Challenge
PracticeMax, a full-service medical billing company, processes over 2,400,000 patient/provider encounters annually, some of which require considerable printing, manual sorting, and mail preparation for distribution to various insurance carriers.
Solution
PracticeMax received a marketing email from Quadient and discovered a better way to tackle their arduous assembly practices. With Quadient® Impress, PracticeMax can automate the creation, output, organization, and distribution of its claims. Impress Automate, a cloud-based document delivery solution, manages both physical and digital communications and ensures that the right documents go with the right claims, while Impress Distribute processes the printing, sorting, stuffing, and metering at Quadient’s secure and state-of-the-art production facility.
Results
- More than 100 self-sufficient staff who utilize Impress to complete their own print jobs
- Savings of 120 man-hours a week by eliminating manual sorting, assembly, and mailing
- 7-12% savings on postage gained from Quadient’s bulk rates and combining communication pieces going to the same carrier
- Reduced ink and paper costs
- Downsized three large printers to two much smaller ones
- Improved ability to bill clients from accurate tracking and reporting through Impress’s automated system
- More efficient processing enables faster payment collections for PracticeMax clients
- Enabled remote fulfillment from anywhere in the world
PracticeMax is an Arizona-based revenue cycle management company serving over 5,200 healthcare providers in all 50 U.S. states. Founded in 1969, PracticeMax processes over 2,400,000 patient/provider encounters and generates billings in excess of $1.6 billion annually.
As a full-service medical billing company, PracticeMax handles all the medical billing from the point that the doctor sees the patient through the end of the billing cycle. “We read the doctor’s medical record for the patient and from that, we generate the codes, the billing information, and the charges that go into the HCFA (Health Care Financing Administration) forms that get sent to the insurance company. The insurance company then adjudicates that claim and sends it back to us with the patient’s responsibility. We take it from there through to collecting payment from the patient,” explained Darren Wilson, Director of Patient Services at PracticeMax.
There are some medical insurance claims that cannot be filed electronically, and processing them would require substantial printing. PracticeMax’s processing staff, who can work anywhere in the world, would send the processed claim together with documentation to their central mailroom in Phoenix for printing and mailing. From there, the process would be entirely manual.
PracticeMax utilizes practice management software to file claims electronically. If a claim is denied or additional information is requested, the software produces the HCFA forms all at one time, which could be40 forms or more for all different patients. “When the first claim is denied, a secondary claim would have to be filed. All the claim forms would come in one batch and the supporting documentation would trickle in behind it. It was a very manual process to have to pull off the first claim and then go through everything else to see if all the supporting documentation is there,” said Wilson.
Automation, the better way
One day, Wilson received a marketing email from Quadient that kickstarted more research into a better way to tackle their arduous assembly practice. Having found no other vendors offering similar services, he reached out to Quadient. “We were really impressed with Quadient’s solution, so we decided to move forward without any real comparison to anyone else because we just weren't finding other vendors that were providing the same sort of services,” said Wilson.
With Quadient Impress, PracticeMax can now automate the creation, output, organization, and distribution of its previously-manual claims, eliminating hundreds of hours of labor-intensive work and reducing the risk of human error. Impress Automate is a cloud-based document delivery solution that manages both physical and digital communications and applies intelligent barcodes to ensure that the right documents go with the right claims. Through Impress Distribute, PracticeMax sends documents via a user-friendly platform for printing, sorting, stuffing, and metering by Quadient’s secure and state-of-the-art production facility.
Wilson wanted his team to be self-sufficient and requested to be trained not just on the software itself, but also on how the document templates are built. “The implementation process might have been a bit more complex because we wanted to see how the templates were built so we could make tweaks to them ourselves if we needed to. Quadient was great in taking us through all this. Once we were trained, it was pretty straightforward and easy to use. A handful of us were trained and we in turn showed the rest of the team how to use the tool. Now, we have more than 100 users who log in to Impress and print their documents themselves,” said Wilson.
Benefits abound, efficiencies expedite collections
Previously, processing staff would save the documentation as PDFs in a shared folder and the mailroom staff would access these files in order to print, prep, and mail out. Now, processing staff just selects the proper template in Impress Automate, adds the appropriate carrier information, then sends to Impress Distribute for printing and distribution through Quadient’s facility.
“We're averaging around 20,000 communication pieces a month, with each piece containing five to seven pages typically, but there have been rare occasions when we had to send the whole medical record that was over 100 pages long because it’s an ongoing case. Those are especially tedious and time consuming to manage, but with Impress, it’s been a breeze,” said Wilson.
"We have been using Impress for about two years now and have noticed a 7-12% savings on postage due to the bulk rates we get from Quadient and Impress’s ability to sort and combine all communication pieces that are going to the same carrier, instead of sending them separately. We have downsized our three large printers to two much smaller ones because we do so little in-office printing now. Ink and paper costs have decreased significantly as well.
More importantly, we are easily saving 120 man-hours a week from having to manually lay out all the paperwork to sort and assemble, so my team is now able to focus on other higher-value tasks. We’ve also seen an 80% improvement in our ability to bill our clients now that all our work is being tracked and consolidated in an automated system, whereas previously, we had to manage data on spreadsheets coming from several people in the mailroom, and sometimes stuff got missed. Now that our processes are more efficient, our clients also benefit as we’re able to collect payments faster for them."
—Darren Wilson, Director of Patient Services at PracticeMax
Expanding and lasting use of Quadient Impress
PracticeMax was recently acquired by Harris Healthcare and the business is expected to grow. Other business units within Harris are also able to make use of the services that PracticeMax already has. “Recently, one mailroom had two people resign and we were able to bring that office on to Impress so they didn’t have to fill that attrition. Quadient was able to tweak our templates for them and within a couple of weeks, they were up and running,” said Wilson.
“Quadient has been very responsive, from our salesperson to our project manager. We've had nothing but great experiences with the entire team from an implementation standpoint to an ongoing support standpoint. An added bonus is our ability to print remotely from home or anywhere in the world, which was a tremendous benefit when COVID-19 struck as it allowed us to work normally without disruption. It's been a very, very pleasant experience for us,” said Wilson.
