We now log into NaviNet in the morning and check all of our patients' information which we pull from NaviNet within a few seconds. The time savings has reduced overhead costs, enhanced patient care by enabling us to provide quick and accurate information, and improved the revenue cycle. We have also been able to implement a quality check, which has allowed us to streamline our operations and improve productivity.
Insurer Connect gives provider office staff secure, real-time access to the most current member eligibility and benefit information. Our solutions present increasingly complex benefit information in a straightforward manner, ensuring better patient communications and fewer calls to insurers.
Woonsocket-based Thundermist Health Center is the second largest community health center in Rhode Island, serving three communities and employing more than 50 providers. Thundermist Health Center, which has been part of the federal community health center program for more than three decades, is a non-profit community health center serving more than 26,000 patients. Services include medical, dental, social services, behavioral health counseling, the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Program, Healthcare for the Homeless and a community outreach dental program. Thundermist Health Center is dedicated to delivering high-quality, affordable healthcare and strives for continuous quality improvement and innovation.
About half of Thundermist Health Center’s patients are insured by Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island (NHPRI). Deb Okruta, practice manager of Thundermist’s Woonsocket site, describes the challenges the administrative staff faces when trying to determine insurance coverage and benefits information for approximately 300 patients the practice sees each day in their center alone.
"We have to verify our patients’ insurance each and every visit before they receive care. Our staff needs accurate, up-to-date information from NHPRI, as well as other health insurers, to determine copay amounts, benefits, and deductibles,” Ms. Okruta said. Previously, Thundermist had connected with NHPRI by phone, which was quite time consuming. Ms. Okruta continued, “NHPRI limits the number of transactions you can complete during a single call, so our administrative staff would be on the phone all day trying to get benefits information for the high volume of patients we see every day.”
Interacting with health plans through NaviNet Insurer Connect
To improve communications and efficiencies associated with NHPRI and other health insurers, Thundermist enrolled in NaviNet, America’s largest real-time healthcare communications network. The health center began using NaviNet Insurer Connect, which is offered at no cost to providers by health insurers and enables the health center to communicate with multiple health plans from one Web portal. The health center uses NaviNet Insurer Connect to interact online with NHPRI, Aetna, Cigna and UnitedHealthcare.
“NaviNet is the best office resource we’ve used yet,” said Ms. Okruta. “We now log into NaviNet in the morning and check all of our patients’ information, which we pull from NaviNet within a few seconds. The time savings has reduced overhead costs, enhanced patient care by enabling us to provide quick and accurate information, and improved the revenue cycle. We have also been able to implement a quality check, which has allowed us to streamline our operations and improve productivity.”
Ms. Okruta added, “NaviNet Insurer Connect is easy to use. Users securely log on with their unique NaviNet user ID and access patient data from many health insurers at any point during the day. With NaviNet, our practice’s administrative staff has significantly decreased the amount of time they spend on the phone with health insurers. We have entirely eliminated all phone calls for NHPRI eligibility and benefits information.”
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