As a premier behavioral health management company that provides distinctive work-life and employee assistance programs (EAPs), New Avenues is passionate about improving employee well-being. Located in South Bend, Indiana, New Avenues helps employers of all sizes and business sectors solve a broad range of stressors and problems for employees and their families—issues that can lead to productivity losses, serious medical conditions, workers compensation claims, and surging healthcare costs. New Avenues’ laser-sharp focus on wellness and mental health helps their clients improve productivity and reduce absenteeism.
End-to-End Solution Driving Workflow Efficiencies
A customer since 2007, New Avenues powers its success with InfoMC’s Incedo platform. Incedo helps New Avenues manage programs from end to end, from eligibility and assessment, to care planning and engagement, to utilization, network, and behavioral health claims management.
“Incedo is the backbone of our business, our main source of truth for our employee assistance and behavioral health programs,” said Pat Teverbaugh, Chief Financial Officer of New Avenues. “As well-being is increasingly recognized as a critical factor in productivity, the work we do to support mental health and wellness for employees and their families becomes even more essential. We couldn’t do what we do without Incedo.”
Seamless access to pertinent information from every Incedo screen and automatic task creation that pulls in key data improves usability and efficiency and eliminates the need for double data entry. All activity is automatically incorporated into the individual’s record, enabling users to focus on improving wellness rather than managing data.
“The way Incedo is organized has greatly enhanced our team’s efficiency,” said Teverbaugh. “Using the platform as it was intended helps us automate processes that would otherwise be time-consuming and error-prone, and ensures that nothing falls through the cracks.”
Automated rules for workflows such as authorization autoapprovals further support quality and operational efficiency and ensure work adheres to care and business guidelines and best practices.
Configurability Enables Personalization of Programs and Reporting
Incedo is designed for configurability, giving New Avenues the flexibility to personalize their implementation to meet their assessment, workflow, program, and reporting needs. Configurability enables New Avenues to be more agile and adapt quickly to the changing business and regulatory environment.
“Incedo empowers us to manage our own internal requirements—we can implement functionality ourselves, without custom code or vendor assistance,” said Teverbaugh. “This capability makes us self sufficient— we can get the information we need without the time constraints of having to go outside our team.”
The Incedo platform offers robust reporting to track and trend quality measures, performance metrics, and other information required to support business, federal, and state requirements. All data captured within Incedo is reportable, and creating ad hoc and custom reports is simple.
Network Management Supports Member and Provider Satisfaction
During intakes, New Avenues searches for providers and creates authorizations within Incedo, typically with a same- or next-day turnaround to connect the member with the provider as quickly as possible. Incedo translates each authorization to a PDF and allows the user to securely fax the provider within the Incedo system or send via a secure email per the provider’s preferences.
“Providers are our lifeline, so fast, accurate authorizations and claims processing is critical,” said Teverbaugh. “Incedo helps us track speed to services and speed to payment to improve turnaround times and ensure timely care so we can keep both our members and providers happy.”
Incedo enables provider selection based on key criteria and preferences, including zip code, service type for that employer group, gender, age groups, language fluency, and religion, as well as customized information such as whether the provider accepts Medicaid. This capability helps New Avenues match members to the providers best suited to address their needs. And, Incedo tracks provider insurance eligibility, supporting continuity of care by helping employees transition seamlessly from EAP services to eligible insured services.
Operational Assessment Uncovers Improvement Opportunities
Earlier this year, InfoMC conducted an operational assessment—a collaborative, deep-dive evaluation of New Avenues business processes and workflows. InfoMC delivered immediate value with tips and training on how to use Incedo to alleviate pain points, plus identified longer-term opportunities for engagement to further drive areas of efficiency.
“InfoMC helped us step back and look at our processes from a business standpoint and question things we hadn’t thought about—it helped us discover opportunities for improvement for both our internal processes and how we use the Incedo platform,” said Teverbaugh. “We found tremendous value in optimizing how Incedo is applied to our business model and finding ways to leverage Incedo to create efficiencies and improve our ROI.”
Long-Term Partnership
In 15+ years of collaboration, InfoMC and New Avenues have developed a strong partnership based on trust. “InfoMC has a good understanding of our business and our needs—and what is critical for us. And they are appropriately responsive. We know that if we have a problem, we get action,” said Teverbaugh.
“InfoMC helped us step back and look at our processes from a business standpoint and question things we hadn’t thought about—it helped us discover opportunities for improvement for both our internal processes and how we use the Incedo platform,” said Teverbaugh. “We found tremendous value in optimizing how Incedo is applied to our business model and finding ways to leverage Incedo to create efficiencies and improve our ROI.”
