Anagram
Case Study
Revolutionizing patient costs at the point-of-service for eye-care professionals
SectorHealthcare, B2B, SaaS
RoleLead Product Designer
User Research, User Experience Design, User Interface Design, Design Systems, Prototyping
PlatformsWeb App
Healthcare is a slow-moving, antiquated, and highly regulated industry seemingly controlled by insurance companies. Most practitioners get into healthcare to serve patients, not deal with the ins and outs of the highly complex medical coding system, billing, and claims. Yet, to a patient, insurance (or at least “coverage”) is at the forefront of most medical decisions.
The result? Providers are squeezed on revenue, and patients are left confused and tormented with delayed, unexpected, and unexplained patient costs.
My mission? Streamline patient costs at the point-of-service bringing more transparency to providers and their patients.
The ProblemAccurately calculating vision care services and materials relies on antiquated workflows (phone, fax, paper claims, etc.), a lot of patience, and unfailing diligence to double triple-check your math. With complex requirements when utilizing insurance benefits, not only is the process frustrating and error-prone it has a real business impact that could result in lost revenue, lost patients, and increased administrative rework. The fallout is that some providers will even drop insurance networks altogether “to avoid the hassle.”
“Our opticians spend 15 or 20 minutes calculating vision plan coverages and co-pays”
Brittney McWilliams, OD
“Trying to get reimbursements — it’s so confusing, you have to submit so many times”
Kara Ramsey, OD
Antiquated
The workflow for retrieving a patient’s coverage and submitting claims is antiquated and slow
Error-prone
Calculating patient costs by hand when factoring insurance benefits is prone to errors
Intimidating
Interpreting insurance is daunting and complicated requiring extensive knowledge
The opportunityHow might we build a real-time cost calculator for eye-care providers that is streamlined, accurate, and intelligent?
Antiquated » Streamlined
Connect the workflow into one holistic, streamlined, and inter-operable experience
Error-prone » Reliable
The system should handle the complex calculations and logic on behalf of the provider at the point-of-service
Intimidating » Inviting
The product should be simple and easy enough for non-providers to use and understand
design explorationsThe new calculator workflow went through many iterations and user validation sessions before we had a shippable design candidate
Final DesignsPush past the obvious solutions for something clean, warm, and inviting.
Streamlined and connected
The new web app workflow ensured ECP’s wouldn’t have to figure out what benefits applied to what services (re: medical code)
Real-time reliability
With benefits being automatically mapped to services, the worksheet calculates costs in real-time for the item and in totality
Fresh and inviting
To enable clearer task pathways and give the UI more breathing room, we decided to nest extraneous details that aren’t crucial.
The impactProviders frequently describe Anagram’s cost calculator as streamlined, seamless, and user-friendly. Additionally, we saw a dramatic increase in claim approvals: nearly 99% compared to 50% before the launch. In addition to the increase in claim approvals, we saw patient conversions increase by 85% and revenue per patient by 90%. These metrics demonstrate that vision care providers saw the value in Anagram’s cost calculator.
99%
Claim approval and pay-outs
85%
Increase in patient conversion
90%
Increase in revenue per patient
PressSoftware Takes The Mystery Out Of Vision Plan Pricing
Helping patients make an informed decision on eyeglass purchases
With Anagram, Dr. McWilliams has streamlined the process of calculating the costs for a patient. “It takes seconds to calculate optical totals as a flat fee versus our optician spending 15 or 20 minutes calculating vision plan coverages and co-pays.”
The Tool Helping Us Capture 60-70% of Vision-Plan Patients Who Contact Us
An Efficient, Streamlined Way to Process Benefits
Anagram is considerably easier than filing paper claims. Keeping separate forms for each plan, filling them all out by hand, and mailing them, is a huge time suck. Anagram eliminates all of those chores and makes it much more likely that patients will get reimbursed. Anagram keeps everything in one place and verifies the plans for us. This simple claim-filing process saves us around five minutes per patient.
Insurance Processing Tool Helping to Facilitate 20% Annual Growth
Huge Stimulant to Revenue Growth
Dropping insurance and filing out-of-network (OON) with Anagram has increased our revenue per transaction by $80 in the first month of using the technology, and has grown since then to a $110 increase in revenue per transaction. We started at $120 in revenue per transaction, and now we are at $235 per transaction... we continue to grow at 20 percent annually with a revenue per patient of $557.