Automated Payments Let Health Insurers Pick Patient Care Over Paperwork

In the healthcare industry, there’s a lot of data that goes back and forth between providers and payers. As a result, data management is a key infrastructure issue in the healthcare industry.

When an insurer or other payer’s staff can spend less time with their hands on keyboards — processing provider roster data, for example — they can spend more time working to improve patient care.

“In terms of automated roster uptakes and automated data quality audits, as provider networks are ingested into our customers, there’s a lot of manual oversight that is currently being applied from just people teams,” John Pharr, chief financial officer at veda, told PYMNTS. The company makes artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) software that automates complex processes for payers.

Building a Compliant, Faster, More Accurate Process

The manual processes in place in the healthcare regulation and healthcare client space create an opportunity to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) innovation to optimize things and implement a smart automation process.

“It takes a long time for those things to be processed, and with new regulation in place, with the No Surprises Act and things along those lines, we are able to correct and ingest that information for our clients so that they’re able to process their information in a more compliant, faster, more accurate way,” Pharr said.

Remaining Nimble, Agile and Streamlined

In his role as CFO, Pharr has seen that veda itself must make sure it has the correct integrations in place to submit invoices and process payments from the enterprise procurement systems customers use.

“Internally, how we’re making sure that we are able to support the finance and operations business of our company and the operations teams of our clients is, we just make sure that everything is on time, correct and in place,” Pharr said.

Companies have also had to adapt to a hybrid/remote world, and Pharr said this has created an opportunity for businesses to attract talent from a pool that is more broad and more diverse.

“I think it’s really going to accelerate businesses that are not in the places that you would typically find strong technology talent centers like New York, San Francisco, LA,” Pharr said. “So I think it’s going to see a lot of different players emerge as business leaders, and I’m looking forward to seeing how that plays out in terms of managing that at veda.”

Preparing for Growth

With Zoom calls and the ways teams are structured, veda has maintained the sort of watercooler conversation that can help propel businesses, Pharr said. He hopes to see that continue as the company grows.

He also plans to continue to optimize veda’s integrations with its customers’ procurement systems.

“We want to make sure that as the business grows, everything that we have in place is appropriately allocated and built up so we can facilitate the next stage of the company,” Pharr said.