Why SaaS? Agility

Ken Meyers, our VP of Operations, recently reported the following statistics:

1. Industry news reports (http://www.modernhealthcare.com/, among others) identified a 4x or more increase in rejections around national claim flow.
2. Emdeon is reporting 25% Medicare and Medicaid rejections persisting 1 week after the deadline.
3. Mysis reported to their customers a 50% increase in call volume after the deadline and asked for patience.
4. Regional medicare centers are experiencing major spikes in call volumes (http://www.wpsmedicare.com/, among others)
   ...
5. AdvancedMD experienced a daily call average DECREASE of 4.4% the week after the deadline (including accounting for Memorial Day), and we do not have any information indicating any material increases in rejections from RelayHealth.

So, why do I post this on an architecture blog? It all comes down to the agility that is inherent (or should be, if you're doing it right) in the SaaS model.

Most of our competitors are either Neanderthals (defined here as locally-installed client-server systems) or dinosaurs (text-based systems running on, for example, DOS or AS400s). When CMS announced the dearly beloved NPI requirements (described in boring detail here), most of those guys didn't just have to rush to modify a bunch of code to meet the requirements. They also had to figure out how to get their updates deployed to all of their sites...thousands of sites in some cases. And that assumes that their customers were willing to pay the (sometimes exorbitant) fees for the upgrade.

Once they had the upgrades installed in (most?) of their customer sites, they had to wait for the feedback on why their upgrades aren't working. Then fix the updates, deploy them, and wait for feedback again...and so on.

For AdvancedMD users, the NPI requirement has been, I have to confess, not particularly easy. No major changes in healthcare come without a few skinned knees. But glitches were found and then corrected quickly and, for the most part, transparently, on a weekly basis. By the time May 23rd rolled around, we were ready to go. Our customers even have a handy link to the NPPES NPI Registry so that they can quickly find NPI numbers for their referring providers.

With healthcare regulatory changes being as frequent and confusing as they are, a SaaS technology and business model just makes sense. And it keeps our customers laughing all the way to the bank.*

*Not really...I would imagine that most have ACH and don't physically deposit their Medicare checks. But you get the point.