Challenge
Automated HealthCare Solutions (AHCS) processes $2 million in claims weekly and sends out an average of 100,000 pieces of communications per month. Because the company’s cash flow is tied to claims, it is imperative that claims are processed in a timely manner. As the business was growing, the amount of paper and documentation that needed to be organized, assembled, and sent out was becoming increasingly difficult to manage manually and was costing AHCS more labor and postage spend.
Solution
By automating processes with Quadient’s hardware and software solutions, AHCS has eliminated its time-consuming manual document preparation process and has optimized employee resources. Quadient’s DS-200i folder inserter and IN-600 mailing system help AHCS efficiently get claims and other documentation mailed out in a timely manner while Quadient® Impress ensures document security, integrity, and offers the flexibility to process mail from anywhere.
Results
AHCS’s manual 6–8-hour process was reduced to less than 2 hours, providing labor savings from weekend and overtime work. Within the first year, AHCS realized over $250,000 in savings in postage alone and achieved ROI in less than 10 months. By utilizing Impress Distribute, an application within Impress, as a disaster recovery tool, staff who is unable to be onsite to get mail out can now send the task remotely to one of Quadient’s mail production facilities.
Automated HealthCare Solutions (AHCS) is a healthcare billing company focused on improving the patient experience and enabling providers to get back to their passion—practicing medicine. Founded by physicians, AHCS leverages its proprietary technology to give physicians the ability to dispense medications at point of care and effortlessly process the billing for those claims.
Edward Dibeler, CIO of AHCS, is responsible for all technology, infrastructure, and software development for the company. “AHCS has been around over 20 years and does business in 32 states in the U.S.—we are the largest in our space. We’re focused on workers’ compensation, which involves very complex and data- and paper-driven processes, as far as collections are concerned,” he states.
Manual document process overload
AHCS serves almost 2,000 physicians in over 1,000 locations by managing their prescription and dispensing process. Patients benefit from getting medications at point of care versus shopping around at pharmacies while physicians ensure that patients get the right medication. AHCS also works with insurance carriers to manage claims related to the prescriptions and processes $2 million in claims daily.
As a result, AHCS processes an average of 100,000 pieces of communications per month. They were not performing pre-sort as they did not have the manpower to support a manual process. If several claims were going to the same insurance company, AHCS would send each claim in a separate envelope.
“Our doctors see millions of patients every day, so there’s lots of paper and documentation that needs to be organized, assembled, and sent out. Workers’ compensation claims are time-barred, so if we don’t get to the claim within a certain time frame, we won’t get paid. Getting claims out in a timely manner is tied to our cash flow and is one of the most important processes in our organization,” explains Dibeler. As the business grew, they had to start paying employees overtime and having people come in on the weekends to process mail to maintain that pace.
With hardware a hit, trust builds
The company had already partially automated their process using Quadient’s hardware for several years before the Quadient team introduced Impress to them. “AHCS was growing, and we were using another vendor’s machine, which was constantly breaking down and turning our mail process into a full 8-hour day. Since using Quadient, our mail process is smooth and quick because the hardware works very well and my Quadient team has provided me with many solutions over the years. The team is always interested in learning about my business and was the one that brought the Impress solution to me by seeing the need for improvement in our processes,” says Dibeler.
AHCS runs two Quadient DS-200i folder inserters and an IN-600 mailing system to get their 100,000 pieces of mail out each month. “These machines are pieces of artwork. They perform very well and have been one of my favorite purchases. We bought the second folder inserter recently so we can run them in tandem and get faster in our processes,” says Dibeler.
Software revolutionizes processes, brings rapid ROI
With Quadient Impress, documentation is pulled from AHCS’s back-end claims system and collated so each insurance company receives all claims in one envelope instead of multiple individual envelopes. As part of the discovery process and analysis, it was determined that changing the envelope size would allow employees to put 4 claims—typically 4 pages per claim—into a single envelope. By grouping mail, AHCS realized significant savings in postage and envelope costs, in addition to labor savings.
When Quadient presented Impress and showed what it could do for us, it honestly revolutionized the way that we do the business and the mail process. It cut our time down considerably. We saw that a single person was able to take a 6–8-hour process down to less than 2 hours. Within our first year, we realized over $250,000 in postage savings alone and achieved ROI in less than 10 months. That was the big impact for us.
– Ed Dibeler, Chief Information Officer, Automated HealthCare Solutions
Bonus savings and benefits
Streamlining the outbound document workflow and mailroom activities has enabled AHCS to introduce and evolve other processes.
“Everything is done for us as if it were regular mail. Instead of someone making multiple copies of the same document and then hand-filling the sheet that lays out the individual tracking IDs, Impress gives us a batch of tracking IDs, pre-applies them to the forms, and then sends them to the post office. That delivered more savings,” says Dibeler.
Impress truly proved its value when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Impress offers a remote mail application called Impress Distribute, which AHCS utilized as a disaster recovery tool during lockdowns and when staff is unable to be onsite to get mailings out. They can upload documents remotely from their desktops to Quadient’s secure mail production facility, where the communications are printed, sorted, stuffed, stamped and delivered to the post office.
“Mail is our revenue channel, so it’s a must-do for us daily. When our building was closed during the COVID-19 lockdowns, we literally just flipped a switch and Impress Distribute helped us get our mail packages printed remotely.”
Performance is everything to me. If a vendor proves they can deliver, that's really big for me.
– Ed Dibeler, Chief Information Officer, Automated HealthCare Solutions
