Tidewater Physicians Multispecialty Group (TPMG) was formed in 1992 with four primary care medical groups in Newport News, Hampton, and Yorktown, Virginia. Today, TPMG has grown to include more than 245 primary care, specialty physicians, and advanced practice clinicians providing consistent, compassionate, high-quality medical care in 85 locations throughout the Hampton Roads and southeastern Virginia.
TPMG turned to its revenue cycle management (RCM) partner, AGS Health, to help it leverage Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to resolve challenges associated with key manual RCM processes
Challenge
- Limited resources to manually process placeholder transactions that allowed claims that include zero-dollar quality codes to be paid.
- Manual processes consumed staff resources that were better suited for higher-value responsibilities.
- The backlog created by the time-consuming process disrupted the billing and collection cycle.
- Delayed billing impact patient satisfaction.
Solution
- Automated 98% of the penny adjustment process and resolved a backlog of more than 100,000 outstanding write-offs in just four months, which would have cost $41,000 annually in FTE labor if done manually.
- Achieved a 99% accuracy rate in transaction posting.
- Will generate an estimated savings of more than $200,000 over a five-year period.
- Accelerated the revenue cycle, improved overall cashflow, and delivered clearer insights into TPMG’s financial outlook.
"Our staff was definitely excited that they didn’t have to do this work anymore and could instead focus on issues that they knew needed their attention and expertise to address quickly and accurately. No one signs up for the job of writing off pennies in a transaction. RPA eliminates that need and lets our staff dedicate themselves to the real work that they did sign on to do."
