OAR Webinar: The Provider Onboarding Portal: A Homegrown UCI Onboarding Experience

UCI Health represents the clinical arm of the University of California, Irvine, standing as the sole academic health system in Orange County. As our network continues to expand across Southern California, we took a realistic dive into the barriers of the onboarding process to better understand where our service gaps were occurring and evaluate how the enterprise could respond. In 2023, the Provider Onboarding Portal (POP) was rolled out across all of our 20+ clinical departments to serve as a central repository aimed at providing a unified “UCI experience” for each candidate. In its initial phase POP was originally developed to support faculty recruitment, but has since expanded to support staff physicians, researchers, and allied health professionals. As a homegrown database, the ability to customize templates and functions breaks down to the specialty and user, allowing for a more efficient white glove approach and user-friendly interface. Since go-live, features such as My Team, About Me Profile, and a direct messaging function have been added to continue addressing barriers and reduce redundancy for candidates and admin users. As of 2025, the Provider Onboarding team has utilized POP to successfully onboard over 130 candidates, with more than 80 current active providers in progress and growing.

Cristina Navarro

Provider Onboarding Analyst

UCI Health/UCI School of Medicine

Cristina joined UCI School of Medicine in July 2022 as an Onboarding Analyst shortly after receiving her M.S. in Health Care Informatics from the University of San Diego. Prior to UCI, Cristina was the Practice Manager for the Division of Pediatric Hospital Medicine at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, leading the onboarding of academic, staff, and per-diem physicians. With this knowledge, Cristina joined the Clinical Affairs team at UCI SOM as part of an initiative to improve the physician onboarding experience. As the first Onboarding Analyst for the school, Cristina’s role focused on identifying and addressing the barriers in onboarding starting from when an offer letter is extended to the first date of service. To begin addressing these areas, Cristina partnered with the UCI SOM DSS team to roll out the Provider Onboarding Portal (POP) in early 2023. Since going live, the UCI Onboarding Team has grown in its staff and efforts to improve the UCI onboarding experience for all physicians and allied health providers. The Onboarding team has transitioned to support not only the school of medicine, but also the growth of the UCI Health community hospital network. As of July 2023 the Provider Onboarding Portal is live for all 22+ clinical departments and interdisciplinary groups within UCI.

Cathryn Stansberry

Provider Onboarding & Recruitment Specialist

UCI Health/UCI School of Medicine

Cathryn has been working in higher education since 2018, and has been with the University of California, Irvine since 2020. Prior to joining the Provider Onboarding Team in 2024, Cathryn worked as a Medical Education Coordinator and Academic Personnel Business Partner for the School of Medicine, where she gained vital knowledge of the academic components of physician onboarding, as well as processing recruitments, appointments, & international hires.