Founded in 1977, Hollis Cobb is a revenue cycle solutions company headquartered in Atlanta, GA. They specialize in insurance follow-up, accounts receivable management and other business office functions such as pre-certification, pre-registration, customer service and staffing for hospitals and large physicians' groups. They have set goals to drive top-line growth, new customer acquisition and expand into additional markets.

Hollis Cobb was looking for software solutions to streamline the services they provided to the medical industry and help their clients use technology work more efficiently. To accelerate their digital innovation journey, Hollis Cobb engaged with BDO Digital to develop new solutions.
   

The Need for Digital Transformation

With rapid changes to regulations, processes and insurance procedures, engaging with a patient during the intake process can be complicated and labor intensive. Additionally, applying for financial assistance after a procedure requires cumbersome paperwork resulting in more staff time and a delay in answers for the patient. Many providers of medical services find it difficult to obtain resources to handle these functions due to labor shortages and complex processes. Frequent procedural changes have also made the intake process very inefficient.

Hollis Cobb saw these business issues as an opportunity to help medical providers improve the overall patient experience while simultaneously allowing them to redeploy valuable resources to other areas. They needed support from a team that has a proven track record in helping client’s transform their business outcomes and those of Hollis Cobb clients.
 

Custom Software Solutions

To achieve their business goals, Hollis Cobb needed to create two innovative software solutions that would allow them to automate the paperwork-intensive patient intake and payment processes. With the help of BDO Digital, they created two solutions called Passage and Financial Assistance Expert (FAE). Both custom software solutions used .NET and Azure cloud services to provide a seamless experience and integrate into the customer’s electronic medical record (EMR) platform.

The Passage solution consists of a web portal built with the .NET platform (hosted by Azure) which allows for secure management of patient data. The solution uses automation with UI Path bots to streamline the pre-authorization process by delivering procedure evaluation, authorization initiation, systematic status updates and financial clearance. Additionally, robotic process automation helped minimize manual tasks, increase throughput, reduce expenses and limit the amount of patient denials for procedures. Passage has had a positive impact on provider efficiency and profitability, and patients have a better client experience during intake as a result of reduced denials and a faster path toward their procedure.
 

One of the main defining things of Passage, from a KPI standpoint, is based on the research that we've done with BDO, we're looking at a 30% reduction in the workflow volume.

– Josh Best, Vice President Client Services, Hollis Cobb
*(30% of workload at day 1, moving to 60% once matured)
 

FAE helps streamline the application process for patients in need of financial assistance for medical procedures. Using cloud services, FAE provides automated options for patients to request financial assistance over the phone or on the web. Patients can request financial assistance through web portals and eliminate the need for staff to be involved in this process. The phone request system uses an integrated voice recognition feature powered by a cloud service. With automations in FAE, hospital staff can spend less time in this area, and focus more time on the high value activities that have a positive impact on the bottom line. BDO Digital provided the knowledge and talent to bring all the technology together into solutions that met the objectives of Hollis Cobb.
 

Results and Benefits

With the creation of Passage and FAE, Hollis Cobb has transformed their business and accelerated their digital capabilities. Hollis Cobb has reimagined their business and is now functioning like a software company that is strategic, agile, and focused on delivering great outcomes for their clients.
 

By implementing FAE, our clients should realize 90 to 95% expense reduction in the administrative cost around the financial aid application process.

– Greg Hocutt, President and CEO, Hollis Cobb Associates

 

Moving Forward

Hollis Cobb’s tailored solutions, created with BDO Digital, will have wide ranging applicability in the medical provider community. With the initial release of these applications, they will directly connect into the nation’s largest electronic medical record (EMR) platform known as Epic. Epic currently holds the medical records for 54% of domestic patients and any Epic client will be able to find these two innovative solutions natively within Epic’s application catalog, referred to as application orchard. Hollis Cobb also supports the capabilities of Passage and FAE into other EMR platforms. Moving forward, Hollis Cobb will create new digital solutions and continue to enhance Passage and FAE to service the needs of their clients.
 

BDO Digital has always executed at a high level, and always have exceeded my expectations. After 15 years + working with BDO Digital, I’m still very excited about the next project.

– Greg Hocutt, President and CEO, Hollis Cobb