Still driving your own car? Get with the program. There are now cars that drive themselves! Well, maybe not quite yet, but we're getting eerily close. How about your athletic insurance claims process? Still driving that by filling out and submitting claim forms manually? Yikes. There is a much better way now!
Claim filing automation can save you valuable time and help you get out from behind your desk and back to those injured athletes. Assuming that you're utilizing some type of injury-tracking software, the process is very simple. With the injured athletes' general information in your system, you're already logging notes about the accident/injury. So why duplicate that work on an insurance claim form? A handful of the leading injury-tracking systems have the capacity to automatically submit that information to your athletic insurance claims payer. And thus eliminate the need for a separate claim form. There are a few variations of how this works, with some systems only using that data to prefill the claim form and leaving it up to you to email the Third-Party Administrator (TPA). Either way, the need for you to spend valuable time completing claim forms should be virtually eliminated. Of course this all hinges on the capabilities of your TPA. If they aren't able to receive claim information directly from your injury-tracking software, you're back to manually driving the claims process and tediously filling out forms.
In addition to filing a claim, Claims Payers and/or TPAs may (or may not) be doing more work behind the scenes. The norm is for you, as the liaison between the athlete and the insurance company, to be responsible for gathering primary insurance documents and submitting them with the claim form. There are, however, a few TPAs in the business today (the ones we partner with) that take a different approach. They put in the extra effort to track down all those primary insurance EOB's and itemized bills directly from the medical providers. This not only expedites payment, it takes work off your desk! Can you imagine how great that would be? Unfortunately, these are elements of athletic accident insurance not often understood by purchasing departments and staff. It is important that you get involved to help them understand the impact and VALUE this would afford you and your team.