Manual provider credentials processing can create hours of data entry work and build mountains of paperwork. An Arkansas medical group learned that lesson quickly–and responded by implementing a credentialing software program that has helped staff save both time and money.

Scaling Paper Mountains

Cooper Clinic is a large multispecialty medical group headquartered in Fort Smith, Ark. The clinic employs 830 workers, including 130 physicians. Debbie Heimark, assistant director of human resources, heads the clinic’s provider enrollment and credentials verification process.

When Heimark joined Cooper Clinic five years ago, there was no credentialing software in place. When a new provider came on board, she had to manually complete as many as 13 different enrollment forms, get the provider’s signature and then mail the completed documents to each insurance carrier. She followed a similar process each time a staff provider’s license or credentialing information needed to be updated. The process amounted to hours of data entry work and piles of paper. Filling out forms by hand was not complicated, she says, but the process was redundant and left room for errors.

“I knew there had to be a better way to do provider enrollment,” Heimark says. About a year later, the medical group bought its first credentialing software. But she felt the headaches soon afterward. Within months, the software was obsolete, Heimark says. Vendor staff lacked medical background and failed to understand end-user needs. “The only thing that system did was warehouse information for us,” Heimark says. “We still had to manually complete many provider forms for various insurance companies.”

Heimark needed to find a more efficient option–and fast. As a member of the human resources department, she could not dedicate the majority of her time to provider credentials. After considering several vendors, Cooper Clinic focused on Brentwood, Tenn.-based Sy.Med Development Inc. and its OneApp healthcare credentialing software.