Anagram: OpenAccess
CONTEXTMillions in vision benefits wasted every year
Every year, millions of dollars in vision-insurance benefits went unused—lost to confusing insurance portals, tedious paperwork, and the pervasive "use-it-or-lose-it" policy. This represented a massive, untapped revenue stream for independent eye-care practices fighting to remain competitive in an environment dominated by insurance payers and restrictive reimbursement contracts.
8 out 10 people thought out-of-network meant “out-of-benefits.”
$60K/yr in lost revenue per practice
CHALLENGEVision insurance: opaque by design
Before Anagram existed, eye-care providers faced a fragmented maze of payer portals, phone calls, faxed forms, and complex manual calculations. Practices experienced operational bottlenecks, missed revenue opportunities, and customer dissatisfaction due to a lack of clear visibility into the root causes.
Mapping CPT codes correctly in a CMS-1500 insurance reimbursement form was overwhelming and complicated. A slight misstep could result in a smaller payment or a full on claim denial.Several critical pain points consistently surfaced during the initial market research:
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Processing insurance was complicated, inconsistent, and laborious
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CMS-1500 forms and fax machines. Enough said.
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Nearly 50% of claims would be rejected or underpaid due to some calculation or form error
DISCOVERYBringing key ineffeciences into focus
As the first designer and third employee—working directly with Anagram’s founders—I took on early product thinking, user research, and strategic direction. Extensive field research included cold-calling optometrists, shadowing Costco-affiliated ODs, interviewing receptionists, and mapping detailed workflows. These activities uncovered deeper, systemic issues affecting practice economics, provider productivity, and patient revenue potential.
“Our opticians spend 15 or 20 minutes calculating vision plan coverages and co-pays.”
“Trying to get reimbursements — it’s so confusing, you have to submit so many times”
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Repeated claim denials forced practices into costly rework cycles or absorbing financial losses through write-offs, directly affecting practice profitability.
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Appointment-based scheduling inherently limited patient volume, making it essential to maximize revenue per patient encounter—a difficult task under restrictive in-network insurance contracts.
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Practices spent 30+ minutes per patient per visit on tedious, manual insurance processing, significantly reducing overall patient volume and practice efficiency.
Keeping it 20/20
As a lean team of three, our biggest risk was chasing too many ideas, diluting our impact, and losing focus on what mattered most to providers. Given the vast range of possibilities uncovered, clear alignment on strategy became critical. We consciously narrowed our approach to three strategic principles directly derived from our key discovery insights, anchoring every future decision in clearly defined provider pain points.
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Replace complex manual tasks and paperwork with one streamlined, fully digital solution.
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Automate insurance eligibility and benefit calculations at the point of service, ensuring accuracy and reducing costly claim denials.
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Build experiences that empower practices to optimize per-patient revenue.
STRATEGYOBJECTIVEA seamless, retail-like transaction
Consistently validating early concepts, ideas, and prototypes directly with providers crystallized a singular priority: transform complex vision-insurance processes into a frictionless, intuitive checkout—instant, accurate, and optimized so patients and providers could confidently capture every available benefit dollar.
PRODUCT DESIGNInstant eligibility, smarter checkout
Translating the validated design objective into action, I designed a cohesive digital workflow enabling providers to deliver intuitive, retail-like transactions. Providers could instantly confirm patient eligibility, dynamically configure and calculate benefits in real-time, and seamlessly submit electronic claims—all at the point of service. This ensured each patient interaction captured maximum value while minimizing administrative friction.
Instant eligibility with universal search
Anagram’s universal eligibility lookup eliminated guesswork entirely. Instead of juggling multiple insurance portals or spending hours on tedious phone calls, providers simply entered basic patient details once, triggering an immediate, comprehensive benefits retrieval. No estimates, no ambiguity—just accurate, real-time coverage confirmed instantly at the point of care
Providers entered minimal details once to instantly retrieve patient benefit coverage, eliminating manual verification and uncertainty.Personalized, real-time cost calculator
Our calculator did the actual math on the fly. Inspired by automotive configurators, the system dynamically adjusted in real-time, mapping exact patient benefits, accounting precisely for copays, upgrades, add-ons, and reimbursements specific to each patient's vision plan. Providers could confidently show patients exact out-of-pocket costs instantly, maximizing transparency, trust, and per-patient revenue
All glasses transactions started with the frames and progressed through the materials to ensure patients and providers could maximize benefits
Dynamically calculated precise patient costs, mapping exact benefits, copays, upgrades, and reimbursements in real-time.
Instant claim submission at checkout
Gone were the days of batching claims, filing paperwork, or waiting weeks for reimbursements. With instant claim submission built directly into checkout, providers completed the entire insurance transaction in seconds. Each claim auto-populated accurate patient details and service codes, drastically reducing errors, claim denials, and administrative headaches—ensuring quicker reimbursements and smoother cash flow.
Claims auto-populated instantly at checkout, drastically reducing errors, denials, and administrative overhead.
OUTCOMEMillions reclaimed, growth unlocked
Anagram transformed practice economics and patient experiences. Providers reclaimed over $400M in previously lost benefits, supported over 3M patient benefit verifications, increased average per-patient revenue from $290 to over $340, and onboarded more than 2,000 independent eye-care practices nationwide.
$400M+
Claim revenue
3M+
Patients served
2000+
Eye care providers
99%
Claim approvals
REFLECTIONVision care was just the beginning
Designing Anagram validated a scalable, payer-agnostic workflow, laying the groundwork to expand seamlessly into other healthcare verticals (mental health, physical therapy, chiropractic). It demonstrated how strategically driven UX and product design could systematically transform complex insurance processes into intuitive, profitable experiences, positioning Anagram for substantial growth beyond vision care.
PRESSSoftware Takes The Mystery Out Of Vision Plan Pricing
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
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
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.
CREDITSFOUNDERSDESIGN DIRECTORPRINCIPAL PRODUCT DESIGNERPRODUCT DESIGNERSBrett Plotzker
Jeremy Bluvol
Aaron Smith
Aaron Smith
Sara Pelaez
Lauren Bottino
Dalaney LaGrange