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Case Study: Practice Cuts Costs and Saves Time with Integrated Healthcare Payments

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“Before InstaMed, our staff spent hours each day on the claims submission process, including the time it took to correct and resubmit rejected claims. Today, this process takes us minutes to complete, and we rarely see rejections. InstaMed has also made our patient payments process more efficient, enabling us to get rid of our slow, costly bank terminal and go paperless, making the patient checkout process and end-of-day reconciliation quick and easy. And our lives are much easier with InstaMed’s excellent Customer Service team. They detect any claim or payment delays and send proactive email notifications within seconds, and continue to send updates until a resolution has been reached. If I have any questions during the claims or payments processes, someone is always available to walk me through it step by step. Our staff doesn’t have to be computer savvy because we have InstaMed.”

- Toni Garland, Office Manager, Eastside Pediatrics

BACKGROUND:

Eastside Pediatrics is a five-physician pediatrics practice in Taylors, South Carolina, with a staff of 22 and a high volume of annual patient visits.

CORE BUSINESS PROBLEM:

Eastside Pediatrics was using inefficient tools to manage the payer and patient payments processes. To add to these inefficiencies, the practice relied heavily on paper for the patient payments process.

SOLUTION:

By leveraging InstaMed’s integration with its practice management system, Eastside Pediatrics streamlined the payer and patient payments processes.

BUSINESS RESULTS:

• Reduced time spent on claims submission and patient payment processing by 88%
• Reduced claim rejections
• Reduced costs by going paperless

EASTSIDE PEDIATRICS’ STORY:

A Series of Problems

Inefficient Claims and Remittance Management Processes

On an “easy day” Eastside Pediatrics staff spent two hours on claims submission, as the process was extremely manual.  Once claims were submitted, the staff did not receive acknowledgement that the claims were accepted and delivered to payers until many days later. Frequently, the staff had to reprocess and resubmit rejected claims, an extremely complex and cumbersome process due to deficiencies in the reporting.

Slow Patient Checkout Process

To collect patient responsibility, Eastside Pediatrics processed credit cards using a single bank terminal, which used a slow dialup connection through the practice’s fax line. Since 98 percent of the practice’s patients pay with credit cards, this made the checkout process very slow.

Difficult Reconciliation with Stacks of Paper

As the practice’s bank terminal was not integrated with its practice management system, the staff had to add up stacks of paper receipts at the end of each day to reconcile payments. If an error occurred during the time of payment – for example, if a staff member did not correctly identify which patient made a particular payment – the process to resolve this error and reconcile the payment was slow and inefficient. Each day, practice staff spent hours on these processes.

Lack of Support

To make matters worse, the staff did not have an accessible customer service line with their clearinghouse for assistance, so fixing any issues with claims and payments was difficult and time-consuming.

An Easy Solution

Integrated Healthcare Payment Solutions

Eastside Pediatrics chose InstaMed due to the seamless real-time integration with its practice management system and the user-friendly solutions. To simplify the transition, InstaMed walked the practice through every step of setting up and using its integrated solutions and deploying InstaMed’s private cloud so these solutions could be accessed anytime.

Integrated Clearinghouse and Comprehensive Reporting

With InstaMed’s Claims solution, the practice now spends just a few minutes each morning to submit claims through its practice management system. Within an hour, the practice receives an easy-to-read report showing that the claims went through, or indicating any corrections that need to be made. And with InstaMed’s Claim Status solution, the staff can log into InstaMed Online at any time and check the status of claims in batch or real-time. The practice also receives ERAs (electronic remittance advice) that posts directly into its practice management system, eliminating paper checks and EOPs (explanation of payment) and simplifying reconciliation.

Efficient Patient Payments with Automated Posting

Eastside Pediatrics processes card payments securely using swipe devices attached to each computer through InstaMed’s private cloud. All patient payments automatically post into the practice management system for easy reconciliation, so the staff no longer needs to manually add up and reconcile stacks of paper receipts each day. This has saved the practice significant time and effort.

Hands-On Customer Support

If Eastside Pediatrics has any questions during the healthcare payments process, InstaMed’s Customer Service team works diligently to find a resolution, even outside of business hours. Frequently, the practice does not even need to pick up the phone, as InstaMed detects all delays in claims and payment processing, sends proactive email notifications of the delays and continues to send updates until a resolution has been reached.

Drastic Results

By using InstaMed integrated with its practice management system, Eastside Pediatrics has decreased its time spent on claims submission and patient payment processing by 88 percent, reduced from several hours each day to minutes. Furthermore, the practice saves even more time with fewer claim rejections as well as with InstaMed’s dedicated customer support that quickly resolves any issues that arise. As additional cost savings with InstaMed, Eastside Pediatrics is now a paperless office.