Transcript
Bijon Brydson (00:00) hey, Bernie. Hey, Julie. How you doing?
Mallory Smith (00:05) Hi, doing well. Thanks.
Bijon Brydson (00:06) Happy Friday. You too. I think we’re waiting on a couple more Katie.
Bijon Brydson (00:20) Catherine. I know this is her AI… indhu, if I’m saying her name correctly, yep. Yep. I’ll give them if you guys mind pinging them, and then we’ll go ahead and kick everything off. Any cool, exciting plans for the weekend?
Bernie Lu (00:44) Basketball?
Bijon Brydson (00:46) Yeah, I.
Bernie Lu (00:47) was hoping.
Bijon Brydson (00:48) You said that, Bernie? Yeah.
Bernie Lu (00:51) I’m sure everybody’s watching.
Bijon Brydson (00:53) Yep. Is.
Dave Wallach (00:54) there a big game on this weekend or something?
Mallory Smith (00:56) Marsh, madness, Dave?
Dave Wallach (00:58) Oh,
Mallory Smith (00:58) my God. I know you’re like a football Guy and I was like, does he not know?
Dave Wallach (01:07) All, I know, I haven’t met you yet, Bernie, but you just looked up like, who is this Guy… part of the fun?
Bernie Lu (01:17) Is watching during work, right?
Mallory Smith (01:19) Oh, no, I’ve never done that.
Bernie Lu (01:22) Yeah.
Mallory Smith (01:24) Good background noise.
Bernie Lu (01:26) All right.
Bijon Brydson (01:26) Yeah, I know we have 25 minutes. So I’ll go ahead and kick off the call and ask others to join in. That’d. Be great. I would like to introduce the new face on our team, Dave wallach. He is the head of partnerships in the east. I report directly to him, having him join in and just listen in and provide any insight as we continue to have our conversation. So, Dave, I know I introduced you but, yeah.
Dave Wallach (01:50) Pleasure to meet everybody. Happy to be here.
Bernie Lu (01:53) Nice to meet you, Dave.
Bijon Brydson (01:55) So, I know everyone had a chance to meet Mallory at himss. I’m sorry, I wasn’t able to go. So, you know, the purpose of this call was to reconnect on our past conversation. We had, I believe it was like a month and a half ago regarding the next steps and direction that you guys were thinking about when it came to how you would want to deploy medallion to your potential customers and as well as debriefing on some of the data, I believe mal talked about some of the ehr data that we would need to kind of provide… to piggyback off what we’ve seen some other ehr slash RCM customers use on our side to see if the data kind of matches up. So, just wanted to see if there’s anything else anyone else wanted to cover if not, we can go ahead and kind of kickstart the conversation.
Mallory Smith (02:43) Yeah, I think that’s fine.
Bijon Brydson (02:44) Mal, I’ll let you.
Mallory Smith (02:46) Thanks, Bijan. Yeah, yeah, of course. So, I’ll just go through and level set. I know that thanks indhu for joining. I was just about to talk about our conversation with indhu, but ultimately, I just want to make sure everyone here is on the same page. We did have our event last week at the himss. We went to the sphere and saw the wizard of oz. It was actually really cool. Indhu. Did you get to take an apple… and you’re on mute? I’m sorry, but your smile says that you got to take an apple home, which was what we wanted. Can I get off of mute?
Indhu Lakshman (03:18) Yes, I did get an apple.
Dave Wallach (03:20) I.
Indhu Lakshman (03:20) was going to.
Mallory Smith (03:22) Hop the gate and go get one from the other suite and then the people working the event, they’re just like let’s let you have one. I’m like that’s. Probably better, thank you. So. But ultimately, we had a great conversation before the event started and ultimately with Carrie and indhu. And of course Catherine, we were able to kind of go through and piece together what a potential partnership with medallion would look like. So, we know that raintree, you have segments in both the ehr space as well as the RCM in just a minute. Bijan’s going to talk about the RCM because that is a very typical customer and a partnership that we have here with medallion. There is revenue acceleration as a part of that. There’s the ability for you to build in costs to make sure you’re covering your bottom line and also padding it a little bit as well. So we’ll have that conversation in just a minute. We did speak specifically about the ehr component when we were talking at the event. So I believe it was Carrie she’s currently with the credentialing department there. Who, what she’s going to do is we’re going to work together on gathering the different data points that you currently collect as part of the ehr, whether that’s the provider, demographic, information, practice locations, whatever it may be. I’m going to take those data points. I’m going to do a cross check analysis within the medallion platform. And the goal of that is basically to determine, is there a way to avoid double data entry? Are there points that we’re able to automatically check with our apis, whether it’s with primary sources, licensing, npez, the npi registry, things like that. So points that Carrie and her team are currently having to manage today, if there’s a way to build that with medallion and have it seamlessly flow back to your actual system there at raintree. So that’s the next steps. When we think of the ehr perspective, indhu, was there anything you’d like to add to that since you were part of the conversation?
Indhu Lakshman (05:09) Yeah. You just mentioned Carrie and her team. You meant like Carrie who you met with us? Carrie is the VP of sales on our side?
Mallory Smith (05:16) I don’t know why I was thinking she was on the credentialing team?
Indhu Lakshman (05:18) No, she isn’t that’s why I wanted to clarify. So the credentialing team would be more Bernie and Julia. I don’t know if the introductions are already done. Sorry, I joined a little late, but Kerry is our solutions engineering team’s VP, so she knows a lot about everything there. So she’s able to speak to it. But yes, if you’re looking for action items, you have the right people on the call here with.
Mallory Smith (05:40) Bernie and Julia. Thank you. That absolutely makes more sense. I think maybe Kerry says she’ll get with the credentialing team and I was just at the sphere in vegas and I don’t remember that.
Indhu Lakshman (05:50) We’ll blame it on the wizard.
Mallory Smith (05:52) Okay, perfect, he takes all the blame these days. Okay? So then let me ask Bernie, Julia. So based on the points that we kind of discussed, do you think there’s an appetite there internally just with the information you currently have to collect and see if there’s maybe any potential overlap?
Bernie Lu (06:14) Sorry. And I think I’m just catching up on like maybe what happened? So like collecting this data, like the data we’re asking from our customers, you’re saying Mallory?
Mallory Smith (06:26) Yes. So, I’ll kind of like level set so big picture we love. Sorry.
Indhu Lakshman (06:31) Mallory, I might have to, I don’t think Kerry’s had a chance to talk to Bernie about our conversation. So we might have to take a step back and give Bernie the introduction and all of that information.
Mallory Smith (06:41) Absolutely. Thank you. Yeah. So I’ll take a step back further. So ultimately because you are an ehr platform as well as an RCM there at raintree medallion, because we deal so much with provider data management, just the onboarding process of providers, getting them credentialed getting them enrolled to billable status. We are looking for what a potential partnership between our two organizations makes sense. So essentially, we would come in and help assist your credentialing team, whether that’s on the RCM side or with the ehr. So if I look at the RCM side, we frequently partner with rcms in this space because there’s revenue acceleration. We’re able to get quicker turnaround times with payers. We’re able to get the providers enrolled. And then the RCM org themselves can still help manage that relationship. You can still be what I like to call the white glove service, the liaison for any of those needs. So ultimately, because we can get quicker turnaround times, you’re able to bill faster. So from an RCM perspective, this is something we frequently see now regarding ehrs, this is more for like the data accuracy component. So when you’re thinking provider demographics, how you’re onboarding the providers, the different data points that you would typically see when you think of the ehr that’s where we were having the conversation with Carrie, to see if there’s any potential overlap, that if your team is having to follow xyz steps to confirm information, if it’s something that the medallion platform can just automatically do for you. Whether that’s we enter the information, verify against our apis, push it back into your system. But I think the ultimate goal here is just to ensure that it would make sense that raintree and medallion partner at the organization level, so that we can help each of your customers by proxy. Does that help better level set the conversation today?
Bernie Lu (08:32) Yeah, yeah. That’s helpful. So, I think like it really goes back to, I think the question or not like we want to continue doing the verification like, well, let me put it this way. So on the services side, I won’t be able to answer that for you right now, we don’t offer that as a service. And I think like, that would be a discussion from our RCM services team, whether or not they want to get into that type of business. I mean, from what I understand for the most part, like we’re just working Ar, right? So, like we’re not really intercepting any of this credentialing type work that’s mostly handled by the clinics or, you know, the provider staff on that side, whether or not we want to get into that business again, like to support them in that process, right? I think I’ll let the services folks decide that the.
Mallory Smith (09:17) actual.
Bernie Lu (09:18) application portion, I would say that’s I think where we need to discuss internally, I think as an organization, whether or not we want to continue in this business because already we are doing the verification of what you’re saying, right? So, like collecting that provider information and doing that primary source verification. We’re already doing that today. I think that the step that I think is ultimately important… the decision we need to make is whether or not we want to keep doing that because we could just pipe in that data from you guys, right? We could just have all that be done in medallion. And then we’re piping that into our system for it to be more like alerting to provide that data from like a, I would almost call like a provider profile, right? It’s like we manage a provider profile where like the credentialing stuff is being managed outside of medallion. And I think it’s not a decision we can kind of make today, right? To say like, hey, whether or not we want to do that or not. Because again… there’s also the option of like, hey, our customers can bring whoever, right? Like we can work with medallion. They can work with medallion as the credentialing platform, or they can work with, you know, 12 different other organizations and we’re ultimately just the endpoints. And again, like indhu’s team manages gateway. So that makes a lot of sense to say like we’re just creating endpoints to load that information in and ultimately update values within our system, right? A lot less management from our part. And I think… more options that you guys can provide from just, you know, having a platform or even being, you know, the service as well, to the platform and all the different combinations of things, right? I think it’s we’re not there yet on the decision, but I think it is something we’re looking at whether or not that’s what we want to do moving forward.
Mallory Smith (10:59) Okay. Thank you. And I appreciate the additional insight. I’m definitely in agreement with you. No decisions have to be made today whatsoever. Just continue the conversations where we might just check in, you know, every few weeks just to see if there’s any more appetite for this. I would say that with the rcms that we do partner with, I do kind of want to paint a visual for you as far as like how that relationship could look. So, Bernie, you mentioned RCM services. So the services that are being provided, are they billing services for those customers?
Bernie Lu (11:31) That’s correct. Yeah. So, we do eligibility, prior, auth billing and, as well as follow up.
Mallory Smith (11:38) Okay. Thank you. So one of our ehr partners or sorry, RCM partners in this space is experity. If you’ve heard of the experity, RCM, they’re very big in the urgent care space. So, they’ve been with us for a number of years. And the partnership that we have with them, if I were just to paint the visual would be that they have their individual customers, their customers come to them and say, hey, you’re doing a great job with billing. We would really love to have more of a one stop shop. So is it possible for you to add credentialing and enrollment? So about five years ago, experity said, okay, we’ll build our own credentialing enrollment team. That way you have one point of contact for credentialing, of course, first line of revenue generation, you get them enrolled, and then you are now able to bill for the services as all on one platform that was actually so successful for experity. That they ended up growing a little bit too fast. So that’s when they reached out to medallion, they wanted to know how our services could potentially interact. So what that relationship looks like today, we’ve been again, I think like three or four years, at this point, they are customers and they will basically have their sales team or the revenue team. If they’re interested in credentialing, say we actually partner with medallion. We have an API that connects the two systems. Would you be interested in the credentialing services? So medallion is able to perform the credentialing and enrollment services. Experity no longer has to submit the applications, follow up on them, manage that process.
Mallory Smith (13:04) All they kind of do is just in the middle where they’ll connect the clients into the medallion platform. And then experity will actually go back and bill them on a consumption basis. So what that relationship could look like with raintree for instance, would be that we give you a bucket of services, maybe we give you 500 or a 1,000 enrollment applications a year. And then you spread that out to your customers. And then for each of your customers, you’re able to say, OK, they used 25 applications this month. We’re going to add a 25 percent upcharge for each of those applications and bill it back to them. So our contract would be with you at the highest level within raintree. Just like it is with experity. So there is the upcharge model. There’s also just the pass through fees. So because raintree is so massive, we could do economies of scale a lot easier, you would have volume based discounting. So if any of your customers are, I would say smaller than 20 providers, they may not be able to qualify for medallion services on their own.
Mallory Smith (14:04) So if they go through you within raintree as that intermediary and the contract sits with you, they now get the benefit of not only being able to partner with medallion but also the cost adjustments as well. So always something to consider there. So there can be an upcharge on your side where you monitor the consumption. There could also just be a pass through fee where you say you’re able to utilize medallion because of our efforts.
Bijon Brydson (14:29) I would like to include in there too Bernie. Just something to think about the other organizations that are like experity that are using us for that. It’s almost another way for them to get even more stickier with their customers, right? And find another way to make things more efficient for them. Because obviously the smaller organizations or even some of the bigger ones don’t really have the credentialing piece figured out. And just having a value added service that you guys can offer enrollments to would just make your offering that much more sticky as you guys thinking about outside of ehr and continuing to grow within the RCM space as well.
Bernie Lu (15:03) Yeah. I don’t disagree with the idea that we can do this, right? I think that the problem I’m having now is like we haven’t done sufficient analysis to understand our customers that this is really an issue. And I think from the year or two that we’ve had this credentialing product out, the feedback we’ve gotten to that is that in some of these cases where it’s like a 20 provider situation, right? The cost to do this really doesn’t outweigh like the denials they’re getting and the time that they’re taking to do this, right? And I think like that’s what we need to really understand is like, what’s the white space opportunity for us to get into this with our customers, right? Like and again, like you’re totally right? Like we’ve got the bulk purchasing power and we can kind of divide these costs, right? But like we just gotta, we don’t really understand that right now. I think that’s where like we’re that’s the next steps we’re taking to figure that out is like, hey, we can work with our services team to see if that’s something they want to expand, to get stickier with their customers, right? Like has this been something that’s been brought? Up? Some things we just kind of need to go about, not sure we’ll be doing that at least this year. But I think something I can at least throw out there to them to kind of get their thoughts and see like where things have been in the past, but like I think for experity, right? And a lot of these like especially for them because I think you said they’re services, right? So like credentialing being a big deal for them, for hospitals, for physicians. I think that’s also a big deal, too, right? That totally makes sense. I’m also new to the therapy space. So I don’t know if it is as big of a deal, maybe something helpful to understand like how many therapy customers do you guys have currently like and like, what size are they? Yeah.
Mallory Smith (16:38) Absolutely. So when you say therapy, are you referring to there’s behavioral health? And then of course, there’s like occupational PT, things like that. Yeah.
Bernie Lu (16:47) Let’s let’s just go with the occupational PT, you want to do both? Catherine? Yeah.
Kathryn Cheng (16:51) I’d say all of the above because we’re multi.
Bernie Lu (16:53) Disciplinary.
Mallory Smith (16:55) Okay. Hi, Catherine. Thanks.
Kathryn Cheng (16:57) For joining. Sorry, I was late.
Mallory Smith (17:00) Absolutely. No worries at all. No. I thought Carrie worked on the credentialing team so that’s how much I remember well.
Kathryn Cheng (17:06) She basically could because she, yeah, she can basically work at in every single team on raintree because that she’s that knowledgeable there. But I love.
Mallory Smith (17:18) it. Okay. Well, no, thanks for joining you. You got in at a great time. So ultimately, to answer your question, I can absolutely go back internally.
Mallory Smith (17:26) We use sigma as our reporting back engine and I can get you a better idea on how many therapy specific clients, so we can do behavioral health as well as work the occupational space for you just to get you a better idea. But I would say too, just as you are exploring this opportunity, whether it’s this year, next year, three years from now, we do have a survey that you could potentially send out to each of your customers. We have the ability, you can white label it, make it as generic as needed. And that could also help you get a better idea of how much percentage of claims denials are happening because of credentialing efforts. Is there an appetite among your current customer base to extend credentialing and enrollment services? So we do have something built already more than happy to send you a template with the data points regarding therapy coverage as well.
Bernie Lu (18:13) Okay. Yeah. Sounds good. Yeah, that’d be great if we could take a look at that and see again, this is just like… I’d love to have this as a component, right? I think just making a business case for it with the services side, or having them make that business case of like how we get into that I think is important. So again, this will help us understand like what the appetite is from our customer base, absolutely.
Mallory Smith (18:35) Perfect. And Catherine, you’re on mute if you’re talking, I.
Kathryn Cheng (18:41) Was just gonna say, I think a very basic version is, you know, if and when Bernie and Julia decide to enhance the credentialing module, which, you know, I think they’re looking to do, I think one potential thing we could look at is like, is there anything in the medallion software technology side that you would want us to be able to present back into raintree? And so that’s just something to consider and you can kind of share with us what you think those pieces could be? And then the other pieces, you know, obviously our clients are always looking for, hey, who are you talking to? We need somebody to help us in credentialing and maybe that’s something we’ll just we could do it enable some sort of basic referral agreement back to you guys?
Mallory Smith (19:27) Yes, no, great call. Let’s appreciate that. So, I did have that conversation with Carrie last week just regarding what are those specific data points. So with those data points, do you think Carrie would be the best resource to collect those? Or should I rely on Bernie and Julia?
Kathryn Cheng (19:42) It’d be Bernie and Julia. So depending on like what you’re hearing from your clients in terms of like, hey, I really want this to be represented back in raintree. Like we’d love that. And Julia and Bernie can kind of figure out based on our roadmap, like where does this? Where could some of that fit? Okay?
Mallory Smith (20:00) Perfect. Well, Bernie, Julia, what I can do to make it even easier for you so that you’re not additional things on your plate. I’m sure they’re plenty high already is, I can actually just send you the standard data points that we do collect from a credentialing standpoint. That way you can actually do more of like a reverse analysis rather than you sending me and me checking. So that can absolutely be part of the conversation. And of course, because we do have an open ended bi directional API if it makes it easier on your team, you’re able to focus your efforts on more higher strategic events. That would definitely be ideal in this scenario. Yeah.
Bernie Lu (20:37) That sounds great. Of course.
Mallory Smith (20:38) All right. Great call, Catherine, appreciate it. Yeah.
Kathryn Cheng (20:41) We also have a event coming up. Our user conference if we’ve told you about that Mallory?
Mallory Smith (20:48) I believe you mentioned it. Yes, remind me the dates again, it’s.
Kathryn Cheng (20:52) August nineteenth to the 20 first and, you know, it’s where all of our clients show up as well as our prospects. And so it may be a good opportunity for you to get in front of our clients there, I would.
Mallory Smith (21:05) Love that. I’ve actually been to a couple of experity’s conferences for that. For that purpose. Actually. I would be happy to talk offline with you regarding the details. I run it by the marketing team. Make sure that it’s something that we could attend. Can you tell me where it’s located? Is it in the U? S?
Kathryn Cheng (21:19) It’s in the U. S and it’s going to be, very hot. So it’s in Austin.
Mallory Smith (21:26) Oh, I think we’re going to Austin. What is it team like in two weeks?
Bijon Brydson (21:29) Yeah, two weeks.
Kathryn Cheng (21:30) That’s much better time than August nineteenth. So, yeah, but you’ll be able to scope out all the good food places?
Mallory Smith (21:39) Absolutely. Yeah, yes, for great things. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. No, appreciate that. We can definitely, I’ll talk offline with you about that just to get more of the details, but would love to appreciate you making that offer. Of course.
Kathryn Cheng (21:50) Yeah, of course. And just to clarify roles because you made mention about Carrie. So Carrie is our VP of solutions engineering. So she really gets in front of clients to explain sort of the product features. And in real depth, I run our partnerships team. Bernie and Julia are on the product side for RCM. So Bernie leads that team. And then indhu, who you met is on the, she runs platforms for product. And then kitty is on my team. Perfect. Thank you.
Mallory Smith (22:22) Okay. And then I actually forgot to address this. You had mentioned a referral agreement. I would say anything is possible at this stage, right? So if it is where you consider, there’s a group we’re talking with in Arizona right now. I believe that they don’t necessarily want to purchase the services firsthand but that they do have many interested parties, they’re more of like a gpo style. So that is definitely something we can have as a part of the conversation. Okay? So I guess that leads me to my next question. What is the appropriate next step here? I can absolutely follow up with those credentialing data points. But as far as the timeline perspective, should we meet again in two weeks in a month? What would be the best cadence here? Yeah.
Kathryn Cheng (23:01) I don’t think, I think they’re probably going to, I think there’s a lot of discovery that needs to happen that Bernie mentioned that they’re going to be sort of focused on. I think you and I can kind of touch base and let me work on getting the referral agreement. We’re in the process of switching out our GC so that’s going to that might take a second. But I think that Mallory, you and I can kind of figure out that referral piece. This is like our crawl walk run process which is, hey, let’s see if we can generate more interest mutually between our clients. And as we grow into that 10 20 30 plus mutual clients, then we can make more investments as a product, as sales, as co development to do something bigger. So, I think for now, what we can start off with is like the referral agreement. And then if you can send over the data points so the product team can then figure out future state as they build out this product, what could it look like to enable medallion clients within in raintree? Absolutely?
Bijon Brydson (24:08) It sounds like really good next steps if you would like to send over whenever you get a chance, Catherine, what that looks like, and we can kind of go through it on our side. Obviously, matt will work to send over those data points and then we will schedule some time with, you know, maybe in a month or so, if that’s okay?
Kathryn Cheng (24:27) Yeah. I think I don’t know John between you and Mallory. I can send you guys the referral agreement once they get it, and then we can decide whether or not you want to kind of talk through it live? Yeah, that.
Bijon Brydson (24:39) Works perfectly. All.
Kathryn Cheng (24:41) Right. Sounds good. Well, good. Seeing you again, Mallory. And yeah, excited to see if we can, you know, move something forward with you guys.
Mallory Smith (24:49) Absolutely. Thanks again for the time today and thanks again for joining this fear event. Catherine. Did you get an apple? I know that indhu, did.
Kathryn Cheng (24:58) My husband did so, you know, that’s good enough. Thank you. I appreciate it though. Yeah.
Mallory Smith (25:04) I appreciate the time everyone today, we’ll be in touch with next steps.
Kathryn Cheng (25:07) Sounds good. Thank.
Bijon Brydson (25:08) You guys. Thank you.
Kathryn Cheng (25:09) Guys.