Transcript
Zo Hooda (00:00) Noah.
Noah Laack-Veeder (00:01) Hey, what’s up, man?
Zo Hooda (00:03) What’s going on? Man? We missed you this week.
Noah Laack-Veeder (00:05) Hey, you know, glad to hear it. You’re like that’s what you’re supposed to say? You missed us too.
Zo Hooda (00:14) Yeah, yeah. Come on, Noah. You’re like, no, I had shit to handle… responsibilities.
Noah Laack-Veeder (00:22) Responsibilities… that was a good. Yeah.
Zo Hooda (00:25) It was good. It was good. It was good to obviously be around everyone, but also just see what everyone’s working on and, you know, get Kyle and cam’s take, so.
Noah Laack-Veeder (00:35) It.
Zo Hooda (00:36) was good.
Noah Laack-Veeder (00:37) I’m sure you’ve probably fared pretty well.
Zo Hooda (00:40) Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, being able to say I booked six meetings in the last two weeks and this is what I’m working on. It was definitely nice to be able to say that.
Noah Laack-Veeder (00:52) Yeah, dude. Yeah, it’s like, man, it didn’t go well for me. Well, did you know that when you put together your qsr, like, you should probably know how it’s going to go?
Zo Hooda (01:03) Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was funny because I booked a meeting right before presenting. So.
Noah Laack-Veeder (01:09) Dude, you should have like a slide immediate wins.
Zo Hooda (01:13) Yeah, like I was going to give you a heads up just in case you thought you were busy man. Just kidding. Just wait, just wait.
Noah Laack-Veeder (01:21) Dude. I’m ready. I’m like I much prefer a super busy day. So, I’m ready to make some money.
Zo Hooda (01:31) Yeah, dude. Me too. Got some stuff in the works. I,
Noah Laack-Veeder (01:36) mean, solus looks good man.
Zo Hooda (01:38) Solus looks good. I mean, a lot of good signals this week with all of the, it and security stuff getting kicked off. Yeah, the.
Noah Laack-Veeder (01:47) only risk I see is I don’t really know if we have any like info… around their price resistance and budget, you know what I’m saying like that’s the only thing that I’m just kind of like.
Zo Hooda (01:58) Yeah, no, totally. I mean, she did tell me that. I feel like everyone says this. We’re cost conscious. Everyone does that, but she was just like the margins in radiology are like not crazy. So, part of that is what I’m going to talk to her about next week. I extended the call to 45 minutes because it’s definitely not covering everything I want to cover. You know, I want to talk about a few things like confirming the scoping, I want to talk about. Obviously, we’ll touch base on the legal and security stuff. I want to talk about meeting the Eb. Can we get a cam connected with him? I’m inviting her and Brian, her boss to a dinner that we’re hosting in Dallas, which is where they’re based out of in may, got to understand the Roi factors. What’s going to make sense? Yeah, man. I feel like we could be transparent with her. Is it really just a matter of this is less expensive? How can we, are you all willing to pay a premium to prevent any money lost? Again? That kind of conversation? And she’s really transparent about.
Noah Laack-Veeder (03:02) Yeah. I mean, not a percent. She’s not trying to mess around.
Zo Hooda (03:04) Yeah. So that’ll be good. And then also reverse engineering the timeline that’s one thing I haven’t done with her. I mean, we’ve gotten far in three calls. So it’s like, okay, there’s a few other things we got to talk about. Yeah.
Noah Laack-Veeder (03:15) You’re saying we got a technical win in two calls? Yeah.
Zo Hooda (03:18) Two calls. Yeah. So that’s good. This one’s interesting. I feel like, yeah.
Noah Laack-Veeder (03:27) What are the call notes? It sounds like a good.
Zo Hooda (03:31) Good one. Yeah, it sounds like your classic icp, you know, PT specialty provider group. They added home care which is extending out of their normal PT. Yeah.
Noah Laack-Veeder (03:44) Spanning business lines, yeah.
Zo Hooda (03:46) All right, Carol’s, in sweet.
Zo Hooda (03:55) Hey, Carol. Good afternoon.
Zo Hooda (04:06) Just realized I was on mute. How you doing, good. How are you? How’s your week going so far? So good. Amazing. Where are you based out of… glenrock?
Noah Laack-Veeder (04:17) New.
Zo Hooda (04:17) jersey? Oh, okay. I think we’ve got a few folks that are close by over there. Oh, yeah. Where?
Noah Laack-Veeder (04:23) Are.
Zo Hooda (04:23) you guys, I’m based out of Austin?
Noah Laack-Veeder (04:27) Madison Wisconsin? So it looks like we’re representing like three quarters of the U. S. Right now. So there we go.
Zo Hooda (04:36) Well, glad we were able to find some time to connect Carol. Hopefully the team enjoyed the cookies. You know, as I mentioned in my email, there’s a reason why I was reaching out to sportsmed and specifically you is really about the research that I gathered and typically some of those indicators we see with especially specialty provider groups. A lot of those types of provider groups work with medallion. So I figured it’d be at least worth an introductory call to see, you know, hey, is this something worth exploring further? You know, basically, I think the purpose of this call is to figure out, is this our first call or is it our last call, right? So I think for the 30 minutes, as far as the agenda, I’d love to just, kick it off with a round of introductions. And then I think as a starting point for the discussion, I would love to just start with my hypothesis. Hey, this is what I’ve researched. This is what I typically see and then have you kind of validate or invalidate, you know, my hypothesis. And I think that could be a good jumping off discussion to understand. Hey, how are things managed at sportsmed today. We can talk more about medallion, medallion’s automation, how that might fit. And then towards the end of the call, we can mutually decide, hey, is this worth exploring or not? How does that sound sounds good? Perfect. Yeah. So to kick things off with the introductions, we’ll start on our end. My name is Zoe. Nice to meet you, Carol. I’m the account executive for sportsmed at medallion. So I’ll be your main point of contact for an evaluation. If we were to move forward here, bringing in all the relevant resources, getting you the information you need. I work with several types of companies from digital health to specialty provider groups, to large health systems. So really excited about this conversation along with me is Noah, he’s kind of my technical counterpart, Noah. You want to do a quick intro? Yeah?
Noah Laack-Veeder (06:17) So technical counterpart. So if a demo makes sense or any questions about the technology, I can be your point of contact, but I just like to join conversations like this especially kind of customers of your profile just to see if I can offer any technical insights so great to meet you.
Carol Azar (06:30) Great. Nice to meet you guys. And as you guys know, I’m Carol Azar, I’m the VP of revenue cycle management here at sportsmed, and have been here since day one when we had one office. So now, you know, we’ve definitely grown a lot through the years. Yeah.
Zo Hooda (06:44) And I think that, thank you for the introduction. I think that’s a good segue. So, you’ve been there since day one. So you’ve been there from one location to now, 51. Is that right? Dang, that’s we’re.
Carol Azar (06:53) actually at 55?
Zo Hooda (06:55) 55? Yeah, yeah.
Carol Azar (06:57) I kind of lose track myself… yeah.
Zo Hooda (07:02) Yeah, that’s really amazing. So, I think that’s a good kind of jumping point to referencing some of my research. And so, yeah, a couple of things stood out to me. Obviously, the growth, right? Like you’ve grown to 55 locations across New Jersey and Connecticut. I think in 2018, it was seven locations when Hildred came into the picture. And so that’s an amazing growth. And obviously, that growth comes with how do we scale our processes to handle the increased load of credentialing and provide enrollment? If we’re onboarding all of these new providers? And so growth obviously comes with some challenges that medallion is really good at addressing. I also saw that you launched home care in 20 24 which is extending beyond the normal physical therapy model, right? That’s kind of new enrollment processes, new billing codes, things of that nature. One thing I’m curious about as well is we typically see provider groups that are scaling like this, doing a lot of 10 consolidation given the acquisitions that they may be doing. So, I’m wondering how that might be going at sportsmed. And then of course, with PE backed specialty provider groups, we work with a lot of them. We know that PE puts a lot of emphasis on EBITDA efficiency, scalable margins. And so that often tends to put a scope or a lens onto like, OK, how, are we operating efficiently from an opex perspective from a process perspective? So, you know, I think from my perspective, I’m curious to get your feedback on it. Typically, you know, with groups like yours, we see when they’re scaling, credentialing and enrollment bottlenecks start to surface, right? Like how do you scale your processes when you’re at seven locations? And now at 55, like how is that transformed? And in that process, a lot of times we see bottlenecks start to surface. And we see specialty provider groups kind of going with three options, right? Which is like, okay, we have the function in house and we need to scale it in house. So we see like a combination of increasing the fte count to handle the increased load. And then maybe a combination of that plus some self serve software to kind of scale that data management, maybe some excel thrown in the mix or we see folks that are maybe outsourcing the RCM function or outsourcing the billing component where they’re not doing all of the credentialing or doing the full pay enrollments. But that tends to, you know, lend to a lack of control over the processes. And if there’s long turnaround times, you know, they don’t have the ability to impact it themselves or, you know, we see companies trying to leverage automation, which is something that medallion does to help them scale without having to maybe add more ftes, you know, increase the opex, while also achieving faster turnaround times. So, you know, I’ll stop there, but I’m curious like, you know, am I on the right track? Like what are your thoughts? I’m curious maybe as a jumping point like how are you handling this today at sportsmed? How is it scaled? And are you seeing some of those challenges that I mentioned with other provider groups that we work with?
Carol Azar (10:00) Yeah, sure. I’m just going to close my door because I have a lot outside noise. So give me one second.
Zo Hooda (10:03) Yeah. Go for it.
Carol Azar (10:16) Okay. So first, I could tell you did your research, you seem to know a lot about our company. So, yeah. So right now, obviously, there’s always challenges with credentialing… right now. I actually have one of my managers that was handling credentialing alongside her duties. She works late hours to get everything done. And I’m now at a point where actually we just put an ad out to hire specifically a credentialing specialist because it has become a full time job. So you’re kind of getting me at like the right time here because now it’s like, do we want to hire a person or do we look at softwares such as your company? Yes, there’s always bottlenecks, you know, optum always has some issues and it has some issues. I mean everyone has their issues when it comes to all this credentialing. So as far as scalability, like, you know, again, we were managing it with one person putting it on as their side job. And now it’s become a full time job. So we definitely need to figure out where we want to go and the direction we do use. We do have a software that kind of keeps our data and information organized. So we utilize, we just started utilizing that probably about like eight months ago, and that kind of keeps things streamlined. Like you said, lots of excel sheets, sharing excel sheets with the billers and managers. And whoever needs that caqh is always a big one on our, you know, for us is making sure these providers are doing their caqh properly. And so we have involvement from our regional directors to help onboard new providers and help them through their caqh. So there’s a lot of different people that are involved in ensuring that credentialing is done properly. But like I said, it is a full time job at this point, and we are at a crossroads to figure out where we want to go.
Zo Hooda (12:19) Got it. Yeah, no, I appreciate that background. Obviously, the one thing that stuck out is, hey, it was a side job. Now, it’s a full time job. What was the main driver that caused it to be a full time job? Was it as simple as we’ve got a lot more providers now, and there’s a lot more work or anything else that drove that to?
Carol Azar (12:35) Be a fact. We’re hiring providers constantly… and that never ends. And we’re you know, as we continue to scale and grow, we’re hiring providers. So we’re constantly hiring providers and that’s where most of the work comes in. And then obviously the recredentialing and, you know… we have over how many providers do we have now? Because we do not just physical therapy, occupational therapy, acupuncture, chiropractic, care. So we have several providers. I mean, we’re probably 250 providers at this point… multiple tax ids as you spoke about. So it’s definitely coming a little bit. And so it’s a full time job, right?
Carol Azar (13:18) So I need my manager to do what I need her to do which is collect it’s focusing on collections. And I need someone to focus specifically on credentialing.
Zo Hooda (13:25) Right now. That makes sense. And obviously, you’re growing a lot. So around 250 providers today. Could you give me an idea of like how many on average you’re adding on a given year? Like I guess, what are you expecting for 20 26?
Carol Azar (13:39) So… don’t know for this year, how many we’re going to be adding. I have to look at the growth map as far as which office, how many offices we’re opening… but I could tell you… on average, I mean, it’s like two providers a week. Almost we’re getting, you know, of course, there’s always turnover as well, sure.
Zo Hooda (14:06) But.
Carol Azar (14:07) I would say like two providers a week, you know, for home care and it’s not necessarily home care. It’s more physical therapy in the home care. In the home setting, it’s a little different than actual home care, like agency care. You know, we have a big team of those providers, right? Because we want to service all of New Jersey, and home care providers usually do it as a side job, right? So we’re so we have several of those providers and we’re you know, and they may only work a few hours a week, but we still have to credential them, and get several on board so we can service our patients. So I don’t know an exact number of having to be planning on hiring, for the year. I don’t have that number, but I could tell you we have another six offices at least that we’re planning to open this year alone yeah.
Zo Hooda (14:52) That’s awesome. Another six locations. Huh? Wow. That’s incredible. Yeah. Okay. So along those lines, right? Like you’re as you’re hiring new providers, obviously, you’re wanting to get like, for example, in those new six offices open, obviously, you want providers working as quickly as possible. So, I’m curious like we speak with a lot of organizations your size and typically their turnaround time for getting a provider credentialed and enrolled with providers or payers. Sorry, is around like 90 to 120 days. Is that what you’re seeing at sportsmed as well?
Carol Azar (15:23) Not with all payers, it really depends on the payer, our medicare is quick that their turnaround time is very quick. It’s usually 30 days Aetna. Same thing. Quick, blue cross is quick. Optum is our biggest challenge. They take forever.
Noah Laack-Veeder (15:41) And by forever, is it like closer to 120 days? You would say?
Carol Azar (15:45) Yeah, it, could be. I mean optum, I mean, in Connecticut, it took us like six months, seven months. Sorry to finally credential one chiropractor out in. Connecticut is its own separate breed though, New Jersey is usually not typically that long. New Jersey is probably like 60 days. I would say on average, okay.
Zo Hooda (16:07) Got it. Yeah, that makes sense. And when I speak with a lot of RCM leaders at PE backed companies, there’s always a kind of like an idea of like have you quantified maybe the cost of having a provider sitting on the sidelines while you’re getting credentialed a lot of times that’s like a metric of like okay per day. We have this much EBITDA from a provider. And so, if we can get them this much faster, that’s the, you know, it’s an easy math equation. Is that like a concept that’s within the leadership team and yourself that you’re measuring?
Carol Azar (16:39) No, not necessarily. It doesn’t because we don’t really have issues like that because all our new providers as they’re waiting to get credentialed, they’re working alongside another provider that co, signs their notes and is reviewing. So as far as billing is concerned, and just making sure that we’re going to get paid. It’s really not an issue because of the way we structure our organization.
Zo Hooda (17:00) Got it. Just taking some notes here. Okay? That makes sense. And I guess also, I’m curious like as far as actually… one thing you mentioned was that you use a software today? What software is that?
Carol Azar (17:17) It’s a small little company. It’s called crediapp. Okay. Simple software. Nothing. We didn’t want anything too crazy when we first started looking, just something to organize our spreadsheets, our rosters, all our information. I’m not into the weeds into that software. I kind of my manager that’s handling now seems to like it. I know it’s not the most robust but… it’s doing the job right now.
Zo Hooda (17:45) Gotcha. Okay. That makes sense. Okay. So, you know, some provider or some payers, it’s relatively quick to get enrolled, but some of them obviously take a lot longer, seven months, right? Like I’m sure you wanted that to be a lot quicker. The other thing that sticks out when I work with RCM leaders is claims and owls, right? Specifically claims and owls due to credentialing errors or revalidation errors. How are you seeing that materialize within sportsmed? Obviously when we speak with folks, it’s because they have a manual process. It’s because maybe things slip through the cracks. So I’m curious to understand like how you’ve seen that within the organization?
Carol Azar (18:21) So like I said, it’s not really an issue for us because of the way we handle new providers in this organization, how we have like an onboarding process where they work alongside another provider. And then with the recredentialing, we’re on top of it, I have to say, I’m not going to say we have no denials, but it’s not enough to really quantify at this point. So it’s really not an issue for us.
Zo Hooda (18:44) Gotcha. Okay. So yeah, I think just what I’m hearing is essentially like you all are growing really quickly and it’s gotten to the point where that one fte that you have that’s managing it is now full time on it. And you’re at kind of this crossroads, do you bring on another person or do you leverage technology like medallion? And just, I guess, let me give you a quick overview of medallion. I know we’ve got like 10 minutes left here. And so medallion, we’re an automation first platform like we’re AI powered automation. And when we talk about automation that lends to everything from provider onboarding to credentialing to payer enrollment, to licensing, ongoing monitoring, you know, everything around the entire provider operations. And so I think when I’m thinking about sportsmed, the first thing that comes to mind is around the optics, so our customers can, because of our ability to automate a lot of the manual and repetitive tasks, but also have all of this data in one central platform. Our customers are able to just have one credentialing specialist supporting up to a 1,000 providers. So when we think about the optics piece of it they’re allowed, you know, they’re able to absorb a lot more volume without having to add headcount, just because medallion’s handling a lot of the automation or a lot of the tasks. And when I say tasks, you know, we really transform credentialing specialists from being the one that’s executing all of these individual tasks, submitting payer enrollment applications, you know, filling out all of the documents, doing the copy and paste, following up with providers. We automate all of that. So now you’re one credentialing specialist where it was a full time job and potentially needing to bring out another person is now just quarterbacking the operations and having medallion executed through automation. And I can let Noah talk more specifically about like, okay, you say automation, what does that exactly mean? But from an optics piece that’s one thing I see is for sportsmed, if you’re at that crossroads, medallion could allow that one person to absorb a lot more volume. And you wouldn’t need to hire another person for quite a while. And then the second part is around turnaround times for pay enrollment. So with medallion, we’re actually seeing on average across all payers between 30 to 60 days. And of course, we can, you know, if we were to move forward here, we can look more specifically at the payers you work with and provide you with what our turnaround time specifically is for that. But we’re seeing 30 to 60 days and so, and then the last piece around claims analysis because we’ve removed the area for human error, right? With the automation. We have a 99 point five credentialing file accuracy. So we’re really minimizing any sort of claims that come from credentialing errors or revalidation errors. So I’m thinking for sportsmed… I think there’s an opportunity to like you said, avoid having to bring on another fte and let the existing fte absorb a lot more volume and maybe be even less busy than where they’re trending to. And then secondly getting faster turnaround times. Maybe for some payers, it might line up to what you’re seeing. But it sounds like there’s some payers that we could speed up that enrollment piece. So I’ll pause there real quick. Noah. Anything you’d like to add to what I just mentioned there? No.
Noah Laack-Veeder (21:59) I just think just the pitch here Carol from the technical perspective is the stuff that I’m sure your fte loves doing late at night like preparing the applications, calling up payers, sending emails back and forth that’s all automated through medallion. So then the question becomes what does that individual do? And that’s more the higher value things like if there’s that white glove service we want to provide to providers to make sure things are done, we take care of that. But the other thing I just want to mention, you mentioned that caqh is a big component, right? If you’re evaluating other softwares, like a lot of them will say, yeah, we can get data from caqh medallion’s unique where not only can we get data from caqh, but we’ll automate the caqh attestations for you as well because as you scale, there’s going to be the payer enrollment work that needs to get done. And then a lot of organizations end up having to hire a full time employee for the caqh piece as well. So with medallion, we can do that whole service for you. And ultimately like our pitches if you go with the medallion and not hire that person will be hopefully cost neutral in that sense. But then you’ll get better turnaround times as well. And that’s why organizations typically choose to move forward with a medallion. So with all that being said, we think there’s an opportunity here and I could do a demo if that makes sense to kind of show you what that automation looks like. But given that this seems to be more of a higher priority for you right now, how would you like to move forward? So my.
Carol Azar (23:26) question is, are you guys just offering an AI platform or is this actual service that you have somebody? Like, is it AI just does everything or is there somebody on the backend also making these calls and reaching out to these providers. So is it a service or platform or both?
Noah Laack-Veeder (23:42) It’s both. And I think the way that I think about it is a lot of organizations when they’re at that tipping point of scale. Like some organizations like we’re opening six locations, some are like we’re opening 100 and they’re transforming where it’s like, I don’t want to have to hire 10 more credentialing specialists that have that knowledge. So medallion has the knowledge and specialists on our team, but we also have the AI component automating a lot of the things that we don’t want people to do. For example. So you’ve heard of agenic AI. We’re using that to do a lot of the pay or follow up conversations, a lot of the emails. And because we’re doing it that way, we’re not waiting on a sequence of events to get things done. Things are done in parallel. So ultimately it’s just freeing up your team to work like if you’re working if we’re talking about your current fte, credentialing truly does become more of a side of the desk thing for her. Meanwhile all of the work that needs to get done kind of the foundational work with credentialing is going to be automated through medallion. And if it can’t be automated, medallion specialists, take that first step. And if then we still can’t do it, that’s the only time we would route it back to your team to get it down to closure, lots of things to show you with that. But generally speaking, we’re a hybrid of a technology and people. So we can also do things like guarantee you outcomes. So if we say that it’s going to take us 30 days to get something out the door because we have the folks and the technology, we can actually commit to slas, that’ll say we’ll get these things done by X date.
Carol Azar (25:12) So another thing that our credentialing specialist does, and I don’t know if this is typical across companies or how it works. But a big part that takes up a lot of our time is uploading into our practice management system. These new providers, the fee schedules, different fee schedules for each type of payer, and our software is a bit complicated. It takes up. It’s more complicated than it should be. Do you guys offer like that service too where it’s like, okay, not only do I want to credential, I want our software to reflect these credentialed providers have the right fee schedules linked to each different payer. Is that something you guys do as well or not really?
Noah Laack-Veeder (25:51) That’s a good question. We do handle like the tin management from like in a credentialing standpoint, so we could have the contract in there and things like that. But the use case around like fee schedules. Typically what we’ll do from like an RCM perspective is the data point that’s integral. From a billing perspective, is that effective date. So from like a scheduling and claims perspective, we send that effective date to the team immediately. So there’s no kind of waiting back and forth. But in terms of like managing the fee schedules and the contract specifically, that’s typically done outside of medallion, it’s something that we are evaluating in the future but typically how organizations work is they’ll have. So medallion is kind of someone who’s managing new payer contracts and relationships. They’ll use medallion to request the bid and do the paperwork for them. But the negotiations about rates and things like that is still done by like a payer relationship specialist, I would say. And then from the billing perspective, the billing stakeholders really care about those effective dates, proofs of enrollment, things like that and that’s how we integrate there. But really medallion’s piece is everything related to credentialing the initial contract, we can help the paperwork. But then downstream we’re sending that data to the right platforms ultimately to reduce the claims and aisles of write offs because of credentialing issues. Yeah.
Carol Azar (27:13) Yeah. Okay. I mean, I think before we jump into like any kind of demo or anything like that, I think what I’d like to see is just a general like pricing structure… before jumping in, right? Because ultimately dollars matter in the end and I have to kind of weigh out which decision, which direction we want to go into. So I’d want to see some kind of structure of what pricing would look like. And then also just, I mean, I know you said you’re dealing with a lot of organizations or have a lot of clients, just a couple, if you could just give me a couple of names of organizations that you are working with similar to our size. I mean, just so I see who your clients are and I think… from there, if things look good, then we could schedule a demo at that point. Yeah.
Zo Hooda (28:08) Yeah, that sounds good. I can definitely send you some case studies with some metrics that I think you would be interested in.
Zo Hooda (28:16) And as far as pricing goes, obviously, you’re not going to move forward with medallion, if it doesn’t make sense, Roi wise, right? Like obviously you were thinking about does offsetting the cost of an fte. Where does medallion land? Okay? If it’s higher than an fte, what’s the value we’re getting out of that? That’s something we work with you on, you know, especially if you see medallion’s platform, you’re like, okay, this actually helped us a lot like let’s work with you on the Roi piece and make sure it’s your numbers, not just us telling you this is what it’s going to be. I will say from a cost perspective, we do have a 50 K minimum. So want to be fully transparent there, there’s a 50 K minimum. But the way that we license is based off of three things, volume and length of contract and timing. And so I think in order to get to the point where we’re providing accurate pricing, we typically, how these evaluations start is like we have a discovery call where, okay, we identify some pain, we identify some sort of fit, we identify areas where, okay, medallion can provide value here and there. But is it technically going to fit our needs? So we’ll typically do a demo as a next step where you see the platform, you see how it works and you’re like, okay, now, I’m interested in understanding how this structure is actually structured from a pricing perspective. And then from there, we’ll do like a scoping call because we, as I mentioned, we based off of volume. So we need to understand like, okay, how many, you know, pay enrollments? Are we going to do like how many, you know, renewals? Are we going to do, you know, how many providers are we expecting to be on the platform? At that point, when we collect that data from there, we’ll typically then do a pricing walkthrough with the Roi component and we’ll work with you on the Roi, but I’ll say like, at a minimum, it will be 50 K, but to get to accurate pricing, we’ll typically, we’ll have to have that kind of scoping. So I’ll turn a question over to you but I can definitely get you the case studies that are relevant. But given that, you know, for accurate pricing, we’ll need to understand a little bit more scoping as far as next steps go, would you be? Interested in actually seeing the platform like, hey, does this actually, you know, fit for what our needs are before we even get to pricing, or to the scoping or, you know, yeah, what are your thoughts there? Just because, you know, I want to make sure we’re transparent through, this process. Yeah.
Carol Azar (30:31) Yeah, for sure. Now, minimum, you’re saying minimum is 50,000, I could sit with that, right? But then what’s the maximum, right? Like, so what am I looking at? Is it like anywhere from 50 to 100,000? I mean, just general ballpark because I will tell you I’m on a very tight budget. So if you’re thinking, you know, based on our size and what the information I gave you, if you’re thinking we’re going to sit somewhere around 100,000 dollars, I can tell you right now, it’s not for us right now. So I know I wouldn’t want to waste anybody’s time because I can tell you right now we can’t spend that much money. So if that’s kind of where you’re thinking it could lead to, then I would have to say, let’s revisit this at a later time.
Noah Laack-Veeder (31:15) Yeah. And I would just say like most organizations of your size, like the assumption that we’re making that we’re trying to work around is like the new fte kind of fully loaded is around like 72 to like 84,000. Is that kind of similar to how you’re forecasting that fte or are we off that assumption?
Carol Azar (31:35) I’m looking more for like 60,000. I mean, with that said, we just posted this position and I haven’t really had many hits on it. So I don’t know yet right now. So we’ll have to see, but that’s kind of where I’m budgeted for. So. Yeah.
Zo Hooda (31:53) Yeah. I mean, I would say, you know, like obviously there’s a 50 K minimum. I could see a situation where you’re at the minimum, but based on the information you provided, I think we would be in line with more like at a maximum, I think we’d be in line with what Noah just said like around that 70 to 80,000. I don’t think based on what you said at your scale, it’s going to be something like a like six figures. So, you know, with that in mind, I think obviously you’ve got the 50 K minimum. The scoping will help us determine, you know, are you still at the 50 K or are you slightly above? Then we’ll be able to give you an answer on that. So I guess as far as next steps, we could either, you know, do I could, we could send you the questions for scoping or we could in the meantime, we could do a demonstration for you like kind of two birds in one stone.
Zo Hooda (32:44) Let’s get the scoping to where two things where you can see the platform and understand. Is this a technical fit? And then at the same time, we could pretty quickly understand where you might land? And if it’s going to be six figures or not. And if it’s that point, right? And you can be like, OK, not the right time and, we can revisit later or, OK, this seems like it’s worth exploring based off of that, what are your thoughts there?
Carol Azar (33:10) My thoughts are just if you could send me like the case studies, like you said, I think that’s kind of relevant. Let me think about it. Let me just sit on it and think about it again. I just don’t want to waste your time or my time. If my, if I’m thinking we’re not going to go this route but I just need to think a little bit and I think so just send me those case studies. Let me think about it a little bit, then we can schedule a demo at that point. If I want to proceed. I see the value but I just need to kind of sit on it for a little bit sure.
Zo Hooda (33:42) Yeah, of course. You got to think about it. So, yeah. Okay. I think we’re three minutes over. So I think and one.
Noah Laack-Veeder (33:47) Thing, Carol, I just wanted to just jump in. So the optum piece just before we jump, I just want to make sure I give you some timelines there. I took a look at our turnaround time. Obviously you need to see it in the demo, but I just want to let you know that our turnaround times are closer to 60 on average than 120. So kind of when you’re evaluating this, I think just leaving two with, hey, we’re probably going to be cost neutral. But for those bigger payers like optum, we’re half and then for medicare, I took a look at those two states. Our average is around 15 days. So it seems like across the board, we’re at around 50 percent reduction in turnaround times. And again, you’re not going to trust that until you see the demo obviously, but I wanted to share those just so when you’re thinking about it, it’s like we’re investing in medallion versus an fte. Usually the predictability of 50 percent faster turnaround times is why organizations will choose us. So I just want to leave you with that.
Carol Azar (34:40) I appreciate that. Yeah.
Zo Hooda (34:43) Thanks for adding that, Noah. So what I can do, Carol is I’ll start a new email thread with summarizing what we discussed with some case studies, you know, give you some time to review that. And then with that being said, if I don’t hear from you, when would be a good time for me to reach back out? Give?
Carol Azar (35:02) Me a week at least. Yeah, we got a lot going on here, which is another, you know, I have to consider there’s just so much going on that can we even absorb trying to implement a software? So there’s a lot that I have to think about. We can’t commit 100 percent of our time to this. That’s problematic, right? If you don’t commit your time, then you don’t get the value out of a software. So a lot to think about on my end.
Noah Laack-Veeder (35:27) Yeah. And I think one thing to think about and right now, we have a lot of organizations that are thinking this with the size of your organization and kind of the FT that you have. Like the way that I would look at this is we could probably get you live within four weeks or less. And the commitment that your team has to do is literally just, hey, we need your data in our system. If you’re using caqh, we can grab most of it already. So in terms of evaluating that piece, I can talk through implementation but high level implementation, it’s going to be less than four weeks and the commitment that your team would have to do to commit to this would be less than two to three hours a week just to get us the data that we need.
Noah Laack-Veeder (36:05) So, yeah, just wanted to leave you with that as well because I know implementation is a big thing as well, but that’s typically what organizations see.
Carol Azar (36:15) Okay. I mean, that’s good to know as well.
Zo Hooda (36:18) Perfect. Okay. Well, it was, very, nice to connect with you, Carol. I’ll send you the information you requested, and then, yeah, excited to get your feedback. I’ll check in with you early next week or around this time, next week and see if it makes sense to schedule some next steps. But of course, if you have any questions in the meantime before next week, please let us know for.
Carol Azar (36:37) Sure, for sure. Thank you so much.
Noah Laack-Veeder (36:39) Appreciate it. See you later. Yeah.