Implementing revBot in Vision Claims Processing

Implementing revBot in Vision Claims Processing

Our claims automation software, revBot, can revolutionize your practice by taking over many of the billing tasks currently performed by your staff. But you may be wondering: how does a piece of software successfully carry out complex, multi-step operations, navigating the many databases we currently interact with?

In reality, training revBot isn’t much different than training a new staff member. revBot’s ability to actively learn and adapt to your existing workflows is what makes it such a powerful technology.

But like any new employee, revBot needs good guidance, clear instructions, and some time to get up to speed. That’s why we developed a five phase implementation protocol to evaluate your practice’s needs, customize your revBot agent, and prepare it to gradually take on the duties it’s assigned. The process is collaborative from start to finish, with Revival Health engineers guiding you every step of the way.

We’ll go over each of the steps below in more detail, but here’s an overview:

Phase 1: Scope
Our team will assess your needs, goals, and whether revBot is a good fit for your practice

Phase 2: Design
Revival experts will sketch a customized plan for integration, presenting it for your review and approval

Phase 3: Build
Our engineers write the code and begin test runs with revBot on simple tasks

Phase 4: Launch
When you’re ready, revBot will begin completing the tasks assigned to it. Revival provides direct training for your staff so they can monitor revBot’s performance

Phase 5: Fine tuning
Revival team members will stay with you every step of the way to calibrate your system, making adjustments as needed

Transparency and Guaranteed ROI

At the heart of Revival’s business is a guarantee that clients see a positive ROI with the revBot system. We demonstrate our commitment with ongoing reports at every phase of the process, spelling out exactly how many labor hours you’ll save.

That commitment to transparency also means we don’t want to sell a system that won’t deliver a substantial ROI. That’s why you’ll notice that the first step in the process above is to assess whether revBot is a good fit for your unique practice needs.

Below we’ll talk in more detail about how each phase of our implementation process works. But if you’re ready to learn more about how revBot can work for you, you can also fill out our simple application form, and a member of our team will be in touch.

Phase 1: Scope

Before we dive into automation, we’ll help you determine exactly what you’re trying to achieve.

Our rule of thumb is that revBot is only a good fit if your business is spending at least 2 hours per day on vision claims processing.

If it looks like revBot will bring you the benefits it has brought to dozens of other practices, we’ll move on to scoping. Our experts will work with you to narrow down on your immediate goals, prioritizing those that will deliver a rapid return on investment. We’ll also help you determine which specific parts of your systems you’d like to automate (more on this in the next step).

After we’ve worked closely with you to determine your goals, existing procedures, and which processes would benefit from automation, we’ll deliver a detailed proposal for your review. Included in that proposal is a straightforward pledge indicating your guaranteed ROI.

Phase 2: Design

Before we start customizing revBot for your needs, we’ll analyze your current workflow.

No two ophthalmic practices are exactly alike. So before adding revBot to your team, we will spend some time studying your claims process to see which parts can be improved by our software. We do this by breaking down the claims cycle into four steps:

1. Benefits discovery
2. Eligibility and authorization
3. Filing claims
4. Payment reconciliation and follow-up
   
   

Some practices handle all of these tasks in-office, while others outsource them to third parties. Furthermore, you may wish to automate all of these tasks or only a few.

‍Either way, we’ll help you estimate how much time and money revBot can save at each stage.

Phase 3: Build

At this stage, our engineers start customizing your revBot.

Our team and your staff will collaborate to draw up standard operating procedures (SOPs) for the tasks you’d like to automate. Our software engineers will then translate those SOPs into the digital language revBot understands, breaking each task down into a set of steps that revBot can carry out automatically.

For offices that already have clear SOPs in place, this step can be handled mostly by Revival staff. If your practice has not yet standardized these tasks, we’ll work with you to develop them.

Phase 4: Launch

With a detailed design in place, we’ll start integrating revBot into your systems.

You’ll either set up a workstation in your office where revBot can log in securely —  just like a remote employee — or, alternatively, we can host revBot on our own external server.

In the same way a new employee might “shadow” a more experienced staff member, revBot will then watch over the “virtual shoulder” of your current employees as they perform claims processing. Training revBot on your unique SOPs is ultimately a collaborative effort between your practice, Revival Health and revBot, with our engineers guiding the way.

Initially, we’ll instruct revBot to take on only small batches of real work, while humans check that work for accuracy at key stages. We typically train revBot on one task at a time, ensuring that it works with perfect accuracy before moving on to another task. This process repeats, with Revival Health staff’s full technical support, until you’re satisfied with revBot’s performance.

We’ll also set up revBot to deliver regular, automated reports to keep you in the loop. These reports fall into three main categories:

• Status reports confirming that your bot is up and running, and functioning as intended.
• Failure and exception reports alerting you to errors, such as a patient’s coverage being confirmed in error or a claim bouncing back because of incorrect coding. These reports help you identify where revBot might need coding adjustments or human oversight.
• ROI reports illustrating how much value your bot is delivering, typically in terms of employee hours saved, compared to the cost of the system.

Phase 5: Fine-Tune

We’ll keep refining revBot until it’s doing everything you expect of it.

We’ve found that it’s easier to adjust to any new automated tool if someone on your team has clear ownership over it. We’ll help a member of your staff get trained to be revBot’s on-site partner, helping monitor its work and reports. Our experts and support staff will stay involved too, to fine tune revBot’s performance.

After Implementation: Ongoing Maintenance and Performance

Revival Health provides ongoing support throughout your partnership, even after revBot is fully up to speed.

revBot will continue to refine its processes, and we’ll also help it adapt as your business evolves. For example, if you’re making major updates to your website or your practice management system, we’ll help revBot adapt to those news systems. The same goes for any shifts in your business strategy and priorities. As long as revBot is running, you’ll be backed by our ROI guarantee.

Vision Claims Automation Case Study: St. Paul Eye Clinic

The following is from a conversation with Marcus Becker, Director of Optical Services at the St. Paul Eye Clinic P.A. in St. Paul, Minnesota.

St. Paul Eye Clinic began using revBot in 2021. Given the extensive history of implementing this new technology, we asked Marcus to summarize how his day-to-day operations have been transformed. Note: Marcus’ answers have been edited slightly for length and clarity.

‍R.H.: What problems were you facing that you hoped Revival Health and revBot would help you address? Please be as specific as possible and provide examples.

‍M.B.: With the growth in Managed Vision Care, our hope was to minimize additional staff resources needed for billing. Re-entering data from our current POS to a managed care site takes time. That means we need to increase our FTE count to accommodate the need for billing, or pull an FTE off the sales floor to accommodate the increasing volume.

‍R.H.: What was the biggest reason you decided to move forward with trying revBot? What were your initial expectations?

‍M.B.: We decided to move forward with revBot to help reduce the delay in billing and to help speed up the ordering process for our patients. We were looking to regain about 15 hours per week in our optical billing department. Also, allowing us to be more efficient with billing meant we could speed up the process of having managed vision care pay sooner.

‍R.H.: What automation process or processes did you decide to implement initially? What were your reasons for choosing these?

‍M.B.: We implemented the eyeglass side of automation first. We decided to focus on eyeglass ordering as it had the biggest impact on staff time. We could see an immediate improvement in ordering time, from order to dispensing of eyeglasses, and revBot freed up staff to sell more and to improve the optical biller’s time without adding additional staff.

‍R.H.: How would you describe the benefits you and your staff have experienced as a result of automating all of the above processes?

‍M.B.: Staff are more accessible to help the next patient, instead of trying to finish billing. This has also reduced the “stress" of helping a managed vision care patient.

Contact Us

We know that implementing a claims automation system like revBot can sound confusingly technical or abstract. But our phased implementation strategy ensures that revBot gets trained just like any new staff member and works to its fullest potential. And Revival Health staff is there every step of the way.

To find out whether revBot can help revolutionize your practice, Contact Revival Health today.