By Gia Seymour, Freelance Writer
Kathy Kuhns, Director of Revenue Cycle at Dayton Physicians Network, didn’t go looking for a software platform to help manage patient financial assistance, but when she heard about Annexus Health’s AssistPoint, her interest was immediately piqued.
“What really caught my attention was the ability to have a single place for all of our financial counselors to work from,” says Kathy, who’s been with Dayton Physicians Network for 16 years.
“We have four hematology and oncology locations, plus we have a pharmacy, so my financial counseling team is spread out across different offices,” she says. “That made it challenging to provide cross-coverage to help patients when we had someone out sick or on vacation. So, to have everything we need readily available to all of us in a centralized location with AssistPoint was very enticing.”
AssistPoint is a comprehensive software platform that accelerates the management of financial assistance and access services for healthcare organizations, helping patients get the care they need by proactively identifying available resources, streamlining enrollment, and facilitating the management of assistance.
Kathy made the decision to adopt AssistPoint for Dayton Physicians Network in 2019. Here’s why she’s never looked back:
Automation that enhances teamwork and efficiency
“Prior to AssistPoint, we had to do everything manually,” says Kathy. “We had our financial counselors doing benefit verification, providing treatment estimates, talking to patients about various assistance programs, and getting the information needed from them to fill out the assistance applications. We also had a financial advocate whose job was to do all the paperwork; that person enrolled patient after patient into all of the different assistance programs, keying all the information in by hand.”
“Everything is so much simpler with AssistPoint,” she says. “Our financial counselors are working in AssistPoint all day now. It’s our primary platform.”
In fact, with the automation and efficiency AssistPoint has provided, the financial advocate position has now been completely repurposed, as that role is no longer needed.
“AssistPoint makes the entire process so much easier and faster for our team,” Kathy says, noting that the digital enrollment feature in particular “really saves time.”
Available for a growing list of integrated life science and foundation programs, this feature enables AssistPoint users to enroll eligible patients directly within the platform using a standardized digital form that is automatically prepopulated with information from the health organization’s practice management system, electronic health records, and/or pharmacy management system. This eliminates the need to fill out multiple repetitive forms, minimizes errors and omissions, and helps secure assistance as quickly as possible.
“I really don’t know how we ever managed to do all this manually,” says Kathy, reflecting on the days before her team started using AssistPoint. “The financial counselors were so overwhelmed, especially at the beginning of each year when, on top of all the new patients starting on treatment, we also had to reevaluate all the patients currently on treatment and re-enroll them for financial assistance.”
“Now, in addition to the ability to digitally enroll patients, AssistPoint does automatic re-enrollment [for programs that accept it] to help us stay on top of financial assistance for all our patients so that there are no delays or interruptions to their funding or treatment.”
“AssistPoint has been a huge change to the way we manage patient assistance,” she says. “A really good change.”
Features that ensure assistance opportunities are maximized
One of Kathy’s favorite AssistPoint features is the Assistance Watchlist, to which users can add patients who are waiting for funding to become available. When funding opens
up, patients on the Assistance Watchlist can be easily enrolled at the click of a button, without having to repeat the search process.
“We used to keep track of those patients on a spreadsheet, and it’s so easy for things to fall through the cracks that way,” says Kathy. “To have the patient on the Assistance Watchlist and have all the information right there ready to go when the funding is available so that we can push the enrollment out right away is awesome.”
“Plus, AssistPoint sends fund status alert emails whenever a foundation opens up,” she says. “That’s one of the most valuable features for my team because it saves them from having to visit the individual websites every day to constantly check the status of each fund and ensures that they can quickly get our patients enrolled as soon as funding is available.”
Another thing Kathy loves about AssistPoint is how easy it is to manage free drug.
“Having all the information in one place with AssistPoint lets us manage free drug much better than we could before,” says Kathy. “We can go in and easily see when patients have met their deductible or out-of-pocket max and no longer require the free drug, so we can get them off of that program and, if needed, find financial assistance for them. We’ve had a really positive experience with that.”
Kathy also credits AP AnalyticsⓇ, the suite of on-demand reports easily accessible within AssistPoint, with optimizing the way they manage assistance.
“The reporting within AssistPoint is phenomenal,” she says. “It allows us to see how much money we secured from various sources and compare that to how much we’ve actually collected. It gives us a lot of different ways to look at the information, such as month by month collections or contributions by staff member. Those insights are really valuable.”
Exceptional, ongoing customer support
Beyond the many features AssistPoint has to offer, Kathy has been impressed with the outstanding support Annexus Health has provided since Dayton Physicians Network first started using the platform in 2019.
“One thing I really want to point out is that I feel like, even after 5 years, Annexus Health is still here for us,” she says. “They’re still supporting us, and that’s never fallen away.”
“Usually when you get a new product or service, you sign up and have the company’s full attention during the implementation process, and then that support starts to disappear over time,” says Kathy. “They’ll make you put in a ticket if you have an issue and then maybe you’ll hear back from them in two weeks.”
“That’s not the case at all with AssistPoint,” she says. “We had excellent service during the implementation process, which went so smoothly, and we continue to have excellent communication with Annexus Health. Our account manager checks in with us every month, reaches out to let us know about any new features or changes to the platform, and is always so responsive whenever we have questions–which isn’t often, because AssistPoint is so easy to use!”
“Annexus Health has been absolutely wonderful.”
About Annexus Health
Annexus Health is the leading healthcare technology company that is revolutionizing the patient access journey by delivering innovative solutions, including tech-enabled services, that reduce financial and administrative burdens to improve access, speed, and adherence to critical care. To learn more about what Annexus Health and AssistPoint can do for your organization, visit annexushealth.com.
