The healthcare industry in America is in a state of flux like never done before. Thirteen million Americans have recently been added under affordable healthcare. But thanks to politics this is changing market dynamics, new regulations, and laws, healthcare is in transformation.
Outsourcing too has matured from being all about mere back office processes handled by cubicle workers to operational services that are complex and multi-level. Today, outsourcing combines with healthcare in wholly new ways.
One company that has been ahead of the curve and has outpaced changing market scenarios, by integrating healthcare analytics, Clinical documentation improvement (CDI), Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and Revenue Cycle Management with services offerings for organizations is Vee Technologies. This global strategic services firm started up in the year 2000 in India’s tech capital, Bangalore, and in New York City.
To start with, Vee Technologies provided healthcare business process management services to American companies. Just a year later, the company had two of the top five medical insurance companies in the U.S. on its client list. In the next few years, Vee Technologies rapidly added Revenue Cycle provider services and engineering, services to its portfolio.
Initially employing 300 people, the company grew to include 3,500 employees in the first few years. Achieving a growth of nearly 10-fold growth over that period led Vee Technologies’ inclusion in the Inc. 500 companies listing in 2015. A position it has maintained for three years in a row as INC5000.
The company’s founder Chocko Valliappa, a fourth-generation entrepreneur from the Sona Valliappa Group established in the 1920s rapidly grew medical billing and insurance payer services for the US healthcare industry.
Chock’s enthusiasm for entrepreneurship came from his great-grandfather, whose textile company grew to become one of the largest firms in the sector globally.
At first his interest in the burgeoning IT industry led Chocko to become co-founder of an IT incubation company called VSTP which started in 1995 and brought companies like VeriFone, Cisco, and Oracle to India. The success of this venture inspired him to launch his business process management firm, Vee Technologies.
Chocko, who studied textiles engineering, polymer and chemical sciences, is a keen researcher in the field of technology. Chocko, as he is popularly known, finds the time to lead varied ongoing R&D projects in computer science and healthcare technologies. He plays an active role in the family educational trust that manages a South India based Sona University with 10,000 students on its rolls, and 200,000 alumni.
His special project is SonaYukti, a non-profit venture that aims to empower the youth with vocation-based training. Chocko is aiming to grow employment opportunities in India based on an understanding with the government of Tamil Nadu, a major state in South India. As part of this plan, he aspires to generate 100,000 jobs in the next five years in a variety of industry verticals that the Sona group has presence in.
Chocko is a member of the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) Global One Chapter. He serves on the executive committee of YPO’s Healthcare Network. Chocko is also one of the founders of the Entrepreneurs Organization’s Bangalore Chapter, and has headed the Asia region for Entrepreneurs Organization.
Vee Technologies is one of the first Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)-certified and compliant companies at the global level. Also, the company is compliant with SOC2/Type II audits. It is also an ISO certified company for quality and security.
The company also provides healthcare analytics for audits, such as DRG validation, revenue cycle analytics, and pre- and post- bill revisions. This has resulted in the greater streamlining of revenues for both payers and providers, leading to better revenue collection in shorter cycles. “We help our clients to render niche processes like RAC audits, RAF automation, concurrent and retro review, etc., which helps our clients increase the level of patient care. Vee Analytics builds information management capabilities that result in insights about patient populations, clinical outcomes, financial measures and risk stratifications,” says Chocko.
The company has plans to move forward in analytics solutions working on predicting revenue and improving clinical decision making capabilities using its AI, Machine Learning and proprietary tools. Vee Technologies attributes its success to the flexibility and adaptability that they bring into their operations.
Benefits to clients
Clients are benefitting from Vee Technologies’ expertise through streamlined processes, improved collections, reducing losses, and substantial savings. For example, in the healthcare industry, the company processed a million charts for DRG validation per year which saved their clients $500 million for clients. The company helped clients clear $7 million worth of credit balance in two quarters alone, and their insurance solutions helped clients to increase 60% to 75% in auto adjudication.
Vee Technologies’ insurance solutions helped one of the largest PPO networks reduce effort by 40% in data management. Also, Vee helped a rural hospital recover $15 million that the hospital didn’t know could be recovered.
Service promise
The promise of Vee Technologies is to develop extraordinary outcomes. Vee Technologies focuses so intensively on quality that it has integrated quality levels in contracts with customers as Service Level Agreements. “We focus on adding value exceeding our customer’s expectations. Vee believes that the customer is key and prides itself on offering maximum value for clients,” said Chockalingam.
Vee Technologies has been rated as No. 1 in customer satisfaction in the recent International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IOAP) list. The company has achieved this by offering the benefits of being local while delivering global solutions.
“We are close to the customer and understand their needs innately. We are continuing to expand on this by setting up onshore centers,” says Chocko.
The future is exciting says Chocko
“To meet our expanding business needs a new onshore delivery center is being set up in the North East. This facility will have all the advanced technologies along with State side staff to service our customers better. This will place us close to our customers and help them quicker,”
