In healthcare, accurate and up-to-date provider information is critical for meeting patient care needs and maximizing revenue. It powers everything from provider onboarding and enrollment to patient care coordination and billing. Yet, gathering or maintaining this information is often a significant challenge, taking as long as six months or more. For example, onboarding new physicians can be delayed by outdated or incomplete data, contributing to lengthy administrative timelines. When provider information isn’t current, it disrupts core systems and slows down critical functions across the organization.
During Becker’s 2025 Annual Meeting, at a featured session sponsored by Axuall, Charlie Lougheed, chief executive officer at Axuall, moderated a panel discussion with five healthcare leaders about these challenges and the role that AI-based workforce intelligence platforms can play in solving them. The panelists were:
- Kate Neal, director, IT access innovations and CRM, Cleveland Clinic
- Chad Smith, MD, physician executive and former chief medical officer, Mercy
- Patrick McGill, MD, executive vice president and chief transformation officer, Community Health Network
- Armando Cardoso, chief executive officer, PayrHealth
- Craig Overpeck, chief operating officer, Doximity Talent Solutions
Here are four key takeaways from their conversation:
- With AI and automation, health systems can update provider master files quickly, accurately and comprehensively.
Cleveland Clinic has around 23 million outpatient visits each year and about 40% are external referrals. In this environment, manually maintaining the Epic provider master file is a daunting task. Ms. Neal explained that Epic told Cleveland Clinic that Cleveland Clinic would need to add 14 to 22 more FTEs to their IT team just to keep the SER file up to date.
“We really had to think differently about how to do this work, so we could get the most out of Epic — a solution that we’d paid for fully,” she said. “It meant getting information from sources that, quite frankly, we don’t have access to.”
Initially, Cleveland Clinic hired 10 consultants to clean up their external provider records. After six months, the team brought back 50,000 records and for most of those, the only available data was a National Provider Identifier (NPI), address and fax.
Ms. Neal gave the same 50,000 records to Axuall. Within three days, Axuall delivered a file with DEA verification for the provider, NPI and around 22 additional fields. “Some of the records the consultants sent back had a facility NPI instead of a provider NPI,” Ms. Neal said. “Axuall found those inaccuracies. If we had billed based on the facility NPI, payers would have issued denials.”
Cleveland Clinic is now looking at the next phase of becoming even more automated and more integrated with Axuall, so it can move to true automation.
- Automating physician onboarding gets providers to the bedside sooner.
Most doctors dread the physician credentialing process. Dr. Smith described it as cumbersome, antiquated and unfriendly for physicians.
Axuall’s technology-enabled solutions enable organizations to transform physician credentialing into a best-in-class, high-touch experience for providers that can be completed quickly. “What we’ve seen with Axuall is how beneficial it is to collect provider data more rapidly and more accurately,” Dr. Smith said. “When physicians engage with Axuall, their time in the system is 30 to 45 minutes, at most. On the back end, we are seeing data that is at least 70% to 80% more accurate than with our old processes.”
To date, the provider feedback at Mercy has been positive. Physicians also appreciate that if they leave the organization, they can take their Axuall digital wallet with them.
Like Mercy, Community Health Network has also transformed physician credentialing using Axuall. “I knew that our credentialing [process] was terrible, and I thought there was nothing we could do about it,” Dr. McGill said. “The one takeaway is that we accept a lot of things that don’t have to be the way they are. Axuall is good for employees, physicians, your business and your patients.”
- Faster physician credentialing means faster revenue generation.
PayrHealth recognizes that delays in the physician credentialing process mean that providers can’t work, patients aren’t seen and as a result, surgeries must be deferred. Mr. Cardoso said that in the past, it took PayrHealth over a month to collect an onboarding package from a physician. Today, it takes less than a week.
“Axuall’s credentialing solution has been a game changer,” he said. “The process is four to five times faster than what we were doing before and that’s due in large part to the innovation. The system pre-populates verified information for individuals during the onboarding process, such as education, licensure, employment history.”
In addition, PayrHealth can push data from Axuall to its internal systems to ensure that the provider experience is consistent and cohesive. “When you onboard faster, you generate revenue sooner, which is critical. Axuall also lowers the administrative overhead. It’s a straightforward, modern process that leaves new providers eager to join the organization,” Mr. Cardoso said.
- Streamlined processes reduce onboarding time for locum tenens physicians.
When it comes to connecting locum tenens physicians to hospital assignments, the work has a lot of moving parts that must be addressed quickly. Curative Talent, the recruiting arm of Doximity Talent Solutions, is committed to meeting these demands, while also delivering an outstanding physician experience to its locum tenens providers.
Following its acquisition of Curative in 2010, Doximity transformed Curative’s paper-based credentialing, which had a historically low completion rate, into an automated, digital process with Axuall. “We knew we had to transform it and when we looked at partners, Axuall was head and shoulders above the rest because it’s so physician focused,” he said. “On the locums side, it’s about speed, but we also need quality. It’s about being physician-first.”
Now everything about the Curative physician credentialing process is digital — credentials are pulled for physicians so they can quickly verify them and upload other information. Curative uses a Net Promoter Score (NPS) question to gauge how likely locum tenens providers are to recommend the credentialing process. Since partnering with Axuall, physician satisfaction and NPS scores have significantly improved.
Curative has now credentialed hundreds of physicians using Axuall. “For the first 750, we didn’t add any staff at all,” Mr. Overpeck said. “It’s all done through automation. Agents go out to validate information and it’s seamless. The dashboard tells us who we need to go after for license renewals.”
Interested in learning more about how AI and automation can transform provider data management and streamline your onboarding processes? Contact Axuall today to discover how Axuall’s technology-enabled solutions can drive efficiency, accuracy, and revenue growth for your organization.
