Switch RCM set to triple its client base with Astrato’s Self Service Customer Facing Insights

How Switch RCM Leveraged Astrato’s Embedded guided analytics to move away from unreliable and slow reporting which was significantly impacting customer experience.

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Switch RCM, established in 2017 by healthcare veterans, is a leading platform specializing in healthcare revenue cycle management. Focused on resolving repetitive billing and payment errors, Switch RCM is dedicated to reducing provider costs and improving revenue outcomes. Analytics forms a core component of their offering, enabling customers to enhance operational workflows, optimize revenue cycles, and discover new revenue opportunities.

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Challenges with previous solution

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Initially, Switch RCM utilized Qlik to deliver reporting solutions, however, this setup soon proved inadequate as customer needs and their expectations changed for more modern analytics solutions.

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Melissa Pluke, Chief Analytics Officer at Switch RCM explained:

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‍“Having worked in the Healthcare industry for a long time, the Switch RCM team has significant experience of understanding the needs of their customers.  We originally built Switch RCM to address a significant weakness in reporting using the industry standard ERM system.  However, we have seen trends change, with customers no longer wanting to rely on basic monthly reporting and demand growing for more advanced analytics and ad-hoc custom insights. With basic reporting, customers were not easily able to spot, or understand issues that were impacting their business, or able to drill down into the underlying data.”

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The previous solution was also already creaking from the growth in customers and their data.  Customers were unable to access reports until late in the morning due to the increasing length of the multiple hour batch load process and were frustrated by dashboards taking too long to load. This problem was exacerbated by COVID, when customers needed out of normal working hours reporting.  

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‍“We have always strived to be close to our customers, understand their needs and meet them wherever possible.  We had to change if we were to continue growing our business.“  explained Pluke.  

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Upgrading servers presented a dilemma—costs were prohibitive, and there was significant concern about the impact on customer.  Past upgrades had led to lengthy downtimes, customer dissatisfaction, and the diversion of resources, making this approach untenable.  

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‍“Upgrading or scaling the servers had been a challenge in the past, leading to us being inundated with customer support tickets and complaint emails.  We also had to divert significant resources to try and fix issues as quickly as possible, which could take an entire day trying to resolve. The legacy provider's customer support was also painfully slow.  We were so terrified of them breaking again so we avoided doing it, which we knew wasn't a viable long term solution” commented Pluke.

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The transition to Astrato’s Embedded Self Service Analytics delivers empowerment and productivity

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Recognizing the need for a more scalable, reliable and cost efficient solution, Switch RCM transitioned to Astrato, leveraging its native integration with Snowflake.  The no-code, self-service capabilities have empowered clients to independently build custom analytics, breaking free from the constraints of traditional reporting. This newfound flexibility allows users to quickly obtain insights and drive better outcomes for their businesses.  

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“Astrato really is true self service for non-technical users.  Combined with the transparent access to data, every one of our products has a custom report aspect that allows users to choose from hundreds of dimensions & measures to build the analytics and insights they need on the fly without needing SQL skills. The high quality visualizations make it easier to spot issues, for example in the revenue cycle process, and quickly find the underlying cause.”

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Also, Astrato is an embedded and highly tailored analytics solution, unlike other legacy providers.  Pluke explained

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‍“It’s just completely customizable, too. So when you access the customer-facing analytics it doesn't look like a separate product anymore, it just looks like it's our product.”

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Astrato’s modern design delivers performance and customer satisfaction

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Astrato’s modern, cloud native design directly queries Snowflake for efficient and highly scalable computing, improving performance and thus vastly improving client satisfaction.

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“Astrato is significantly faster with dashboards loading almost instantly.  You click on something and it immediately updates. The data processing time has also fallen from over 2 hours to 20 minutes (Thanks to Snowflake), meaning customers can now access reporting first thing in the morning.”

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Furthermore, Astrato’s Actions capabilities streamlined the customer experience by guiding users to the right information at the right time, thereby enhancing customer experience.  Pluke explained,

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‍“We use actions really heavily just to drive the insight portion of our experience. Customers no longer have to waste time hunting through different dashboards, but can easily be guided to the right information at the right time”‍

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Switch RCM powers growth with confidence in Astrato

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With Astrato, Switch RCM has not only resolved the crippling issues of its legacy system but is now positioned for fast growth thanks to the significant performance, reliability and productivity improvements the new solution provides.   What once was a daunting task—scaling infrastructure—has now become a seamless experience.

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"With Astrato and Snowflake we don’t need to worry about updates and can scale up computing power with a few clicks and without any downtime. Astrato’s customer service is also excellent; we always get a fast response and this is giving us the confidence to add new customers."

"Our current sales pipeline will triple our client base and we expect to be able to grow quickly, with Astrato supported by recent and upcoming funding rounds."

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Future prospects

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Looking ahead, Switch RCM aims to capitalize on Astrato’s new capabilities, such as Excel export functionality to help their customers be more productive and generate new revenue streams.  “Our customers have teams of people that make Excel reports. So if we can automate them for that or that for them, they can reallocate that staff to do more productive work, which would be very valuable to them.” Said Pluke.

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