Healthcare — Hospital Services & Patient Engagement · Hybrid · Cleveland Clinic
Hybrid Project Manager Simulation — Cleveland Clinic
Cleveland Clinic is launching Epic MyChart across all 23 hospitals and outpatient sites — appointment scheduling, lab results, secure messaging, bill pay, prescription refills, family proxy access. The technical work is bounded. The actual project is a clinical workflow change disguised as a portal launch, and your job is to win the trust of 12,000+ clinicians who never asked for this. Gain hands-on project management experience over 27 days of real decisions, stakeholders, and PMO deliverables — no prior experience required.
The scenario
Cleveland Clinic is launching the Epic MyChart patient portal across the entire enterprise — all 23 hospitals plus the outpatient network. The portal will give patients self-service access to appointment scheduling, lab results, secure messaging with their care teams, bill pay, prescription refills, and family proxy access. The decision was made at the executive level six months ago and is funded; the portal-side technical work is bounded and well-understood. What is NOT bounded is clinical adoption. MyChart's value proposition depends on clinicians actually using the in-basket secure messaging, releasing results through the configured channels, and committing to the schedule-self-service workflow. None of those is a technology problem — they are clinical workflow changes that 12,000+ physicians, advanced practice providers, and nurses must accept. The previous PM left the program in good standing on personal reasons; the technical scaffolding is in place. You are inheriting a launch that is set up to ship on time and could still fail on adoption. The phased rollout sequences five waves of activation across the 23 sites, opening with smaller community hospitals to build a track record before activating the flagship Heart & Vascular Institute, Cole Eye Institute, Glickman Urological, and Taussig Cancer Center. Wave 1 lands in this 27-day window. The Charter goes to the Digital Health Steering Committee on Day 6.
What you'll do as the project manager
- →Activate MyChart across all 23 Cleveland Clinic hospitals and 100+ outpatient sites in five sequenced waves
- →Achieve 60% patient activation rate within 60 days post-launch at each wave site (industry benchmark for academic medical centers; Mayo Clinic published 71%, Geisinger published 58%)
- →Hold incremental clinician in-basket message burden to ≤ 8 patient-initiated messages per 1.0 clinical FTE per week, measured weekly at each site post-go-live
- →Deliver the six feature surfaces (scheduling, lab results, secure messaging, bill pay, prescription refills, family proxy access) at full functionality from Wave 1 — no feature-staggered rollout within waves
- →Close the program on Day 27 with all four phase-gate deliverables signed, the Wave 1 retrospective complete, and the operational handover to Patient Experience Platforms ops team executed
Project management skills you'll build
The challenges you'll navigate
- •Clinician adoption resistance — the workflow change is real, the clinician body has not been consulted at scale, and the CMO is publicly noncommittal about whether the program will succeed on the current trajectory
- •Privacy/HIPAA interpretive risk — proxy access, minor's privacy (12-17 age band), and secure-messaging defaults are not yet fully signed off by the Privacy Office; an unfavorable interpretation could force significant reconfiguration
- •Wave 1 site selection — early signals from the Heart & Vascular Institute suggest Cardiology may pre-emptively withdraw from Wave 1, which would force a wave-resequence decision before Charter
- •Year-end change freeze — Wave 1 must complete inside the freeze window or push to February, compressing Wave 2-5 schedule and breaking the bi-weekly activation cadence
- •In-basket message burden — without an enforceable cap and a release-mechanism, Halpern's CMO office will push back at first sign of physician complaints, which historically arrive at week 2 post-activation
Technology & stakeholders
You'll manage 6 stakeholders, including Dr. Carla Mendes (VP Patient Experience), Daniel Brennan (Sr. Director, IT PMO & Patient-Facing Platforms), Dr. Marcus Halpern (Chief Medical Officer), and more.
What you'll walk away with
A verified, shareable record of a completed enterprise project — plus the PMO deliverables you produced along the way (charter, project plan, SteerCo deck, closure document). It's real, demonstrable project management experience you can put on your resume and speak to in interviews.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need project management experience to start?
No. This simulation is built for aspiring and practicing project managers alike — you learn by doing. You make real decisions and get feedback, with no PMP or prior PM job required.
How long does this simulation take?
It runs over 27 days, roughly 27 minutes per day, covering the full project lifecycle from initiation to closure.
What will I learn?
You practice the core of project management — stakeholder management, budget and schedule control, risk, scope, and PMO governance — in the context of hybrid in healthcare — hospital services & patient engagement.
Is this based on the real Cleveland Clinic?
It's a realistic scenario inspired by Cleveland Clinic and the Healthcare — Hospital Services & Patient Engagement sector. Details and names are fictionalized for training — it's a simulation, not a record of any actual project.
What do I get at the end?
A verified project completion plus the PMO deliverables you produced (charter, plan, SteerCo deck, closure) — proof of hands-on experience you can show employers.
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