In order to conserve resources and protect against frivolous spending, insurance companies developed the idea of ‘prior authorizations’ (PA). In essence, it requires healthcare providers to obtain authorization for healthcare services before proceeding in order to get insurance companies to pay for the procedures. Unfortunately, an unintended consequence is that access to care for many has been drastically impaired. 27% of physicians say their claims are almost always denied and around 75% say that denied claims increased by some extent in the past 5 years.
The repetitive process of completing PA requests and reapplying hoping for a better outcome can be taxing on any administrative team. Nearly 70% of all providers are still manually completing prior authorization requests, either with a dedicated PA team or with a broader administrative staff.Â
Fortunately, there is a better way via prior authorization process automation. This new technology takes less than 5 minutes to perform the prior authorization process and reduce turnaround time by 55%. Most importantly, it frees up 12 hours a week for each administrative worker in the office, which helps them focus on better patient experiences. While doing prior authorizations is unavoidable, getting them done with automated PA systems makes them easy.
Source: Orbit Healthcare
