The Digital Clinical Assistant is your solution to the prior authorization process. The Digital Clinical Assistant leverages innovative AI technology and a digital workforce to automate the burdensome process within Athenahealth EHR- eliminating the need to learn new tech or add to existing workflows. As a result, the DCA can improve the time to approval by up to 50%, increasing the number of approvals you can process daily. In addition, the DCA can reduce the cost of prior authorization by up to 60% and alleviate the administrative burden on your staff.

Digital Blue is a healthcare consulting and solutions company focused on improving lives through optimized business performance. Our services and solutions empower leaders across the healthcare ecosystem to eliminate inefficiencies, increase productivity and improve patient satisfaction. Client benefits include; increased revenue, reduced operational cost and administrative burden, and improved quality of care. 

Waystar delivers innovative technology that simplifies and unifies healthcare payments. The company’s cloud-based platform helps healthcare providers across all care settings streamline workflows, improve financial performance and bring more transparency to the patient financial experience. Waystar solutions have been named Best in KLAS or Category Leader by KLAS Research 16 times (across multiple product categories) and earned multiple #1 rankings from Black Book. The Waystar platform is used by more than half a million providers, 1,000 health systems and hospitals, and 5,000 payers and health plans—and integrates with all major hospital information and practice management systems. On an annual basis, Waystar’s AI-powered solutions process $5B in patient payments, generate $4B in out-of-pocket estimates and process claims representing approximately 40% of the U.S. patient population. For more information, visit www.waystar.com.

Prior Auth Process As-Is

Prescriber opens the EMR and prescribes the prescription.

The pharmacy will notify the prescriber that a prior auth is needed

Prescriber will submit an electronic request for prior authorization through ePA or insurance portals

Prescribers and their staff input patient demographic information and history and answer clinical questions as they come in. 

The staff is constantly checking for status updates

Duplicate requests come in, typically at night and over the weekend. If the PA request isn't completed quickly enough, these must be filtered out manually.

Backlogged workbaskets and data-entry errors cause care gaps and delays in treatment.

Increased administrative burden is the number one cause in provider burnout and a significant cause for loss in revenue

DCA Optimized Prior Auth Process

The Clinician Opens the EMR and prescribes the medication

DCA monitors the EMR and other systems for PA work and kicks off the automated process

DCA auto-triages PAs and removes ALL duplicate requests as they come in

DCA auto-fills forms via APIs and submits the requests for medications it has been configured for based on your practices' volumes

DCA creates a work queue for any encountered exceptions

nurses work only the PA requests or clinical questions that the DCA is not configured for, saving time for high-value work

Based on payer rules, the DCA posts status updates/tasks to EMR and auto-updates status

60% reduction in manual effort

50% improvement in time to approval

100% elimination of duplicate requests

See more patients, improve employee satisfaction/retention, and get home on time!