Avelead’s Daniel Rasmussen is the mastermind behind Avelead ContractID, a software that helps hospitals gain leverage and insight into all their contracts. With his years of experience in the healthcare technology field, he has been able to help hospitals discover significant opportunities to recover money without spending hours combing through every report and contract. Even with all the strides Avelead ContractID has already made for hospitals, its development will never be finished. It will continue to change and advance to make sure that hospitals can stay competitive and always provide the highest level of help.
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Hey there, Daniel! Can you tell me about your background and how you got into the healthcare field?
Of course! I graduated from the University of Nebraska, Omaha, with a Business Management degree, with a minor in Marketing and a minor in Sales. During my last two years of college, I had a full-time job at a company called TASIS, which is a credit card processing company where we worked in merchant acquisitions and sales. Within that, we worked with the American Medical Association and dealt with all the implementations of hospitals, and helped them get set up with everything they needed.
Cerner eventually reached out because they work with TASIS as their primary point of contact for merchant processing. They kind of hunted me and I started work in the Patient Accounting Consulting for about four to four and a half years at Cerner. Then, I became aware of the job here at Avelead and so I became a Revenue Cycle Architect, as well as the product owner for the product that I designed called Avelead ContractID!
Tell me about ContractID and how it came to fruition.
Avelead ContractID is a third-party bolt-on contract management software that we use to build and price contracts based on data elements that are given from clients’ contracts. Every client will have different types of contracts that are unique to them, and they need to have the ability to build them out and price appropriately. We net down AR at the time of billing based on those contracts instead of at the time of adjudication, or at the time we’re receiving payments and remittances. This is something that clients like because they’re not inflating what they’re supposed to receive, so they’re not inflating their accounts receivable until the time of payment. They’re getting net AR and what they’re expecting to get back from the payers! We also have a lot of variance reporting and other types of reporting within Avelead ContractID, which clients can use to produce reports and find trends with payers that aren’t paying correctly, contractual issues, and more. We have all the functionality to give them the tools that they need to work with to make sure that their contracts are on par with the contracts that they have with the payers to see why they’re receiving certain payments and adjustments.
What sets Avelead ContractID apart from its competitors?
As far as I know, there is not another competitor that can price 1500s. With that, the simplicity, the new advanced user interface, and UI are game-changers. The reporting behind it that we’ve been implementing and we’re always going to be expanding on is also amazing. Companies just don’t have as good of reporting as we do and we’re always advancing ours and making it even better
In terms of Avelead ContractID, what are hospitals still lacking within their systems?
Hospitals cannot see contracts upfront as well as not being able to have proper resolutions through great documentation and reporting. If I was a billing expert and had proper reporting resources set up, I’d be able to say something like, “Hey Payer X, here are all the claims that you short-paid us on in the last month based on our contract. You were supposed to pay this amount, but you short-paid us $100,000.” Unfortunately, many hospitals don’t have this level of ammunition that they’d be able to get if they used our application. With us, they wouldn’t have to go digging for information or ask someone to write SQL queries. They’d be able to break down all the information right there with our reports that are given to them.
And this would ultimately be the difference between a lot of money and time in the long run then, correct?
Exactly! Within our reports, hospitals not only can search by the actual contract itself that we built out, but they can search by financial class, by payer, or even by specific health plans if they need it. Then, they can just filter everything out from there that they don’t need, and have everything that they do need.
We now know what Avelead ContractID does from the revenue side, but what does it accomplish from the patient side?
It all depends on how the hospital handles it! To me, it impacts patient safety because staff on the business level will be the ones using it to catch revenue they continuously fought for. For example, if a hospital has troublesome payers, they are going to be losing hundreds of thousands per year because they’re being short-paid or are having to touch a single claim multiple times instead of getting it out on time or are having adjustments come back based on contractual issues that could be avoided. All this increases what we call price per claim and if we can decrease this and instead increase their revenue, that new revenue can be used to further develop that hospital. This means anything from getting new EKG machines or getting new technology that was just released that helps get new types of patients, or even opening a new wing! The possibilities are endless here.
How has your outlook on the healthcare field changed since creating ContractID?
I would say it’s developed more into thinking about the “what ifs.” I’m thinking about how we can turn what-ifs into actual products because there is so much we can do. We brought up the idea of having this contract management software and we didn’t know where to begin or what to do with it. The difference was that we knew that other companies failed on producing this type of software in the past based on my own experiences and what hospitals have told us. We were able to turn that contract management “what if” into an invention that helps companies report accurately and find contractual issues. Because of Avelead ContractID, I now look at everything as “what ifs” and what could turn into dream applications and further development.
What would you like to see in the future with Avelead ContractID?
I would like to see a partnership with some of the big EHR systems that will resell Avelead ContractID, just like they already do for some of our other products. It would be great to see it go into a big organization like CHS where we can report on hospital systems instead of individual hospitals. That way, we can help and take care of more organizations at once, and further our developments with the application based on all that information.
Looking to the future, we’re going to continue to take this niche market and dive into every resource we have available so we can build our clients’ 1500 contracts with our software. Then, we’re going to go back and develop 1450s, which is going to be institutional. We know that this will be major for hospitals because no hospital personnel will say that they want to report from two different systems. They’ll see the ease with Avelead ContractID and how all the developments have led to the moment they’re able to generate information with just a click of a button. This was never possible for them before, and it will only continue to get simpler and even more time-efficient.
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Daniel Rasmussen is another example of how all the talented minds at Avelead shine. Thanks to his expertise, hospitals can gain back time and money with full visibility and control over their contracts. With Avelead ContractID, hospitals can compare insurance rates across all their contracts and make better renegotiation decisions that will align with their goals.