Beyond Software: Valley Medical & Wellness

Normally, our Beyond Software blog series centers around MentorMate clients experiencing Bulgaria while doing their part to make the world a little bit better. Given the current state of things and lack of travel happening at the moment, we thought we’d do something a little different this time around.

Today, we’re showcasing a client who quickly sprang into action to help with COVID-19 testing efforts in their community — Valley Medical and Wellness.

With several locations across the Twin Cities, Valley Medical and Wellness specializes in chronic pain and addiction care. As part of that work, they already have a high-complexity toxicology lab.

“Since we already had an in-house lab, it was easier for us to expand and meet the incredible demand for COVID-19 testing,” says Valley Medical Clinic Manager Jerald Mackey. “So when the pandemic first started, we began looking at what upgrades we needed to make and got them done in just four weeks.”

As the lab was getting upgraded to be able to start testing, Valley Medical had to figure out how to test patients as safely, quickly, and efficiently as possible. Drive-up testing is by far the safest method as it offers minimal contact in a very ventilated area. However, the registration process drastically reduces speed and efficiency.

That’s where Valley Medical enrolled MentorMate’s help.

“We were looking for a partner that could build us some software to speed up our registration and insurance validating process,” says Mackey. “Preregistering patients allows us to conduct tests with minimal exposure, keeping everyone safe and the line moving quickly.”

The other roadblock to keeping that line moving quickly is the process of validating insurance. While it’s been stated that COVID-19 tests are covered under health insurance, no two insurance policies are the same. Coverage variations combined with people who are without insurance entirely makes for a complicated validation process.

“We’re a small local company,” says Mackey. “MentorMate was very helpful in saving us time as we expanded our company to accommodate larger testing volumes. We needed a tool that allows us to have reliable insurance information so that it can be quickly validated. That’s exactly what MentorMate built for us.”

Patient information is still individually validated but it’s done outside of testing hours rather than in the moment with a line of cars waiting. By freeing up techs to focus on testing rather than data verification, Valley Medical prioritizes making testing available for all and is able to test hundreds of patients each day.

This is a dramatic increase from their previous capacity.

“We could’ve easily just settled for only testing 20 people a day and not changing our current model,” says Mackey. “But that doesn’t do very much to help meet the huge testing demand or help our community and society as a whole. MentorMate was able to help us expand to new heights.”

Looking ahead to the next phase of Valley Medical registration software, Mackey and his team are integrating a third-party insurance validator to automate the validation process and free up even more of the clinic staff’s time to focus on testing.

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