At WellSpan Health in Pennsylvania, efforts to consolidate its insurance verification have yielded new data on physician-order and insurer-denial patterns, Amy Repman, director of access for the two-hospital system, told a crowd gathered Tuesday morning for the Healthcare Financial Management Association's yearly meeting.

Repman said the trends that emerge from WellSpan's centralized efforts can potentially be used to change physician-order behavior or to address insurance denials in contract talks with health plans. She spoke at an early morning session at the HFMA's Annual National Institute, which drew roughly 5,000 healthcare finance professionals from across the U.S. for a four-day conference in Las Vegas.

The York, Pa.-based system, which handles roughly 36,000 hospital visits and 1.1 million outpatient visits annually, handles scheduling, insurance verification and upfront collection from patients under a central center, Repman said. That consolidation led to job cuts and positions were relocated from across the system's 65 locations, she said.

The effort has evolved to include a hotline for consumers, launched last week, who have questions about insurance authorization, benefits and out-of-pocket costs, she said.

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