CASE STUDY:
The Challenge: Taking insurance is intimidating, complicated, and time-consuming
Small ambulatory practices – especially mental health and therapy practices – often struggle with insurance. The whole process of accepting insurance and working with multiple payers can be complicated and intimidating. Like other providers, Nicole Breck, who owns a mental health practice in New York, feared time-consuming billing tasks such as
Correct coding
and reporting
Complicated
billing processes
Claims corrections
and claims
management
Instead of dealing with all that hassle, many small providers opt not to take insurance at all. Unfortunately, in a recession or economic downturn, ignoring insurance can be catastrophic.
“I believe strongly in taking insurance,” Nicole explained. “In a down market, you want to take insurance. Your patients may not have the budget to pay out of pocket, but many of them will still have insurance coverage for your services.”
But how can a small healthcare provider overcome the barriers to accepting insurance?
THE SOLUTION: TECHNOLOGY BRINGS AUTOMATION AND EFFICIENCY
Nicole enhanced her practice’s revenue while freeing up time to focus on her patients with Claims Management.
With an average of 32-38 patients scheduled each week, Nicole cannot afford to spend a lot of time on billing. She chose Inovalon because it helps her save time and frustration. Instead of logging in and out of multiple payer portals, she can access all of her payers in one place. “The time savings alone is worth the price,” she says. “Yes, all of those payers have free portals, but it’s impossible to keep up with all of them and chase them all down. The cost to my time is just too high. Inovalon pays for itself by giving me back my time.” With Inovalon, Nicole has successfully recession-proofed her practice. In good and bad economic times, she continues to have a full schedule and can help more patients who need her but may not have the cash available for therapy
THE RESULTS: MORE REVENUE AND MORE TIME TO FOCUS ON PATIENTS
Since she began using Inovalon, Nicole has seen significant positive impacts on her dayto-day activities for her practice. With its simple, user-friendly interface, the application makes it easy for Nicole to automate her billing processes.
In fact, the application is so easy and takes so little time, that Nicole now bills all her payers twice a month instead of monthly.
“After seeing how successful I was with the application, my Inovalon
representative recommended that I bill my payers twice each month. Since
it’s all basically automated already, I tried it,” Nicole said. “And I’ve seen a big
increase in my monthly revenue.”
“I’ve increased my revenue by 15% with Claims Management. Because I can easily identify denied claims, my overall revenue stream is faster and more continuous.”
– Nicole Breck, LCSW | New York City
