Finding active coverage to support patient care

Unknown insurance coverage can place unnecessary financial burden on patients. Renown Health, a nationally recognized healthcare leader, was looking to better support their patient population by improving coverage identification and verification to more efficiently bill insurance plans for covered services.

Renown Health aimed to minimize covered medical bills becoming a patient’s liability. These uncollected bills place a heightened financial burden on the patient and Renown Health, as they also raise the organization’s risk of bad debt write-offs and revenue loss.

Broken workflows and low staff efficiency cause patient frustration

Renown Health also aimed to better support their staff by improving workflow efficiency. Manual work was required to search for coverage on various payer portals before adding notes to update coverage in the EHR. Low visibility between staff members increased the chance of overlap and duplicated work.

In cases of incorrect or unknown coverage information, patients would be unaware of a balance until they receive unexpected bills for services. This often required multiple calls with the Renown team for manual reconciliation, resulting in frustrated patients and difficult collections processes.

“Many times the patient is not alert or the family is not responsive which makes our processes challenging. Olive relieves patients of the bill and helps our staff find the correct coverage to bill for the visit.”

— Bonnie Weatherby, Supervisor of Business Office at Renown Health

Generate more cash flow and relieve financial burden

Renown Health implemented Olive’s Coverage Identification solution to capture billable insurance that might otherwise be overlooked for patients marked as self-pay. After just a few months with the new solution, the number of found coverages increased by an average of 20%. More than $500,000 of potential bad debt was avoided with five specific coverages Olive found.

By identifying overlooked billable coverage, Olive helps Renown Health generate more cash flow and simultaneously relieve financial burden that would have been placed on the patients. By finding coverage Olive also decreased the likelihood of rejections due to timely filing rules.

Optimizing workflow and improve staff efficiency

Overall staff efficiency improved with the Coverage Identification solution because transparency in the source system enables a more optimized workflow. It also prevents unnecessary communication attempts with patients and avoids sending stressful bills for collection. “Olive’s Coverage Identification product has not only helped our staff but more importantly, it’s helped our patients,” says Bonnie Weatherby, supervisor of business office at Renown Health. “With this product, we enhance our processes but also avoid patient frustrations while increasing Renown’s bottom line financially.”