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VBA 2024 User Conference – Save the Date!

VBA has announced the dates for our 2024 Connect and  Engage User Conference. We hope you’ll join us in person at the exquisite Saint Kate Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on August 21-22, 2024. Watch your inbox for more details coming soon.

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Market and Regulatory Updates

From the Desk of Jessica Lockhart –
Vice President of Analytics and Engagement Solutions

Navigating the Current Economic Challenges: The Role of Revenue Cycle Management

As the healthcare industry faces unprecedented economic challenges, we are starting to see payers become even more laser-focused on evaluating and implementing efficient revenue cycle management (RCM) strategies. In this quarter’s newsletter, I’ll briefly highlight a few of the RCM processes being discussed and implemented to show you how VBA’s solutions can support these strategies.

In today’s economic climate, payers are recognizing the importance of effective administration of claims to ensure accurate reimbursement and minimize friction with providers. As AI and machine learning continue to be at the forefront of the conversation, we see payers exploring additional ways to automate manual workflows and leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to expedite claims processing, reduce errors and enhance provider satisfaction. Efficient claims administration not only improves the overall revenue cycle, but it also strengthens payer-provider relationships and member trust.

Using VBASoftware, clients can leverage these features for more efficient claims processing through:

  • Process Automation - Create automated responses to an event within VBASoftware. This can include auto-generation of emails, letters or reports or sending letters, reports, invoices and other information to a VBAGateway portal.
  • Serverless Computing (VBAdjudicate) - All VBA clients have been migrated to the VBAdjudicate claims processing engine, which expedites the loading of incoming EDI claims from providers and allows you to process tens of thousands of claims in minutes to support prompt payment initiatives.
  • Generative AI (VBAssist) - Coming in 2024, VBA will release our new VBAssist product, which will empower clients to administer their businesses more efficiently. It will include an integrated AI learning model that can provide claims administration recommendations and insights in real time.

Because plan design plays a critical role in attracting and retaining members and managing costs, we are also seeing a trend in implementing plan designs that strike a balance between affordability and comprehensive coverage (i.e. $0 copay and $0 deductible plans for preventive care). Employers understand the benefits of offering flexible benefit options to employees that incorporate preventive care measures and promote wellness initiatives, and payers can use these plan offerings to foster healthier populations and minimize long-term healthcare costs.

VBASoftware can support a variety of plan designs and claim types including medical, dental, vision, HRA/HSA benefits, flex plans, life policies and disability benefits. If you have a plan design and you are not sure how to implement it in VBASoftware, contact VBA and we can provide your team with guidance on the best approach to obtain your desired outcome.

Managed care is back! After years of creating plan designs that enabled members to manage their own care though PPO models, payers are now increasingly recognizing the significance of primary care and value-based care models in improving patient outcomes and controlling costs. By incentivizing primary care providers and fostering collaborative relationships, payers can steer members toward providers who can help them manage their chronic conditions and reduce the likelihood of costly hospitalizations.

Value-based care models are here to stay as they help align incentives with quality outcomes, ensuring that payers deliver effective and efficient care. VBAnalytics with value-based care reporting helps support value-based care initiatives by providing comprehensive insight into member utilization, the prevalence of common chronic conditions and expenditures related to these conditions, along with insight into the efficiency of the delivery of care in your networks.

If you are looking for greater insight into:

  • How efficiently providers in your network are delivering care to members
  • How you can leverage data analytics to identify high-risk and rising-risk members
  • Where you should target your interventions to promote healthier behaviors

Contact your dedicated VBA Account Executive for assistance with getting the most out of your VBAnalytics reports.

The last area we will highlight is accurate and timely financial reporting to assess performance. According to Gartner, healthcare payers will continue to invest in and leverage robust reporting and analytics tools in 2024 to gain insights into revenue, costs, profitability and identifying trends so they can make informed, strategic decisions. Payers need up-to-date information so they can adapt quickly to market dynamics and allocate resources effectively.
 
Clients are using VBAnalytics to form a more complete financial picture. Leveraging the utilization story along with the ad-hoc report workspace, clients have access to:

  • Claims trends
  • Premiums and administrative fees applied to claim spend
  • A comprehensive view of reinsurance contracts
  • Insight into distribution of payments to vendors/accounts payable
  • A simple view of a plan’s medical loss ratio

Final Thoughts

In the current economic environment, payers understand that they must prioritize revenue cycle management and focus on key areas such as plan design, primary care and value-based care models, efficient claims administration, population health management and financial reporting. By embracing these critical components and leveraging VBA’s suite of solutions, clients are able to navigate the changing landscape, foster financial stability, improve member outcomes and position themselves as leaders in the evolving healthcare industry.

As your technology partner, we want to make sure you get the most out of your VBA suite of solutions. If you need assistance or would like to set up a consultation with one of our experts, please reach out to your VBA Account Executive.

VBA’s Q4 2023 Regulatory Roundtable - Recording Now Available

VBA’s Q4 Regulatory Roundtable with John Barlament was held on Thursday, November 16, 2023. This session focused on the Mental Health Parity Act and proposed changes to the regulations. In case you missed it, you can view the recording here.

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Product Experience Update

From the desk of Kelly Wiza – Senior Vice President, Product Experience

We are excited to announce the creation of a Product Experience team at VBA. In this article, we will provide some insight into this new function and share some of our plans for the coming year. We look forward to working closely with you to provide solutions and services that meet your needs.

Product experience is the process of informing and directing activities within the product lifecycle, from idea generation to planning, developing and launching a product. It also includes planning for ongoing enhancements to the product and overseeing the product roadmap.

The Product Experience team includes designated product owners who manage the overall roadmap for each of VBA’s solutions. We also have a team of business analysts who support the process and a technical writer to assist with product documentation. All these individuals work closely with our technical teams to ensure a smooth process from concept through execution.

VBASoftware can support a variety of plan designs and claim types including medical, dental, vision, HRA/HSA benefits, flex plans, life policies and disability benefits. If you have a plan design and you are not sure how to implement it in VBASoftware, contact VBA and we can provide your team with guidance on the best approach to obtain your desired outcome.

Product Experience acts as the glue that holds the shared product vision across our internal VBA teams, including customer experience, sales and marketing, account management and software development. By centralizing responsibility for product management in one team, we can provide a more unified approach and a more seamless experience for our clients and the VBA team.

VBA recently sent out a client email that explains our approach to the 2024 release schedule. You can view the full release schedule here. We are adjusting our product development approach to prioritize continuous innovation and the creation of new features that provide value to a wide range of users, rather than focusing solely on specific client enhancement requests. Your feedback and ideas will continue to be instrumental in advancing our products, and we look forward to working together to deliver the best solutions for your needs.

We are preparing for a major update to VBASoftware that will have an impact on how we approach VBASoftware enhancements. The new VBASoftware User Interface (UI) will be rolled out to clients beginning in 2024. In anticipation of this, we will no longer be adding new software enhancement features to the existing version of VBASoftware as of the March 1, 2024 release. We will continue to address bug fixes and report corrections until all clients have successfully migrated to the new version of VBASoftware.

In preparation for this rollout, we will be offering clients the opportunity to join our early adopter group! This group of clients will be given the ability to use the new and improved UI for VBASoftware in parallel to their current version. Please reach out to your Account Executive for additional details.

We look forward to providing valuable enhancements to our solutions that will drive continued success for VBA and our clients in 2024 and beyond. If you have any questions about the new product experience function or the 2024 release schedule, please reach out to your VBA Account Executive.

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Operations Updates

From the desk of Rachel Lanser – Chief Client Officer

I can’t believe the year is almost over. Where does the time go? As I reflect on the past year, I am so proud of what we have accomplished together. It is truly a joy to work so closely with all of our VBA clients and watch how you are using our technology to enhance and grow your business. We look forward to continuing to support you in the future.

In case you have not heard, we recently confirmed the dates and location for the 2024 VBA User Conference. It will be held on August 21-22, 2024 at the exquisite Saint Kate Hotel in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We had such an amazing experience at this year’s event, and we hope even more of you will be able to join us at the 2024 event.

With the success of the in-person learning labs at the User Conference, we have started hosting virtual learning labs for our clients. You can view the learning lab recordings on the VBASoftware Product page on the Client Resource Center in the Training Videos section here. Keep an eye on your inbox for more learning labs coming soon.

We are also excited to announce that we have created training videos for VBAGateway. The videos cover functionality for the member portal, provider portal, employer portal and administrator portal, as well as the data transfer between VBASoftware and VBAGateway. The videos are now available on the Client Resource Center under the VBAGateway Product page. Click here to access the videos.

We are planning more videos for 2024 and the new videos will focus on VBASoftware. We hope these are helpful to your teams.

I wish you all a happy holiday season and all the best in the new year!

Meet the Team

Kelly Wiza

Senior Vice President of Product Experience

Professional History:

Kelly joined VBA in October of 2023 as the Senior Vice President of Product Experience. In this role, she is responsible for overseeing the strategy, planning and development of VBA’s solutions from the initial concept through launch and beyond. She works closely with the development, operations, sales and marketing teams to ensure a cohesive product strategy.

She brings over 20 years of experience across a variety of operational functions in organizations that support the healthcare and insurance industries, including provider network management, software product management, implementation and design.

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Release Notes

Make sure to share our release notes with your team members to ensure all VBA users are up to date.

As a reminder, VBA schedules multiple releases a year to ensure our clients have the latest software without the wait. You can access the release schedule here on the Client Resource Center.

Below are the scheduled release dates for 2024:

  • January 19

  • March 1

  • April 12

  • May 31

  • July 19

  • August 23

  • October 4

  • November 8

  • December 20

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Upcoming Conferences and Events

We will be participating in the following events:

FEBRUARY 19-21

HCAA Executive Forum

Las Vegas, NV

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Webinars

VBA Application Release Reviews

We did not host a VBA Application Release Review for November or December.

VBA Webinars

VBA’s Q4 Regulatory Roundtable with John Barlament was held on Thursday, November 16, 2023. This session focused on the Mental Health Parity Act and proposed changes to the regulations. If you were unable to attend, the recorded session can be found here.

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Client Resource Center Updates

Check out the latest materials that were posted
to our Client Resource Center:

VBA Learning Lab – Benefit Services (Video)

Enrollment Decision Support – Savvi Financial

VBA Learning Lab – Plan Renewals (Video)

Population Health Management Use Case

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Holiday Schedule

The VBA offices will be closed on the following days in observance of the following holidays:

Friday, December 22 - Christmas Eve

Monday, December 25 - Christmas day

Monday, January 1 - New Year's day

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Tell us what you think!

Your opinion is important to us so we can continue to enhance our products and improve your experience.

Ready to share?

Send your feedback to [email protected].

Thanks for reading this edition of the VBA Newsletter.
Stay tuned for next quarter’s newsletter.