“Rivet is a revenue cycle must-have. We can accomplish more — faster — using Rivet than anything else out there.”
Andi Wilkinson has spent the last 11 years bettering Austin Retina Associates; the last ~6 of which as ARA’s RCM Supervisor. She oversees the financial side of patient care for ~9,200 patients per month. Wilkinson is one of ARA’s primary Rivet users since ARA began using Rivet in 2019.
Austin Retina Associates (ARA) sought for a software partner to help with revenue cycle management tasks such as contract management.
“Contracts are their own can of worms. There’s so much legal jargon you’ve got to learn, so much that can change on a dime," Andi Wilkinson, RCM supervisor at ARA said. "We needed a hub for all our contracts and fee schedules; a place for the contracts to live, and a place where we could see if payers were staying within their set guidelines."
On top that, ARA wanted to offer their patients cost estimates but didn't have the bandwidth for estimates to be a full-time job.
“Estimates are no one’s full time job. Since we couldn’t hire someone specifically for their full-time job, we would’ve had to train multiple people to step in where needed. We needed a standard procedure and software to help us, and that was a major challenge because multiple people needed to be on board. Billing, coding, front office staff, physicians, and admin all needed to have confidence in our tech solution.”
And that doesn't even touch insurance payer claims.
“Payers usually short you if they haven’t already denied your claim. They trust you don’t have the manpower to fight them, and sadly they were right. That’s why we needed Rivet.”
Wilkinson continued: “Rivet allows us to enhance revenue without ever slowing us down. After everything is set up in Rivet, training is easy. If someone is out of office, anyone can fill in because they know how to be successful using Rivet.”
For patient cost estimates, ARA began small.
“We started with surgery estimates, and now we have three simple estimate workflows for surgery, new patients, and patient in-office appointments. It prevents any surprises the day-of and keeps us federally compliant with uninsured or self-pay patient rules.”
Estimates proved to enhance pre-collection dramatically. ARA pre-collected over $250K through Rivet estimates in 2024 alone (pre-collection in-office is not reflected in the pre-collection calculation).
Besides pre-collection ROI, ARA has also recovered thousands of underpayments from payers, prevent denials, and negotiated multiple contracts.
“We’re able to take the fight to the payer with Rivet. We’ve collected interest where we can prove they tried to under pay us vs what the contract states.”
“The analytics tools in Rivet show denial and underpayment trends blocking revenue. I can filter and manipulate the data from the big picture insights to individual claims, which makes systemic changes simple and puts us in a powerful position with insurers.”
Overall, Wilkinson said, “Rivet is a revenue cycle must-have. We can accomplish more — faster — using Rivet than anything else out there.”
Learn more about Rivet's robust underpayment and denials tools now: Schedule a Rivet demo
