ClinicNote wants to scratch out therapy paperwork

Speech-language pathologists dedicate their careers to improving their patients’ communication skills, but about 20 percent of their time is actually spent communicating with someone else: insurance companies. When Tyler Fox, Justin Coaldrake and Morgan Hampel were graduating from Iowa State University, they were intrigued by an SLP friend complaining about the time she spent dealing with…

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Speech-language pathologists dedicate their careers to improving their patients’ communication skills, but about 20 percent of their time is actually spent communicating with someone else: insurance companies.

When Tyler Fox, Justin Coaldrake and Morgan Hampel were graduating from Iowa State University, they were intrigued by an SLP friend complaining about the time she spent dealing with paperwork for insurance companies.

The trio started contacting other pathologists, asking them for a run-through of a typical day. In 2015 they launched ClinicNote, with the purpose of cutting down the time SLPs spend dealing with insurance companies.

How ClinicNote works

Therapy differs from many other medical treatments in that it normally involves multiple treatments over an extended period of time. Insurance companies normally won’t approve indefinite treatments, instead they’ll approve a set number, at the end of which, the therapist has to write up an analysis of how treatment is progressing and seek approval for a further series of treatments.

“Therapists are spending two to five hours every week, basically mapping out info from their notes for these reports,” said ClinicNote president Fox. “What we do is facilitate the automation of this progress report. We’ve found that it saves 60 to 80 percent of the time these reports used to take.”

Therapists use ClinicNote to record their evaluation of a patient, then the software automatically pulls out relevant SOAP (Subjective, Objective, Assessment and Plan) information for reports to insurance companies. ClinicNote makes it easy for SLPs to submit a claim form and get reimbursed.

ClinicNote facilitates HIPAA-compliant document storage that allows therapists to create charts and check metrics. It can also be used to send reminders and call patients to confirm appointments. Fox said ClinicNote users have seen no-show rates drop as a result.

Becoming a one-stop shop

Fox said that initially ClinicNote was going to be more focused on note-taking, but as therapists started to use the software, they realized they needed to offer more services.

“We quickly realized that therapists didn’t want to pay for this software, along with another for billing,” Fox said. “From there we expanded into full service electronic medical records. We needed to streamline the entire process, but it was only after we had people up and running on the service that we really discovered the problem and how to solve it.”

An expanding user base

ClinicNote was one of the first startups to go through the Des Moines-based Global Insurance Accelerator, which is designed to foster innovation in the insurance industry. In 2015 the company raised $75,000 in seed money from Iowa-based angel investing group Plains Angels and the Iowa Economic Development Authority.

The company currently has 12 clinics using its software, and Fox said the company is on pace to expand to 24 by October.

ClinicNote recently added its first nonprofit clinic, which Fox sees as opening up new possibilities for the company.

“It’s a new market sector that we didn’t foresee,” Fox said. “It might be opening new partners [and] markets for us.”

Moving beyond speech-language pathology

Fox hopes that ClinicNote can be used to streamline the entire insurance documentation process. On the insurance company side, claims are being manually reviewed. Fox said that the tech has gotten to the point that submitted forms could be approved automatically as long as submitted reports show therapy sessions have hit certain benchmarks.

And while ClinicNote is currently being used by speech-language pathologists, down the line Fox sees the software as being able to assist with the work of other medical practitioners.

“Most therapy disciplines have similar issues,” Fox said. “We want to make sure we have a really solid project before looking at expanding, but it’s definitely in the long term plans.”

Joe Lawler is a freelance reporter based in Des Moines.

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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