Sponsored Content
By Erika Jurrens, MBA
Executive Senior-Vice President, ABB Optical Group
Jan. 8, 2020
You prescribe the vision correction products and services that you feel will most help your patients, but what if your patients have difficulty understanding and optimizing their vision benefits to take full advantage of your clinical recommendation?
A new solution, ABB Verify, powered by AffinityAnalytics, offered as a part of the ABB Business Solutions pillar of the new ABB Optical Group, gives you a way to help patients maximize their benefits, so they are able to fully follow the treatment you have prescribed. ABB Verify sends e-mail and text messages to patients reminding them of their benefits, and gives guidance on how they can use those benefits in an eyecare provider’s office, such as by alerting them to the amount of money available to cover an exam, eyewear and/or contact lens purchase.
ABB Verify brings back not only patients who have exam and material benefits, but also those that did not make a material purchase and still have unused material benefits. It also identifies if a patient has a second vision benefit plan, perhaps from their spouse’s employer.
Make It Easier for Your Patients to Use Their Benefits
Often, patients do not even know they have unused benefits that they can use toward purchasing contact lenses or glasses. ABB Verify helps a patient maximize their benefits, thereby increasing patient satisfaction and retention, while keeping your exam chair full.
ABB Verify, launched at Vision Expo West 2019, studied five unique practices and a total of 92,485 patient benefits. Over 30 percent of those patients had unused benefits left on the table.
From there, ABB Verify went to work, and created over 991 new appointments in those five practices in the first few months. These appointments, along with the sales in those appointments, generated $166,209 of increased revenue, with one practice having revenue as much as 58 times return on the cost of the program.
New Vision Care Benefits Management Tool
You can also contact ABB Verify live at: 855-589-7913 or by sending an e-mail to abbsolutions@abboptical.com. <<
The total number of new appointments created by reaching out to those patients using ABB Verify’s e-mail and text message system so far is 411. A portion of those new appointments created 197 new transactions, which generated $47,573 of increased revenue to the pilot accounts.
Easing the Management of Benefits for Your Staff
ABB Verify automatically checks vision-care eligibility for a practice’s scheduled appointments and pulls authorizations for plans when needed. The amount of time spent by staff looking for this information can be reduced by as much as 40 percent. The platform also provides the opportunity to educate both staff and patients about benefit levels and eligibility, creating transparency and clarity.
Most patients struggle to identify their vision insurance provider, and ABB Verify specifically solves this challenge. Whether they are working with a walk-in patient, or a caller, the front office staff can enter the patient’s name, city, state and date of birth and within 30 seconds ABB Verify checks up to 20 different insurance payers to provide detailed insurance information.
Simple to Implement & Integrate with Several Practice Management Systems
A practice can easily learn how to use ABB Verify. Currently, ABB Verify integrates with the following practice management systems: Compulink, TM RevolutionEHR, TM, My Vision Express CloudTM and Crystal Practice Management.TM
If an office doesn’t have one of those systems, however, there is another option. ABB Verify On-Demand allows a practice to check benefits in real time, and within seconds, to understand what insurance benefits the patient may have. This platform can assist with walk-in business or as a way to check insurance outside of utilizing a practice management system.
A “Total Game-Changer” for Both Patients & Staff
The practices participating in the ABB Verify solution have experienced impressive results, and have shared their enthusiasm for this new product.
Other Articles to Explore
“We started using ABB Verify in October, and it has been a total game changer for our staff and our patients. In three years of being the office manager, I have never implemented something that was so seamless,” said Mandy Miller, office manager at Eagle Mountain Family Eye Care in Fort Worth, Texas.
“In our first couple of days, we had a patient who was in tears because ABB Verify found vision insurance that she did not even know she had. That vision insurance contributed 100 percent to her medically necessary contacts, which would otherwise have cost her $2,000. She paid that (out of pocket) every year without any insurance contributions.
We have three full-time doctors Monday through Friday, so we are a busy office. With the new software, my staff is able to be more efficient and doesn’t waste time hunting down benefits that the patient ‘thinks’ they have. And patients are being directed into our office because of the e-mails that are sent out informing them of unused benefits. This brings more revenue into the office, and patients love not wasting what they have paid for all year!”
Erika Jurrens, MBA, is executive senior-vice president, ABB Optical Group. To contact her: ejurrens@abboptical.com