The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent economic fallout has put many of the nation's healthcare providers in an extremely vulnerable financial position. Many healthcare organizations are relying heavily on outside partnerships to help bolster the revenue cycle.
The revenue cycle technology provider eSolutions is a standout vendor in this space and is committed to helping its provider partners through this difficult period. The company boasts a 4.5 out of 5 client satisfaction score and has a net promoter score of 44, which indicates that the company has excellent rates of patient loyalty. Anna Whitaker, vice president of client services with eSolutions, shared these figures during a recent interview. Here, the eSolutions VP answers five questions about her company's philosophy and efforts to support clients amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Note: Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Question: How does the eSolutions client services team approach servicing so many different providers types? What's the philosophy?
Anna Whitaker: We have always looked at what we do as a privilege. We understand while they differ, most of our clients are operating under tight margins while caring for underserved populations. Those margins are critical to our clients' missions — we take the responsibility of serving them and strengthening their revenue cycle seriously. The provider type may be different, but the end goal is the same. That really helps motivate us to provide exemplary service. It doesn't hurt that we have a great group who is willing to ask questions and learn from those that have been with the company or in the industry for many years.
Q: What type of additional support have clients needed during the COVID-19 crisis, and how has eSolutions risen to the occasion?
AW: Our mission became even more clear during COVID-19. As we, like many others, read the news and saw how long-term care providers, hospitals and others in the industry were stepping up, we couldn't help but be inspired to do the same. We worked across the company to accelerate implementations for clients who needed our services to manage their revenue. Additionally, we stepped up our Support response times, increasing the amount of cases resolved within the same day, to ensure our clients had the information they needed to manage their businesses and focus on quality of care.
Q: How is eSolutions client services different than similar HIT vendors? What makes you special?
AW: There are a lot of reasons eSolutions is special. We don't nickel and dime our clients — training and implementation services are always available. All of our resources are onshore and full-time employees of eSolutions. Our product guides, training videos and FAQS are meticulously updated to help clients find the information they need. But the biggest differentiator is our people. eSolutions has fostered an environment that empowers employees to take action on behalf of our clients — and they take our clients success personally. Whether it's creating custom content for a vendor to use when training their providers or working overtime to ensure cases are responded to in a timely manner, the Client Services team takes the work we do on behalf of our clients personally.
Q: eSolutions has a 95 percent client retention rate. What do you attribute such a high retention rate to? What keeps clients happy?
It's all those things listed above. When you empower a team to take action on behalf of the clients, the rest of the puzzle pieces seem to fall into place naturally. We also listen to our clients. We send out surveys after every support case and implementation. Most are positive, but we also take time to inspect the negative ones, follow up with the clients and listen to their feedback, and coach our teams on how to improve. We’re never done learning or improving.
Q: Are there any other thoughts you'd like to leave our readers with?
One success story comes to mind. A nationwide EHR vendor came to us after being notified that one of our competitors in the clearinghouse space was turning off services for all their customers (over 80 practices.) The typical enrollment time is six weeks, but they were given less than a month's notice. We collaborated with the client and our sales leadership to create a streamlined process and get providers live for their largest payers as swiftly as possible. We implemented, enrolled, trained and took all 80-plus providers live in less than a month, representing record turnaround time, and ensuring provider revenue wasn't impacted by the transition.