If you’re a doctor, or even a patient who has been to the doctor recently, you’re likely familiar with the process of prior authorization (PA) in the world of healthcare. It was originally intended to conserve the resources for insurance companies, but they have unintentionally created a bottleneck which delays access to care for the insured patients. In the time spent waiting, 25% of patients end up hospitalized, 19% experience life-threatening events, and 9% experience disability or death. Not to mention the additional time spent waiting if the claim is denied and needs to be appealed.

So what can you do as a provider to speed things up? One of the greatest tools is prior authorization process automation. For example, Orbit AI has shown it takes less than 5 minutes to perform a PA request compared to nearly 20 when manually done. Similarly, it frees up to 12 hours per week for each staff member for someone who wouldn’t be manually doing these PA requests. Aside from time, automated PA systems can save up to $9.60 for each request and reduce around 60% of all existing costs for a provider. Ultimately, for both you and your patients’ time, money, and effort, implementing automated PA systems is best for your business.