25days
Median appointment-to-payment time90%reduction
In debt aged more than 90 days40hours saved
Every week across finance and administrationCompany overview
Freedom Clinics is multi-disciplinary private clinic offering affordable back and joint care, and health care. They specialise in osteopathy, chiropractic, sports massage, physiotherapy, podiatry & chiropody, acupuncture and sports medicine.
What was going wrong
The clinic was using a billing company whose errors resulted in unpaid invoices, bad debt, overdue insurance invoices and unpaid patient excesses which had a negative effect on cash flow.
- Sector
- Private GP, MSK, Fitness & Wellness
- Team
- 30+ Clinicians
- Annual Insured appointments
- 10,000+
- Sites
- Single-site Multidisciplinary Clinic
- Go-live to First Claim Submission
- <12 hours
- Practice-Management System
- Jelly
- Insurers
- BUPA & AXA
"Effra has been simply wonderful. It has helped our cash flow, reduced bad debt, admin & my team find it very easy to use."
A successful clinic that had outsourced billing which then backfired
The clinic was growing but it had outsourced their billing, like many clinics do, to a large billing company which over-promised and under-delivered.
The billing company was making numerous errors, which resulted in unpaid invoices, bad debt, overdue insurance invoices and unpaid patient excesses. This consequently had a negative effect on the clinic's cash flow.
Poor reporting from the billing company also meant the clinic had poor visibility, so they often didn't know how much they were due to get paid by insurers.
Automation without replacing the systems the clinic already trusted
- No replacement of the practice-management system
- No new portal for clinicians to maintain
- End-to-end visibility of every invoice
- Automated remittance allocation
- Automated patient shortfall and excess collection
- Reconciliation through to cleared funds
- Human support during implementation and for exceptions
- Works across major UK health insurers
Live in two weeks, without interrupting the clinic
- Phase 1ConnectEffra was connected to the clinic’s existing practice-management and billing workflow.
- Phase 2ValidateThe teams reviewed insurer details, invoice rules, historic balances and exception scenarios.
- Phase 3AutomateClaims, remittances, patient excesses and reconciliation moved into one monitored workflow.
How Effra changed the workflow
Effra submits the invoice while the appointment is still fresh, follows its progress, processes the remittance and checks that payment reaches the clinic’s bank account. Staff only need to intervene when Effra identifies an exception.
- 01Appointment completedPMS
- 02Invoice submitted automaticallySubmitted · same day
- 03Insurer response monitoredAccepted
- 04Remittance allocatedMatched to invoice
- 05Patient excess collectedCard on file
- 06Payment reconciled to bankCleared funds
The impact
What the numbers show
5225days
Median appointment-to-payment time fell by 27 days. Invoices were submitted immediately instead of waiting for the next manual billing run, and payment issues became visible much earlier.
90%reduction
Debt aged over 90 days fell from £40,000 to £4,000 after 6 months. This is down to Effra automatically resubmitting dropped claims, saving patient's card details on file and reconciling what's been paid to their bank account vs what hasn't.
40hours saved every week
Time spent submitting claims, processing remittances, chasing patient excesses and reconciling payments was reduced by the equivalent of one FTE working week.
Alsosignificantly improved cashflow
Fewer missed, delayed and incorrectly submitted invoices increased the payment collected for work the clinic had already completed.
Accurate billing and granular visibility of finances
"Effra has been a game changer and will be a market disrupter. They’ve made great efforts to correct & improve any rejected insurance billing issues & we can track and see absolutely everything £ for £!"
Jason PatelOwnerWhat the clinic plans next
The time saved for the team will allow them to focus on better serving patients. The reduced admin of insurer billing and predictable cashflow will help the clinic with plans for growth. They plan to add more types of higher value services.