Episode 70: How to Increase Cash Recovery with Bruce Gehring and Anne Orrick

Amanda Brummit:  WeInfuse Podcast, Episode 70. Welcome to the WeInfuse podcast. My name is Amanda Brummitt. In every episode, we give you a seat at the table as we talk to infusion center owners, operators, and experts, so you can get the insight you need to run a thriving practice. In this episode, we talk with Bruce Gehring.

Senior Vice President of Business Development and Anne Orrick, Chief Operating Officer of Allegiance Group. Bruce and Anne will share how to recover more cash quickly and reduce the resources needed for patient payments.  Well, Bruce, Anne, thank you so much for being here with us today. I would love it if you could start with just telling our listeners who you are personally and professionally. 

Bruce Gehring: I’ll start, I guess. I’m Bruce Gehring, Senior Vice President of Business Development for the Allegiance Group,  and I’ve been involved with the Allegiance Group for now going on 17 years, and we’ve seen just a tremendous amount of change in healthcare industry over that time, as everybody knows, so the challenges that everybody’s facing, we’re facing the same challenges and trying to solve for those problems.

And that’s really what got me involved in the industry because a friend of mine who owned the business needed help in getting his business up and running. So with my marketing background and I was in the hospitality industry for again, 20 some years, really needed help with how do we go out and establish those critical relationships that are going to help really, you know, expand the business and reach the the healthcare providers that need the assistance or what we’re, you know, trying to solve for.

So that was my entry into the industry and I haven’t looked back because it’s been a lot of fun to be able to go ahead and work with companies like yourselves and create a solution that makes the product better and really solves common issues. That exists out there for providers and when we can turn around and show them improvement in profitability and in efficiency and whatever the, you know, the, what we’re trying to solve for.

I mean, it just makes, it makes my day. I really feel like we’ve contributed to assisting, you know, those providers in this industry.  

Amanda Brummitt: Great. And then, Anne, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? 

Anne Orrick: Yep. You bet. I’ve been at Allegiance Group for 14 years. I came from financial services. I was in the industry there for about 15 years, working for very large mutual fund companies or companies that actually do the mutual fund processing on their systems.

So I had a very different background and a mutual friend said, come join this company. It was quite small at the time. And Bruce and I have been very fortunate because having come from bigger places in a smaller organization, it’s just been so much fun to get involved in all the aspects of the business.

Our main goal and our main mission just kind of naturally about who we are and the group and the team here is to help people solve problems. And so right away, you know, when we started this, you notice that when you were talking to customers, they were so thirsty for knowledge and tips and. And the technology that we provided, even back then, when I look at the product that we’re using today, what it was back then was so rudimentary, but now it’s just, you know, has so many wonderful bells and whistles and services that, um, you know, I couldn’t even have thought of back then.

So I guess, you know, from, from my background very much in operations. Working with I.T. directly and with the client facing teams. I’ve been product manager, project manager in all sorts of roles within that. It’s been really, really satisfying. And so infusion, although relatively new, we’ve still been working with them.

I’ve been working with them and onboarding infusion clients onto our system for six years, maybe seven years. Much more heavily right now, but they very much like when I first started with Allegiance Group and the typical you know, clientele was the home medical equipment. And back then they were kind of just getting, you know, their hands around technology and, and deciding what their mission was for their clients and things like that, well, that’s where we are today.

For infusion there, you see some that are a little bit more advanced, but some that are still kind of just trying to figure it out. So love it. We love what we do and we love making the lives of our clients better so they can go out and serve their patients. 

Amanda Brummitt: I love that, Anne, because that’s what we’re all actually here for is to serve our patients.

So, can you tell us what Allegiance Group does to help practices be able to focus on that? 

Bruce Gehring: Absolutely. Allegiance group, we’re a medical billing software as a service that specifically is addressing the patient revenue cycle and we have our solution. Collect Plus really is designed to integrate with the billing software that the provider is using to optimize that patient engagement and operating efficiency, with the goal being able to recover more cash faster, more efficiently, and reduce the amount of resources.

The provider has to have to accomplish the recovery of patient payments.  And that’s, golly, looking at an operation. There’s a lot of education that goes along with that.  And it’s then trying to plug in our solution where there are gaps in the services that the provider is wanting to provide to their clientele. 

And we see our role as being consultants, as business advisors, being really critical because we look at this as a partnership. And it truly is, you know, we’re not transactional. It doesn’t matter that I make X on whatever the transaction is. And that’s what we get judged by. 

It is really taking a look at how can we make that business more efficient and more profitable. And I’ll guarantee you in the long run, we will have a customer for life because we have the same vision and the same goals that they have, and trying to run their business. I mean, it gets down to no profit, no mission.

You know, we’ve got to be able to deliver on the promise and not that, you know, cliche it’s, under promise and over delivered, that’s not the idea. We certainly want to provide the right service at the right time in the right way that gets the best possible result for the customer and review that with them.

There’s accountability so that they then know what we’re accomplishing for them and there’s the value, and then when they see that value, I mean, I don’t know, Anne has better statistics on this, but I think the only time we see somebody leave our services is honestly, if maybe they’ve had to go out of business or they got purchased by another company and they’re on some different platform that negates what we’re doing, but that’s a 95/96 percent retention rate is our standard. 

Amanda Brummitt: That’s incredible. And then let’s talk specifically about infusion providers. Can you tell me how you help infusion providers? And as you’re talking about no margin, no mission, the word sustainability comes to mind for me that you’re going to help these centers sustain themselves. How do you help infusion providers? 

Bruce Gehring: Yeah, I’m gonna let Anne take that a little bit because operationally, again, it gets back to your focus on what you do well, and that is providing the care to the customer and, you know, outsource those things that you don’t have the expertise or the resources to manage properly, and that’s where we come in and Anne does this all day long when she does onboarding with clients, and she can probably give you some good examples of where we really fit into that. 

Anne Orrick: Yeah, you bet. And like I said, the sentiment, the objectives have changed over the years since we’ve been working with infusion clients. A little bit more clear now, when the management first joins with us and we do our first kickoff call. Uh, but still, you know, so in other words, they know that they need technology.

That’s what everyone knows. But what goals should they expect, how should they measure it, how can they measure it? How does that work with their mission? What is their mission? What are their collection policies? So a lot of those, there’s just a lot of variety of the types of providers that we work with and depending on how sophisticated they are, how far along they are in that development, it really then changes how we work with them.

What I see, typically is that you do have a range of providers who, some who have a mission of being just, we just want to really be careful with the customers. We don’t want to ruffle any feathers. We aren’t necessarily interested in financial results. We just want to try our best to get something out of it.

And then others that are, they’re past that. And they’re like, we still, we have to have this business. This is a business. We need to make some money again, exactly where we were a very long time ago with HME. They’ve really kind of advanced way past that now. So I think just the mission of how to reach the customer, who is the customer, are they going to adapt to the workflow that we provide, which is, customer friendly.

It’s not over the top. It’s easy to understand. We try very hard to make it easy to understand. So it’s a nice transition for their customers from however they’re sending statements today to now. It’s a nice transition, but it also just has a lot more accessibility. So, working with them to understand the system and really embrace what we have is, you know, what we see with infusion. 

Some of the challenges are just getting them to get unfamiliar, and not be so committed to staying familiar, keeping things familiar, but kind of pushing them out of their comfort level to understand what all the bells and whistles are, what can they implement to bring in the better results, reducing their cost and bringing in more cash.  

Amanda Brummitt: Excellent. And yeah, as I hear you talk, I definitely understand why you describe yourselves now as consultants. You’re not just a billing company. You’re doing way more than just that. So, Bruce, you said earlier that you make it easy for providers.

Can you talk to me about the benefits of Allegiance that make it easy for providers? 

Bruce Gehring: Sure. I think it goes back to some of the education, certainly the mission that they’re wanting to fulfill. I always look at this from, you know, let’s start with the end in mind.

We all want to be paid for what we’re providing. That’s the bottom line. And we’re amazed sometimes when we go in and there’s this reluctance to go ahead and set appropriate expectations with the customer and that gets them off on the wrong foot from a customer service standpoint. It just snowballs.

It is a domino effect. And so, one of the things that we do spend time on is making sure the provider understands, you know, how are they setting those expectations? I mean, it kind of goes back to, let’s go one step back. They went to their, you know, their primary physician and they got a prescription or whatever it was.

I can guarantee you, they paid their copay before they even saw their physician for that appointment, and we have providers in our industry that are so worried about the referral source that they don’t want to ruffle those feathers and yet, they’re really not willing to go ahead and set the appropriate expectation with the customer to get them to respond in an appropriate way.

And when they do that, you know what? It’s not a surprise to the customer. They know that, yeah, there’s going to be a copay on this, or this therapy is going to have an out-of-pocket cost of X. Certainly I have to deal with my high deductible plan. So I know I’m going to be paying for a lot of this myself.

So then if that’s the case, it’s really going ahead and giving the provider the tools that they need to be able to help that customer navigate that, which means if they need to set up a payment plan, how do we do that in a way that’s friendly to the customer? So understanding what the customer is capable of paying and how we can match those terms, so now it’s not an objective objection. It is you’re working with them to accomplish what you need to. And ultimately we want them to feel better. We want them to get well. We want them to, you know, stick to their regiment and not have to worry about this. So let’s go ahead and establish payment tamp plans in terms that fit the circumstance. 

And that’s the tool–that’s the solution that we’re able to provide the infusion provider, so they can ultimately do a better job of caring for their customer. And I don’t know if I answered the question. 

Amanda Brummitt: Yeah, you did. Managing expectations is huge in any industry in any business, but especially in infusion, because people usually don’t want what we’re selling and nobody wants surprises when it comes to money.

So managing those expectations are huge and help me understand. Is that something where you’re working with the infusion center and teaching their office scripting, or is your team having those patient conversations? Who’s doing the patient financial assistance? How does it all work together?

Bruce Gehring: Yeah, we’re typically working with the healthcare provider team, you know, whether it’s billing team, intake team, whoever is engaging the customer, because that’s usually where the questions come from. How do we do this? And what’s the appropriate procedure? And, you know, what’s legal, all those types of things.

And we’re not lawyers, right? But we know we can certainly direct people to those resources if they have a need for that. But we certainly are able to go ahead and really concentrate on the best practices what we know works and why, and then let them figure out internally how they’re going to deliver that, because I can’t force it on any healthcare provider, they’ve got to go ahead and absorb that, and they’ve got to bring that into their culture and they’ve got to be able to go ahead and deliver the goods. So we can and, and we do, we talk about those key things all the time and to varying degrees, they get adopted or they don’t. But the good news is when we’re monitoring their performance and we can see that because they’re doing certain things or getting better results, we want to certainly emphasize those things. So it reinforces that good behavior and accelerates their improvement from a performance standpoint. 

Anne Orrick: And if I may just add to the one thing, that we have a lot come to us and they know they need a statement process.

They know they need technology. But what that all means, they haven’t really processed it yet. They know they want things easier. Well, really, starting with our best practices, and we’ve been doing this for many years, not just with infusion clients, but with all sorts of businesses, anything post acute, and even some non-healthcare providers.

We know the best steps with billing and even on to collections, if it’s necessary. So telling them, you know, what we’ve learned and showing them the best practices and then hoping that they’ll be open to really figuring out how that can fit into their organization. The best part is when they get it and they realize that they’re right now, typically when a provider comes to us, they’re touching every single piece of workflow.

Every single thing they’re involved in, they’re touching, they’re making decisions, et cetera. And with our system, it allows them to only work the exceptions. If they can trust the system, trust the touch points, and trust the comfort and the process, then they’re just working the exceptions and that is a game changer. 

Amanda Brummitt: So their team, you’re actually training their team to do it. 

Anne Orrick: Their bill, yeah, the kind of the core billing team and, and as a sub part of that, you were asking about scripts, the people who are very important part that the people facing the customer, taking the call, pulling up an account and really talking to the customer about what they’ve seen, which they can see right on the screen.

They can, I see you saw a statement, you had a text reminder, you know, it engages with them right away. They understand what the customer experienced because they see it right in front of them. They can hear it, in fact, in the tool and from that, then turning that to a payment conversation where there are a lot of different payment options.

So, you know, again, once it dawns on them, hopefully they can adopt as much of the best practice as possible. It dawns on them that they’re really just working the exceptions rather than touching every little thing in the whole billing process. Uh, it’s really wonderful when that takes hold.

And then my favorite part of this job, and you’ll ask the client success managers too, a couple of months after they go live, they’re like, whoa, that there are so many payments coming in. Best month we’ve ever had, you know, that kind of thing, and you just really know you’ve made a difference. It’s great. 

Amanda Brummitt: Oh Anne, isn’t that the best kind of feedback? That’s the stuff that keeps us going every day, when we know that what we’re doing is working. And then let me clarify something because I want to make sure that I understand this right. So within the WeInfuse platform, people may be set up within the billing module.

So for those folks, if they’re doing their billing in-house or their revenue cycle management company that’s outsourced, they’re logging into WeInfuse and utilizing it to push out their billing.  Do you interact with their in-house billing staff or their outsourced RCM people at all? 

Bruce Gehring: We do in the sense that we’re going to follow-up on what the patient’s responsibility is.

And in many cases, that means we’ve filed the claim, the claim’s adjudicated, it’s paid, and now there’s a balance that’s due from the patient. And that’s when we’re picking up that balance and engaging the customer. And, you know, you can take a step back from that because where you have the best results is where you’re working with a patient.

So you’re at an intake and you know you’re going to go on therapy and that particular drug is covered by their insurance and you have a good understanding of what the patient’s responsibility is. That’s the opportunity. To go ahead and establish the payment terms with the customer right there, because you know they’re going to have infusions twice a month or once a week or every month, whatever it is going to be, and you know that that copay is going to be X.

Let’s go ahead and secure that right now. So it never becomes a question and we can establish those payment terms right from the get go. And you’ll never be chasing that bill. And quite frankly, the customer experience is better because if they’re on an autopay, they’re not getting all these reminder notices and touches and all this type of stuff. Cause that account quote is suspended, if you will. And the payments are coming in automatically based on the terms that were already agreed to. So when we focus on the front end like that, that’s when we see people getting recovery rates in the 80 and 90 percentile. That’s huge because when we look at infusion and get, depending on the mission and all that type of stuff.

I mean, we had one client not that many years ago where we stepped in and they were only collecting about 24 percent of their patient pay. And you’re saying, “oh wow”, there is 76 percent of that  bucket. It’s just being thrown down the drain. And can you sustain that to your point? You know, not very long.  

Amanda Brummitt: And so do they typically have a second company or their own internal team that is working denials and all of that? And then do you guys have any oversight on that or you focus exclusively on the patient side? 

Bruce Gehring: Yeah, we work on the patient side, but we work very closely with billing service companies. And so we tie that together because sometimes, depending on what they’re doing and providing in the way of services, there is some overlap because they may be doing the cash posting for the customer, they may be doing some of those, so the systems need to be, you know, interoperable.

And that’s where we love the integration, where you can go from, you know, one system right into the other, cause there’s single sign on and all those types of technical things. 

Anne Orrick: And it’s the billing services company being an extension of their staff. In some cases, they hack the class to our tool and are using it too.

So we not only work with the client to make sure they’re optimizing the use of it, but also keep tabs on the service group, and make sure they’re using it as well as they can. 

Amanda Brummitt: Perfect. Okay, that totally makes sense. So let’s talk about the integration with WeInfuse. I understand that you guys are now integrated in the software with CollectPlus. How does that work? How does that look for the end user?  

Bruce Gehring: Oh, well, we like to say seamless, right? But that’s probably an overused word, but I’ll let Anne, because I mean, this is really the whole thing as far as being able to pull the data in. It’s all automated. And to her point, making. It’s very easy for the provider just to work the exceptions, but, I’ll let you explain that integration.

Anne Orrick: You bet. So we’re pulling in those new patient balances as soon as we possibly can. The schedule is typically weekly and billing providers for years do the 30, 60, 90 day, hope for the best kind of process. That’s not what we do at all. We’re working to pull in the patient balances as soon as we possibly can to get that outreach to them right away.

So on a weekly basis, we’re pulling any account that’s been moved to that patient’s balance, you know, over a weekend. And we allowed the staff to come in and look at it and kind of be the gatekeepers, making sure what got imported into the CollectPlus tool is accurate and should then be a part of the workflow.

And then once they start that workflow, then they can go in and cancel, suspend, set up an account or set up an auto pay, a payment arrangement of some sort, et cetera, to kind of manage that. And then every night in the integration, we’re pulling over payments and adjustments so that we’re remaining in sync with the WeInfuse balances.

And then the other great part about the integration is that, you know, we understand that logging into two systems is not ideal. We really want them to work as efficiently as possible in one. So WeInfuse being the core, the core most important kind of system, the billing of record, if you will.

So if there is an address change or demographic change that can be done and WeInfuse and we bring that over to compare automatically with Collect plus on a weekly basis. And if we see something change, we’ll make that update. And so it takes, uh, you know, you have to make address changes in booth systems, et cetera.

And then from the other side of that, what do we push into? WeInfuse to make the provider’s lives easier. Well, one thing we’re working on right now is auto-posting. So we have a robust payment portal. As a part of the Click Plus tool, every touch point that goes out, whether it be a statement or eDelivery or text, or we have a QR code and reminder phone calls. It’s all driving the patient to the portal to self-serve or to call the office and then the biller can take that call and make a payment or auto-pay, whatever.

All of those payments then are getting queued up daily. And we want those to autopost back into WeInfuse to save the time of posting. So for those providers who don’t want to manually touch every one of those payments and post it in the system, we can allow for that to happen. And that’s scheduled for, I believe, the third quarter, beginning of the third quarter, this year.

Amanda Brummitt: Wow. That does actually sound pretty seamless. It really does.  

Bruce Gehring: It really does, and it saves time and error because if we can auto-post, then you’re not having the cash posters having to transfer that data and errors occur. And to Anne’s point, we do a daily online payment report, which is their record of what’s been deposited in their bank.

So they certainly can use that to do their bank reconciliation. But that’s what should show up in WeInfuse. And so then if there are exceptions, it’ll show up on that report. And that’s what the cash poster would have to deal with, manual posting or a credit card that was expired and didn’t process so you can do the outreach to get a new form of payment. 

Amanda Brummitt: Yeah.

Anne Orrick: If I may add something just for a minute about processes. The other thing I really love about this is we’re relatively new to WeInfuse, but I’ve been working with similar systems for a long time. But I love working with the WeInfuse clients because they’re going to help us be better.

And shout out to Marina. I’ve been working with her recently and we onboarded a particular provider onto the system and she and her team really scrutinized the customer. Workflow and you know, not everyone can just plug in the best practices and, and think it’s going to be perfect.

There are some nuances and we are able to be very flexible, depending on what the provider needs. So this particular provider has an app, well, the patients already have a login to that app. Well, then that could be very confusing if they’re getting statements asking them to log into something else.

So, working through the patient experience with her and her team really provided us some lightbulb moments in which we can tweak the system and make it even more flexible for users like them and in the future. So I love it. We’re always growing, no systems perfect. And so that’s another example of, as we start working more and more with the WeInfuse community. We’re going to get better. 

Amanda Brummitt: Yeah, that totally makes sense. So, Anne going back to your financial services background and Bruce, back to your hospitality background, I love that you both came up in a different vein and then went into healthcare and sometimes I think that allows us to see different things than other people do.

Anything from those perspectives that you would say, you have advice for infusion providers? Like, I wish you knew this or I wish you knew that.  

Bruce Gehring: I will start because I grew up in the hospitality industry and so that’s all customer-focused, right? So understanding as an infusion provider, that patient journey is how do we engage the customer?

Where do we engage the customer? And how do we help them navigate through this? Because as providers, we’re doing this every day.  And not that it’s old hat, but from a patient’s perspective, this might be my first infusion therapy session. I don’t know what to expect.

I don’t, you know, it’s all of that. And so, looking at it from that perspective and how your operation engages the customer. And each point of engagement, how easy is it for that patient to navigate and provide the direction that they need to get the end result and whether that’s payment or whether that is, you know, getting an appointment on schedule or whatever. It’s really looking at that so that you have the best possible patient experience. 

And so that comes down to what’s being communicated, when is it being communicated, how is it being communicated, all of those things have to be looked at. And you do that well, I can probably guarantee you the experience is going to be better. You’re going to have a lot more, well, in some cases you don’t want repeat customers, but it’s certainly going to be a much better reputation for you as an organization, being able to provide that type of five star service.

Amanda Brummitt: Yeah, they’re going to tell their friends and they’re going to tell their doctor.

Anne Orrick: And from my background in financial services, I think it’s just really about teams and adopting new technology and how organizations can make decisions and move and change. And I see that all the time with my role in the onboarding side of things. You’ve got the, again, not this maybe organizations that aren’t quite there yet with automation and they’re getting there.

They know they need it, but they’re terrified of it. You’ll hear from them, uh, our clients are elderly and, and won’t use eDelivery and text, et cetera. But we know from, you know, surveys out there and our own statistics that like 90 percent of the whole, you know, healthcare market, they prefer paying their bills electronically.

So they just have to kind of get there and understand that. Another scenario might be, again, that group that they, Oh no, they’re well run machines and they are doing this and they’re never going to do anything different, but they know they need a statement, you know, vendors. So, they’ll come over and want to adopt just the statement business, but don’t want to hear anything about the full process and want to kind of scratch off the stuff that makes them uncomfortable.

And then you’ve got the other side of this, which is the larger organizations. They’re more developed; they’re more bureaucratic; they’re working in silos. And they, everything’s just slow. They are kind of fighting within themselves just to figure out how to adopt this new technology.

They all see the need for it. They see the benefit in it. But you know, who’s in charge and they want to kind of protect their own turf and things like that. And then of course, there’s this in all of this, this idea that, well, this could be replacing people, right, because we’re making things better, you know, faster and things like that.

But I guess my point in saying all of that, from just my financial service days along with today, it’s just having people be open to what’s available to them. And we try so hard to make it not an intimidating process and to share what our experience has been with other providers who have used this successfully, and it also comes with a really strong leader. If the successful onboarding comes with someone who sees the big picture, communicates the big picture, we’re here and we want to be here and try to get people really excited about it. And that’s any one of those examples. I really challenged them to kind of get out of there.

We want to keep things familiar role and take advantage of this. Otherwise, they’re not going to see the full benefits and the opportunities that, you know, they can get with the tool, the full potential. 

Amanda Brummitt: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you mentioned earlier lightbulb moments. Can you both share some lightbulb moments you’ve experienced with infusion centers? 

Bruce Gehring: There’s several, but when you take a look at, I think it kind of gets back to what Anne was talking about adopting technology and we just recently had somebody that, oh gosh, we weren’t going to do text. I mean, they were all afraid that he had to get all these objective objections and they didn’t do it.

And we go, you know, but we’re seeing such a lift in recovery and reduction in cost. When people adopt this and finally they adopt it. And then of course it wasn’t even two months later. They came back to us and went “Bruce, I don’t understand why we waited so long. We saw our DSO be compressed by 10 days.”

So it went from like 46 days down to 36 days to get paid. And their recovery went up almost like 8% overnight. And you’re going, that’s just the tip of the iceberg because now you’re getting paid faster. You’re not spending more money, touching people multiple times to get that same payment.

So you just really saved a bunch of money. You got more cash, better cashflow. And guess what? People are using the text and responding to it because that’s the web that they prefer. So now, you’ve got a better customer experience too. So, those are and when you see that and you go, and I’m not that we’re going to sit there and say, I told you so.

Um, but you know, it’s like, yes, you just smile, you know, because you can see that that’s money to the bank, you know? And that’s, that’s huge. I love those stories.  

Amanda Brummitt: Awesome. 

Anne Orrick: I’ll just add kind of a personal note, I think we approached this so much with our business hats on. And I remember when I was first working with infusion clients, the lightbulb I had was that sometimes it’s quite a different patient experience and more dire than just getting a brace or wheelchair patients and patients, everyone needs care and certainly if they’re in a situation where they’re seeing a doctor or need something like that, but this was a lightbulb moment to me when I’m like, no, we can push this forward and get these bills out the door and it can say what our mission is. 

This for a reason, and it’s so just made me realize that the communication that goes into the touchpoints has to represent what that client needs. And we do have a lot of flexibility in terms of content you can put in the statement that really reflects that provider’s own mission. But it, I should have known that, but it really dawned on me as I heard some of these stories and why they do what they do.

And again, it’s changed. It’s changed even from when we started to now. People are being, say, not afraid anymore to bill all the way through. And are not writing off so quickly anymore, but still, you do have cases that are quite dire and you have to, you have to take a moment to pause and think about the big picture.

Amanda Brummitt: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Those are great lessons for all of us. So what are you guys most excited about right now in the industry?  

Bruce Gehring: Wow, the growth. I mean, this is a good time to be in the infusion business because there’s opportunity out there for providers and it’s an industry that’s expanding, you know, and I’ll go back to the HME DME example, it was, I don’t know, 13,000 brick and mortar stores, you know, 15 years ago, and it’s now down to seven. I mean, so we’re expanding right now, but there’ll be a point where now we’ll start seeing some people buy people and it’ll consolidate. But right now there’s opportunity because we’re trying to get the service to the patient, and so you want to be able to have the infusion centers or home infusion, where the patient is and no longer can you afford, especially when you talk rural America, I can’t drive 150 miles to get my infusion. I need to be able to have that readily available and convenient.

And that’s something that I think is really exciting. So there’s definitely opportunity and we’re going to see growth for a number of years. 

Anne Orrick: And I’m excited too, from a system standpoint. Sounds kind of boring, but you know, we spend a lot of our IT roadmap around compliance.

Of course, we’re high-trust certified and there’s a lot that goes into that and we’re always needing to anticipate what’s the next thing we need to be prepared for but, you know, as we bring on these clients to hearing the experience, some of the things we can’t anticipate, we’re going to be able to, as we have always been very agile, adapt to what they need, what they believe they need.

And we’re going to come up with really good ideas, and that’s going to be added to our roadmap. And the system will change for the better. To really cater to all of the infusion providers, as they, as we get more experience too. 

Amanda Brummitt: Yes, those are all exciting things in the industry. Well, if you had just one last piece of advice for infusion center owners and operators, what would that be?  

Anne Orrick: Well, I just say, be open to change and adopting best practices and understanding, you know, that when, if they’re working directly with us, if it’s about that, we have experience.

And we do have a place to start and look at and see what would fit and to be open to that and be open to moving out of the comfort level a little bit to try this because they’ll see the best results. I think, if they’re able to be flexible in it and also to just communicate really well with the group, with their team about what they’re trying to accomplish. 

Bruce Gehring: Yeah. And I think to kind of go along with that. It’s recognizing what you do well and where you need help. Don’t be afraid to look outside the organization for those solutions that can really help you achieve the goals that you’re intending to achieve. And I think, along with that, it is really focusing on your customer service.

So that you are setting the expectations appropriately with the patient because it’s so much easier to manage that patient relationship with the proper expectations set out at the beginning. And then to your point, no surprises. And, it’s easier to navigate the journey. 

Amanda Brummitt: Really great points, Anne and Bruce. 

So as long as we’re talking about managing expectations and no surprises, how much does your amazing consulting service cost people?  

Bruce Gehring: Right, so one of the things that we do, and I do this, is that I’ll do a cost analysis for the customer so they can really see and have an understanding of what to expect.

And that takes a little bit of work because we have to work with their summary aging report. We can kind of take a look at how many accounts they have and what the liquidation is and figure out what this is going to look like in our business model. And then we can give them a better sense of what the cost really should be.

And that becomes a point of reference because now we can use that at the beginning and then say, okay, six months from now, what does this cost look like? Are we close? Did we miss something or spot on. We can usually get pretty good at what the cost is going to be and then if we work on those key elements of, how do we get the cash recovery faster?, they’ll see that return on investment. And we do an analysis there too, where we can say, okay, no discipline in place. The average in our industry, believe it or not, still hovers around 50 percent cash recovery, which half of the money’s left on the table or lower, and if we know we can go in with this discipline and get a 20, 25 percent left. What does that mean? And when you take a look at some of these infusion therapy services, you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars that is potential to the organization that has been left on the table, missed. And I’m going, man, what an opportunity to expand the mission. What an opportunity to go ahead and provide additional services for those people that can’t afford it.

You know, so you can subsidize things in your own community, you use the resources that are just being wasted. So, you know, those are things that we will do. People are surprised, because, I hate it when people just go in and say, okay, what’s the cost of a statement? Well, I can get that statement cheaper.

Well, okay, but you’re not looking at the whole suite of services and what we’re trying to drive, which is really your profitability, your efficiency–all of those things. And so you need, you know, it is a partnership. It’s not, we don’t,  I’m having a conversation transactional rabbit hole. I’m probably not going to be the right fit for the customer, you know, I, I need to have somebody that really looks at us as a partner that wants to accomplish goals together.

And that’s really where I think we stand out because we truly look at what are we wanting to accomplish and how do we get there? 

Amanda Brummitt: That sounds like a great approach. Well, Anne, Bruce, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for all of the brainpower that you put into this and that, you know, nobody wants to go collect money from people that are sick and it sounds like you do it in a way, um, where you’re thoughtful and it’s dignified and you make it easier for the providers.

So thank you for that. 

Anne Orrick: Thanks for the time. 

Bruce Gehring: Alright. Thank you. Have a great day.  

Amanda Brummitt: Well, that was great information from Bruce Gehring and Anne Orrick of Allegiance Group about recovering more cash quickly and reducing the resources needed to collect patient payments. If you aren’t already familiar with the WeInfuse software platform and RxToolKit’s web-based resources, I encourage you to schedule a test-drive.

And be sure to check out the billing module and the CollectPlus integration while you’re there. These tools can save time and money in your practice while making infusion safer for patients and caregivers. My name is Amanda Brummitt and we’ll catch you in the next episode.

Guest Speakers:

Bruce Gehring, SVP Business Development, and Anne Orrick, Chief Operations Officer, from the Allegiance Group.