From a 3-week backlog to same-day patient intake

The Challenge: Manual DME Intake Delayed Patient Care

In the durable medical equipment (DME) space, speed is everything. 

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"Nebulizers are something that patients need immediately," explains Alyssa, Revenue Cycle and Compliance Manager at NEB Medical. "If you're not able to contact them and reach out in a timely fashion, they're going to seek other care and go back to their facilities and make that a point to their doctors."

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This reality created immense pressure on NEB Medical's patient processing operations. With high volumes of low-ticket items flowing in daily, their manual "stop and go" workflow struggled to keep pace.

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NEB Medical’s manual intake process was causing major operational delays:

• Staff were overwhelmed by the volume of incoming referrals
• Intake processing took 10-15 minutes per order
• Order backlog stretched 2 to 3 weeks
• Constant hiring and training of new staff due to turnover

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"Fax wrangling, patient creation, and sales order creation are pretty tedious, cumbersome, and you experience high turnover rates," says Zac Bukema, co-owner of NEB Medical. "The training time that's involved from our managers to get new people in place is extremely time-consuming and pricey."

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The bottom line: manual processes and staffing gaps created a ceiling on growth. NEB couldn’t scale into new product lines and territories while buried under paperwork. 

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The Solution: Automating Patient Intake with Tennr

With Tennr’s automated intake platform, NEB Medical saw drastic operational improvements.

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Dramatic time savings:

• Processing time per fax dropped from 10-15 minutes → under 5 minutes
• Daily throughput increased from 50 faxes → 170 processed per day per Tennr user 
• Contacting patients within 24 hours, sometimes same day

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"With Tennr, we're able to do things so much faster, and it's just huge. It's been a game changer," says Alyssa. "We're able to reach out to patients so much faster.”

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Smaller team, higher output:

Perhaps most remarkably, NEB reduced its intake team from four staff to two — while tripling throughput and eliminating the backlog.

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Improved process visibility and control:

”It's just caused us to be clearer with ourselves and our staff about how an order goes through from start to finish,” says Zac. “Not only is the system faster, but we feel like our process flows are clearer."

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The Results: Faster Patient Care, Happier Referring Providers

NEB’s metrics tell the story:

• Backlog reduced from 3 weeks to < 48 hours
• Patients now receive same-day or next-day outreach
• Referring providers have greater confidence in NEB’s speed and reliability
• The team has regained control over intake operations

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What’s next: Growth Without Bottlenecks

With their operational challenges addressed, NEB Medical is shifting its focus towards growth.

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"Our goals are to add new product lines into existing territory as well as expand into additional territory," says Zac. "We do a little bit of business outside of Illinois and Wisconsin, but we continue to explore additional contracts and opportunities in the neighboring states."

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By eliminating processing bottlenecks with Tennr, they can now focus on what matters most: expanding their business and serving more patients with the medical equipment they need.

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