Company: Raya Health
Location: California, United States
Industry: Healthcare/Doula Network Management
Challenge: Manual credentialing across multiple California health plans
Solution: Automated form filling with Instafill.ai
Forms automated: SFHP, GCHP, Blue Shield Promise, Central California Alliance, CenCal Health, HPSJ/MVHP credentialing applications
Time saved: From 45-90 minutes to under 2 minutes per application
At a Glance
- Credentialing complexity: Each health plan requires different forms with overlapping information, but unique layouts
- Documentation burden: DHCS compliance, testimonial letters, training certificates, CPR certifications, and multi-page attestation packets
- Financial impact: Reducing credentialing delays that prevent doulas from billing for services
- Automated forms: Multiple health plan credentialing application packets, including SFHP, GCHP, Blue Shield Promise, Central California Alliance, CenCal Health, and HPSJ/MVHP
About Raya Health
Raya Health is a doula-led healthcare company based in California. The organization matches pregnant individuals with certified doulas and coordinates insurance coverage for doula services. Doulas are non-medical providers who offer emotional, physical, and informational support before, during, and after birth. Raya Health contracts with multiple Medi-Cal health plans and maintains a network of over 150 doulas across the state. Each health plan operates independently with its own credentialing department, forms, requirements, and review timelines.
The Challenge
Raya Health connects California doulas with patients whose Medi-Cal insurance covers doula services. Since California started covering doulas through Medi-Cal in 2023, demand has exploded.
The bottleneck wasn’t finding qualified doulas – it was getting them credentialed to actually see patients.
Each health plan has its own credentialing application. San Francisco Health Plan uses a 24-page form. Gold Coast Health Plan has an 8-section update form. Central California Alliance requires a main application plus five separate addenda. Blue Shield Promise wants group attestations. And so on.
Every form asks for the same information – NPI, Tax ID, training certificates, CPR card, HIPAA completion, three testimonial letters – just formatted differently. The Raya team was spending 45-90 minutes per application, copying and pasting doula information into different PDF layouts.
Most forms came as flat, non-fillable PDFs. That meant either printing and handwriting everything or painstakingly adding text boxes in a PDF editor field by field.
Worse, mistakes delayed approvals by months. A typo in the NPI number? Rejected. Forgot to initial page 14? Rejected. Tax ID doesn’t match the W-9? Delayed.
While applications sat in review, doulas couldn’t bill for their services. That’s lost income for the doula and families going without care.
The Solution
Raya uploaded their health plan forms to AI form filler and converted them to fillable PDFs. The AI detected all the fields automatically – text boxes, checkboxes, radio buttons, even multiline text boxes.
For forms with tricky layouts (like CenCal Health’s office hours grid or HPSJ’s 16-question attestation section), they spent a few minutes fine-tuning the field mappings once. After that, the forms became reusable templates.
Then Raya created profiles in Instafill.ai for each doula. A profile stores all the information that appears on every application:
- Legal name, contact info, NPI, Tax ID
- Training certificates or experience documentation
- CPR and HIPAA completion dates
- Professional liability insurance details
- The three required testimonial letters
- Language skills and service areas
- Standard attestation answers
Now, when they need to credential a doula, the workflow looks like this:
- Select the doula’s profile
- Select which health plan forms to fill out
- Click “Fill out the form”
- Review the completed documents (takes about 30-60 seconds per form)
- Add any health plan-specific attachments
- Submit
The whole process for multiple applications takes minutes instead of hours.
The Results
With online form filler, Raya Health transformed their credentialing workflow from a time-consuming bottleneck into a streamlined operation:
Time savings: Each application now takes under 2 minutes to complete, down from 45-90 minutes of manual work.
Error reduction: Profile-based autofill eliminated common mistakes like NPI typos, inconsistent address formatting, and mismatched Tax IDs. Fewer rejected applications means fewer resubmissions and faster approvals.
Faster doula onboarding: Doulas start seeing patients and billing for services months earlier. This directly impacts their income and the families who need their care.
Network scalability: Raya maintains a network of over 150 doulas and can continue scaling without hiring additional administrative staff.
Consistent quality: Every application submitted uses the same verified information from the doula’s profile, reducing credentialing department follow-ups and clarification requests.
Before and After
| Before Instafill.ai | After Instafill.ai |
|---|---|
| 45-90 minutes to complete each application by hand | Under 2 minutes to autofill each application |
| Frequent errors requiring resubmission | Profile-based consistency eliminates most errors |
| Credentialing delays of 2-3 months | Faster approvals mean doulas start billing sooner |
| Limited capacity to onboard new doulas | Can scale the network without hiring more admin staff |
Forms They Automate
Here are the specific forms Raya has converted:
San Francisco Health Plan (SFHP) – California Participating Practitioner Application – 24 pages covering education, training, work history, attestations, and references
Gold Coast Health Plan (GCHP) – Provider Information Update Form – 4 pages with sections for professional info, service locations, billing addresses, and hospital affiliations
Blue Shield Promise – Doula Provider Quality Check Form – Group provider form with individual doula attestations
Central California Alliance – Doula Credentialing Application – Main application plus Addendum A (Practitioner Rights), Addendum B (Professional Liability), language verification, confidentiality declaration, debarment certification, and doula attestation
CenCal Health – Provider Information Form – 5 pages covering business details, multiple practice locations, staff languages, and rendering providers
HPSJ/MVHP – Ancillary Credentialing Form – Includes 16-question professional liability attestation
Why This Matters
California now requires all managed care network providers to complete DHCS PAVE enrollment plus separate credentialing with each health plan they work with. For a doula serving patients statewide, that means one DHCS application plus applications to every regional Medi-Cal plan.
Before automation, this was manageable on a small scale. As Raya Health’s network grows, manually processing hundreds of credentialing applications per year wasn’t sustainable.
The real impact isn’t just saved time – it’s that doulas can start seeing patients and billing for services months earlier. Research shows doulas reduce cesarean rates by 52.9%, postpartum depression by 57.5%, and low birthweight risk by 4x. But those benefits only happen when credentialed doulas can actually provide care.
Key Takeaways
- One profile, multiple forms: A single doula profile in Instafill.ai automatically fills credentialing applications across different California health plans without re-entering information.
- Flat PDFs aren’t blockers: Instafill.ai’s free PDF converter transforms non-fillable forms into reusable templates in minutes, removing the biggest obstacle to automation.
- Consistency reduces errors: Using profiles as a single source of truth eliminates typos, formatting inconsistencies, and mismatched data that cause application rejections.
- Speed enables growth: Reducing credentialing time from hours to minutes allows provider networks to scale without proportional increases in administrative overhead.
- The pattern is reusable: The same approach works for any healthcare organization managing multi-plan credentialing – physician groups, behavioral health networks, or ancillary provider organizations.
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