2020: The year of automation?

ATLANTA - HME providers will dig deeper into automating their businesses in 2020, predicts Brightree's Rob Boeye.

To that end, Brightree has dedicated additional resources in the new year to helping providers automate their businesses by optimizing their software solutions, he says.

“Providers are pretty good from a billing solution standpoint,” said Boeye, executive vice president of HME. “The need for continued automation is in intake, inventory management and patient engagement. This is the next frontier.”
Boeye expanded on HME providers automating these areas of their business:

The Holy Grail

Addressing one of the industry's biggest pain points, Boeye predicts providers will begin leveraging their software solutions to completely overhaul their referral intake processes in the new year.

“Our goal in 2020 is to minimize the back and forth between the referral source and the provider, or allowing it to all happen electronically,” he said. “As we know, it's a heavily paper-centric process right now. Reducing that is going to be a big win for our customers.”

Sticky relationships

Boeye predicts HME providers will be quicker to leverage patient engagement apps in 2020. Brightree launched Patient Hub, a mobile app that automates and simplifies how providers connect with patients, in late 2018; it had about 250 provider users in late 2019.

“Patient engagement apps in our industry are fairly new, but more and more providers are figuring out ways to use them,” he said. “When they do, it takes that headache away from the referral source, because the patient is engaging directly with the provider, instead of calling the referral source. And it's not just our app—we'll integrate with whatever turns out to be the best solution for the industry. We want what makes the provider stronger and helps them develop stickier relationships with their patients.”

The P word

Boeye predicts providers will benefit from increased functionality in their software solutions in 2020, thanks in part to increasing strategic partnerships. He says more companies are now approaching Brightree seeking integrations than in the past six years he's been there.

“We want to integrate with the best partners to give our customers the best solutions,” he said. “We're seeing people weekly, coming to us with great automation and technology tools, and we plan to continue to leverage that.”