Authorization lifecycle

The whole flow, from a surgery appearing on a schedule to the authorization number landing on the appointment. Every point where software stops is marked.

#End to end

diagram

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rendering

The two filled boxes are the only places software will not continue on its own.

#The two stops

There are exactly two places where software will not continue on its own: transmitting to a payer, and changing a clinical record. Both are consequential in a way that cannot be undone by a retry, and both carry a named human in the audit record afterwards.

#Where it can end early

Outcome	When	What happens
`stopped`	The payer does not accept 278 on this network	Ends before assembling anything. Prior-auth support varies by payer more than any other transaction.
`invalid`	The draft fails payer validation	Stops before the wire, not after a rejection.
`abstained`	Nothing authoritative answers whether auth is needed	Raises a task naming what could not be determined.
`refused`	Source systems disagree about the patient	Fails closed. See Veradigm.
`routed_to_human`	An adverse determination	Never written back, never communicated by software.
`dead`	Follow-up exhausted its attempts	Becomes a human task. Nothing is silently abandoned.