I'm Ann Bilyew, the former CEO of MDeverywhere and I am going to open my blog about my leadership journey with something I am very proud of and something that a great many incredible people had a hand in - the building of MDeverywhere into a significant company and a leading healthcare revenue cycle company.
The history of MDeverywhere is the history of a Company that has been built on a culture of innovation, customer service and rigorous execution.
MDe actually started out as two separate companies - one a traditional, paper-based medical billing company and the other a technology company that had developed state-of-the art tools (originally built for the Palm Pilot!) to automate the charge capture process for physicians.
While a partner at Advent International - an investor in both companies - I merged these two companies to create one of the earliest technology-enabled service companies in healthcare. The premise behind the merger was a simple one - the technology company (MDeverywhere) had developed very elegant tools that helped bring rules and intelligence to the front end of the revenue cycle while also reducing the need for manual data entry downstream. The service company (Med eManager) had the back office capabilities to manage the complete revenue cycle on behalf of clients and the recurring revenue model that could lead to sustainable, predictable growth. It was a fledgling company - a raw start up - with a few people, some great technology and a vision to bring automation and efficiency to what was a very staid and inefficient but important process. So then we set about to work. That was really the birth of MDeverywhere as it is known today.
There have been many milestones since that day in 2003 and today and I will take the time to mention only a few.
We opened our facility in India in 2005. At the time - and even today - that was a very audacious thing to do for a young, small compay. We took this big step because we wanted complete control of the end--to-end process and saw the potential in India to build a state-of-the-art facility staffed with ambitious, smart professionals who were excited about building a career in healthcare revenue cycle. Many companies "outsource" parts of the process to third parties in places like India or the Philippines but we believe that the best way to provide a consistent service to clients is to control the entire process including who we hire, how we train and how we design and automate our processes. We started with 28 people in a small facility in Noida. In 2014, we moved into our third facility and had more than 250 people working hard there everyday on behalf of our clients. That number is now up to 450. This processing center is a shining example of the big bold steps that went into building MDeverywhere.
In 2008, I went from being a board member and investor to being the CEO of MDeverywhere. It was an opportunity for me to fully lead a company that had tremendous potential but had failed to live up to its promise. And from there, we set about changing everything. First we started with sales - restructuring the sales force, the marketing message and the selling and lead gen models. The results were immediate with an substantial increase in yield on our sales spend and a 5-fold increase in productivity. We restructured operations into multi-functional teams built around clients and created incentive structures based on client performance. We changed our Account Support model to instill greater visibility and accountability around client communication and satisfaction. Basically everything was changed. There was some resistance to the changes and not everyone made the leap to the new day. Not everything we tried worked and we had to make some course corrections along the way but I am happy to say that the overall results have been tremendous as measured by all metrics.
In 2011, we embarked on a major development initiative to update our front-end platform for clients. Building a purpose-built RCM system from the ground up - Practice 1st. Designed out of the gate to bring all the right rules and capabilities to the beginning of the revenue cycle. It it all begins at the practice and with the patient - that is where data integrity is both so difficult and so critical. Practice 1st is special - it is special because it is built with one thing in mind - successful adjudication of a claim. While streamlined workflow and an intuitive UI are also important measures of a system, our team designed Practice 1st as a smart workflow tool that ensures process control as appointments are made, demographics confirmed and encounters coded. Practice 1st was launched to rave reviews.
Also in 2011, MDeverywhere made a strategic acquisition to bring physician Credentialing to its offering. We acquired AHMS, a boutique firm with a highly trained team of professionals with deep experience and knowledge in the credentialing process - including the relatively new process of delegated credentialing or CVO. The Credentialing business unit quickly became an important stand alone business as well as a service offering available to all RCM clients.
In 2013, MDe had two significant milestones - the partnership with Henry Schein MicroMD and the launch of Patient 1st. There is no question that meaningful use incentives and the resulting widespread deployment of EMRs had a major impact on our industry over the past few years. While MDe maintained the ability to interface with most third-party EMRs that a client or prospect selected, The partnership with MicroMD was an important one - enabling the Company to offer an integrated EMR/RCM system/RCM service product to the market.
That year the company also launched a new comprehensive Patient Pay platform designed to streamline the collection of the rapidly growing patient responsibility for payment of medical claims. This comprehensive tool incorporated automated messaging, point-of-care payment solutions, estatements and online payment capability. Our goal was a simple one - to make it easy for patients to understand their financial responsibility and easy for them to pay it.
Other recent innovations include development of a billing support team in the operations center that supports clients via online chat, deployment of a comprehensive workflow management tool, EKOS, to standardize and add transparency to our claim resolution process, the launch of Client 1st as a online implementation portal and development of a number of tools to facilitate and automate EDI processes. And the launch of MDeU, a full-scale knowledge platform. With MDeU, we leveraged our team's collective knowledge and experience to ensure that our team and our clients always had access to the latest information about our products and services and about the business of healthcare.
Over this time, the company also grew significantly and expanded from a regional company serving our NY/NJ base to a company with a national presence. From processing $150 M in annual claim volume to processing >$1 B a year through its systems. From 45 to 650 employees. From docs numbered in the hundreds to more than 20,000. in 2015, the Company merged with eMDs, a company with a market-leading EMR to create the fully-integrated clinical and financial product offering that is required by practices today. That merger was the final step in Book 1 of building MDeverywhere.
We did a great deal over the years - building new products, building new capabilities, designing new processes. It was a terrific journey and one that I am proud to have led. We touched many lives, helped many practices and created opportunities for many people. That is what building a company is all about.
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