Customized Data Delivery & Extraction Solution a “Game Changer” for Veritas HHS
Veritas HHS had a paper problem. Specifically, using reams of paper every week on a costly, time-consuming data entry process made necessary by a digital fax platform that couldn’t be adapted to company workflows.
“Paper wasn’t even a budgeted expense, and that was just part of the headache,” says Alex Garnes, Chief Information Officer. “The faxes were coming in as bulk documents; they couldn’t be separated into individual components and then sent to our OCR scanner for entry into our system. They had to be manually printed, batched, logged scanned and data entered.”
That cumbersome process caused unacceptable slowdowns for a company that needs to deliver data quickly. Veritas HHS provides child support enforcement services to health and human services agencies at the state and county levels. The company, which operates in several states and has about 250 employees, also offers consulting for government health and child welfare programs.
The company’s child-support services hinge on the receipt and processing of a key documents, the Acknowledgement of Paternity (AOP) which verifies paternity when a child is born to unmarried parents. This paperwork is filled out by a hospital registrar after delivery, signed by both parents and then sent to Veritas HHS. It is then processed, and its data made available for the child support agency to verify if paternity was established at time of birth or needs to be resolved.
A Tale of Two Very Different Document Streams
Veritas HHS gets the paternity documentation forms in two ways: paper copies by mail, and online through a fax portal. The hard copies delivered by mail are sorted and scanned by an OCR into the company’s document management solution, which then extracts a set of standard values such as parents’ names, child’s name, and date of birth.
The faxed versions, however, came in as single pages, often with an attached cover page, and so had to be physically reassembled through printing and scanning. That ate a lot of time, and slowed down processing and, eventually, reimbursements to agencies and hospitals for submitting the paperwork properly.
“We needed something that could ingest the fax, create some rules to split out cover sheets, then reassemble the two pages we needed and bring those into our system as a single file for OCR scanning,” Garnes says. “Concord’s solution wowed us. It’s been a game changer.“
Concord NEXTSTEP provides Veritas HHS with AI-driven document classification and data extraction processes as faxed documents arrive, automatically eviewing pages and then placing them into the Veritas HHS system for OCR scanning and processing. Now the Veritas HHS team has immediate access to the data in their faxed documents without having to stop, print, batch, sort and perform manual entry.
Implementation and Support Set a Positive Tone
Making all that happen wasn’t an overnight process. Garnes says he also was impressed by Concord’s dedication to a clear, efficient implementation process.
“I wanted to be shown what a fax vendor could do for us, and I wanted to talk to a person,” he recalls. “That was pretty much impossible with a lot of the operators out there. When I found the Concord website, I was able to quickly see what solutions were available, and when I reached out, I provided requirements and was pleased with how quickly testing and development began.
“I can be a bit world-weary when it comes to vendor promises, and I have to say that the Concord development team is fantastic,” he continues. “I pushed them to do things for us that were new tasks for NEXTSTEP, and they made everything work. I believed them when they made promises, and I was right to do so. We threw a lot at them, and at every step they showed us they could make it work. The communication I had with everyone at Concord convinced me I was going to get what I wanted.”
Faster, More Efficient Processing Fuels Future Business Growth
“[NEXTSTEP] has absolutely changed the way we do business,” Garnes says. “Our document management technician goes about her job completely differently now. Now she can focus on our document management software and quality assessments. We don’t need human intervention for faxed documents until they show up after going through the OCR and getting into our system.”
Deploying a Concord solution has added value in other ways as well, Garnes adds, noting that being freed from document printing and processing allows staff to take on new and different opportunities as the company expands.
“We’re now able to look at taking on more contracts in the child-support world, as well as look at other new lines of business,” Garnes says. “Our partnership with Concord Technologies has been a boon for us. The software is reasonably priced and has added value far beyond what we had hoped. I have evaluated a ton of software over the years, and when you find a vendor that does what they say they will do, and does it really well, and then you get to work with people who are responsive, friendly, and knowledgeable, it makes me very happy.”
Company
Veritas HHS
Industry
Healthcare
Headquarters
Colorado
Website
www.veritas-hhs.com
The Problem
Veritas HHS receives a specific, two-page form by fax and was having to print, scan, and input data by hand because its existing platform was unable to separate pages, classify documents, and deliver specific data to workflows.
The Solution
- Concord’s NEXTSTEP solution created a classification model to identify a specific set of incoming documents, separate out cover pages, then extract and deliver specific data sets to the Veritas team. The document are then reassembled and delivered to a specific storage site for further use within the Veritas system, if needed.