“The cost of being wrong is very high. If we submit something wrong, insurance can take two or three weeks to tell us to resubmit. Automating the first pass and spending two minutes to review is a big win.”
— Ali Pardesi, Co-Founder, Headstart Health
Results at a glance
- Time per form: ~2 minutes (from ~10 minutes)
- Speed improvement: 80% faster
- Accuracy: 99%+ after fine-tuning
- Payer scalability: 30+ → 100+ payers without adding staff
Executive Summary
Headstart Health processes insurance authorization forms daily for Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapy services. Manual completion previously took 10 minutes per form, and even small errors triggered 2-3 week resubmission delays disrupting care delivery and cash flow.
By implementing Instafill.ai to automate initial authorization (IA) and treatment authorization (TA) workflows, time per form dropped to around 2 minutes including review (approximately 80% faster). Form-filling accuracy exceeded 99%, reducing the risk of resubmission. This breakthrough unlocked rapid approvals, empowering the team to handle rising volumes without extra staff.
About Headstart Health
Operating across multiple states with over 30 contracted payers and plans to expand to more than 100, Headstart Health specializes in autism spectrum disorder services. Their workflow includes frequent submissions of payer-specific initial and treatment authorization forms, potentially managing over 200 unique forms daily. Success depends on timely insurance approvals, requiring daily completion of numerous payer-specific authorization PDFs.
Business Challenge
Two types of insurance authorization forms are processed multiple times daily:
- Initial Authorization (IA) Forms: Needed before starting therapy with new clients, requesting patient demographics, diagnosis, proposed treatment schedules, and provider credentials.
- Treatment Authorization (TA) Forms: More complex, pulling detailed data from 30-40 page treatment plans, including CPT codes, service units, weekly schedules, behavioral goals, intervention targets, parent training components, and treatment settings (home, clinic, telehealth).
With over 30 insurance payers – each with unique PDF formats – the team processed up to 100 forms monthly. Key challenges were:
- Unique PDFs per payer for IA and TA forms
- Data extraction from multiple sources: treatment plans, insurance cards, diagnostic reports, and provider rosters
- Manual processing time averaged 10 minutes per form
- High error costs caused 2-3 week resubmission delays
- Scalability limited, making expansion to 100+ payers impractical without additional staff
Implementation
Form Conversion
Authorization forms from multiple insurers mostly arrived as flat, non-fillable PDFs, creating manual entry bottlenecks. These forms were converted into fillable versions through a one-time process taking a few hours per form, which was essential for enabling automation.
Customization for Complex Tables
Treatment authorization forms contain complex tables requiring precise handling of data such as unit conversions (e.g., units to hours), billing CPT codes mapped to service descriptions, and behavioral goals tied to therapy schedules. Through iterative testing and refinement, the Instafill.ai team enhanced the AI’s table-processing capabilities, enabling more accurate, consistent, and efficient completion of these complex tables with fewer errors.
Static Field Management
Certain fields, such as company name, tax ID, NPI, and service addresses, remain constant across all authorization forms. By prepopulating these static fields with fixed data that is automatically inserted into every form without change, Headstart Health eliminated repetitive manual entry and significantly reduced errors. This approach improved workflows and accelerated the overall form processing time.
Solution
The partnership focused on automating five key forms:
- Outpatient Behavioral Health ABA Treatment Precertification Request
- Treatment Plan Request Form for Autism Spectrum Disorders
- IHCP Prior Authorization Request Form
- ABA Clinical Service Request Form
- IHCP MCE Practitioner Enrollment Form
Treatment authorization forms require extracting data simultaneously from 3 to 5 source documents – such as treatment plans, diagnostic evaluations, insurance cards, and provider rosters. Instafill.ai enables uploading all these documents together, allowing the AI to accurately extract and map necessary information to complete each form correctly.
Impact
Headstart Health shifted from manually re-entering information across payer PDFs to a streamlined fill-and-review workflow. Processing time dropped to around 2 minutes per form. Static fields no longer require manual attention, and table sections achieve high accuracy after core AI algorithm updates.
While the team still reviews forms before submission to ensure accuracy, the manual data entry workload decreased by 80%. The automated workflow allowed Headstart Health to manage its current volumes efficiently and prepare for expansion without needing additional administrative staff.
Time Savings
| Before Instafill.ai | After Instafill.ai |
|---|---|
| 10 minutes per form | Approximately 2 minutes per form |
| Multiple forms processed daily | Multiple forms processed daily |
| Hours per week spent on entry | Manual entry reduced by 80% |
| Coordinator focused on data entry | Coordinator freed to focus on insurance relationship management |