iTech Workshop is a secure medical billing and practice management software provider. iTech’s current product portfolio includes, expEDIum Medical Billing (eMB) and expEDIum Claims processing (eCP) software solutions. Below is our interview with Siva Narayanaswamy, CEO and Founder of iTech Workshop:
Q: How would you describe iTech Workshop?
A: iTech is a Bangalore, India based Secure Medical Billing and Practice Management Software and Claims Processing Software provider. Our solutions are Cloud-based and available at monthly subscription. Having been in the industry for several years iTech has gained a lot of experience and a good insight into the USA IT Healthcare industry, well-aware of the moving demands, iTech has kept improving on its standard product portfolio to cater the needs and serve the USA healthcare industry.
iTech’s current product portfolio includes, expEDIum Medical Billing (eMB) and expEDIum Claims processing (eCP) software, both of which are standards based and HIPAA compliant. We have been selling these products for over 5 years and within this period of time have successfully added over 1000 providers who process a few million HIPAA transactions each year through our software. iTech has thrived upon a dedicated team of developers and support personnel who diligently work on iTech’s products to give the end-users a state-of-the-art, standards based experience as iTech believes that customer satisfaction is directly proportional to success for any business in the long run.
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Q: Tell us something more about your core competence?
A: I would say that, our core competence is to provide a robust, standards based solution, with a good technology shelf life used by healthcare practices to streamline their billing and revenue cycle management and get paid more and quicker.
Our products are built on top of our proprietary expEDIum X12N engine which has the capabilities of processing all the 11 HIPAA EDI transactions code sets. So, our main focus has been automating all HIPAA X12N EDI transactions that is the standards based b2b bridge between Practitioners and Payers via a medical clearinghouse. In addition to this, we are closely working with our technology partners such as EHR/EMR companies to provide a complete and seamlessly integrated EMR+PMS solution to streamline the practices, starting from Patient registration, clinical data, claims payment to payment reconciliation and reports in the software.
Q: What is “HIPAA Valley”?
A: HIPAA Valley is a brief overview of the various stake holders/entities that come under the HIPAA space in the USA Healthcare Industry. This overview shows the various participants and how our suite of products fit in that picture. There are 3 Major Entities – on the left side of the valley, Providers such as Hospitals, Clinics, Ambulance Agencies and other Healthcare service Providers, on the right side of the valley are Payers/Insurance Companies, TPAs, MCOs and the middle entities or intermediaries or aggregators such as Billing Service Bureaus/BPOs, Medical Clearinghouses, Independent Physicians Association (IPAs) and other Provider based organizations. The main role of the middle entities are in connectivity or any value added services which help build a seamless bridge between Providers and Payers.
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Q: Can you give us more insights into your expEDIum Solutions?
A: We have a long history of providing cost effective solutions and services based on state of the art technologies to our end clients. We have two flagship software products currently which target different set of entities from the HIPAA valley. Prior to this two flagship solution we had handful of client server based solution such as HCFA-1500 ad UB-04 claims processing and printing solution, several transformation adapters and our high performing expEDIum Engine which has the capabilities of processing all HIPAA X12N EDI transactions codes and our solutions are build using this engine. We had a handful of earlier clients using these legacy products and have processed millions of HIPAA transactions through these products. Some of these products have been deprecated since.
The expEDIum Medical Billing (eMB) Software is a comprehensive and secure Web based Medical Billing, RCM and Practice Management Software. This solution was designed to simplify the medical billing and claims processing workflow and to eliminate claim errors before submitting to a Clearinghouse or Payers/MCOs. Additionally, it has the capability to connect and integrate with other technologies that are used by a practice and hence it streamlines and centralizes various practices, their activities and saves cost & time and increases the practice efficiency. Billing Service Bureaus, Hospitals, IPAs, MSOs, ACO, Ambulance Agencies and Healthcare Practices are the main users of this software. Again, eMB is a robust, extensive and comprehensive application with a large backend database, with expEDIum X12N Engine powering all the HIPAA transactions internally and was built & evolved over the last 5 years. We are continuously working to enhance the product and to keep up with the healthcare industry changes and new standards.
Having said that, the features include 30+ Dashboards for quick data analytics, support for unlimited users accounts which can be assigned specific privileges, centralized Patient Database, Patient Import and Export, Patient Ledger, Patient Statements & Printing, Seamlessly integrated Insurance Eligibility Verification, Appointment Scheduling, Batch claims import from various files types such as CSV, 837P,XML & NSF formats, Claims Scrubbing and Validation, automated electronic claims submissions to payers or clearinghouses, Direct Payers Connectivity, Denials and rejections management features, Payers and Clearinghouse reports processing, Automated Payment postings from ANSI ERAs, Manual posting, Fee Schedule and several reports.
The expEDIum Claims Portal (eCP) Solution is a Web based secure integrated claims processing and referral submission & authorization management software, which is optimal and cost effective solution for Third Party Administrators (TPAs)/Administrative Service Organization (ASOs) to open a direct connectivity between network of providers and streamline various HIPAA transactions. The solution is completely a standard based application and has capabilities of processing thousands of claims each day and manages complete claims life cycle effectively & can have thousands of user / clinic accounts. This solution allows direct claim submission, performs authorization/referral requests directly by Practices from their respective accounts and see various status of such transactions anytime. At the TPA side of the software, TPA users can review various transactions coming into the software from the various practice accounts and move to next stage.
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As TPAs have unique requirements, this product has the right set of features that address these unique requirements cost effectively and also resolve compliancy requirements. Note we do specific customizations such as the referral requests and authorizations to fit the context whether it is OB/GYN TPA or Behavioural Triages or Vision or any other specialties.
Q: What can we expect from iTech Workshop in next six months?
A: We are a growing company having grown an average of 60% per year in the last 3 years and expecting similar growths in the next few years. Several major features are lined up on our product roadmap and shall be implementing many of them in software in the next couple of quarters. Some of the major features are supporting Electronic Prior Authorizations (278 and 278R), Claims status enquiry & response (276 & 277), National Correct Coding Initiatives (NCCI), Support for integrated HL7 support (currently we have an arm’s length support for HL7) among other features. Again, iTech is always with “Client First” attitude and our clients requirements come first. So we do add several client specific features on demand.
Additionally, we would like to highlight us expanding our portfolio by adding Medical Billing Services. We do see a good value in providing a complete Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) by providing a robust standards based solution and value added services to Healthcare Practices.
Q: What’s the best thing about iTech that people might not know about?
A: The expEDIum Medical Billing solution supports RESTful web services based APIs for seamless EMR integration. We have several APIs that allow “tight” integration of any EMR with our PMS/Medical Billing Solution.
We are the market leader in the Public Health Clinic space in the state of North Carolina along with our EMR Partner who provides a seamless EMR + PMS/Medical Billing solution to this market segment.
Our expEDIum Solutions are among the best in the RCM market that are secure & cloud based. Additionally, we have a good customer support team that plugs away any gaps in the product in a timely manner as perfect code is never something one can count on and it is the responsiveness of the vendor that determines the quality and robustness of the overall product. We have been flexible to our clients & partners and have repeatedly gone the extra mile to deliver a specific service request or a requirement. Please refer to our client testimonials at http://www.itechws.com/testimonials.html
We have had over 40 successful product upgrades/releases/patches in the last 3+ years including support for v5010, ICD-10, CMS-1500 Feb/2012 form and Inpatient billing (UB04) among other features & bug fixes, with the record of not having to backtrack any of the upgrades. We constantly strive to improve our development methodologies and tools to deliver on schedule with enhanced quality, at reduced cost. Our product development quality metrics have been better than some international standards we have seen, for instance, we found 2.6 defects per 1000 lines of code (LOC) during our in-house testing in our current project(s) containing 100s of thousands lines of code (Java and JSP code).
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