Elizabeth Wende Breast Care (EWBC) is one of the country’s longest-standing dedicated breast imaging practices, providing state-of-the-art breast imaging services, including screening and diagnostic mammograms, ultrasounds, and MRIs.
The challenge
EWBC’s independence has been its greatest strength, as well as its biggest constraint. Since opening in 1975, the practice has prided itself on delivering fast, comprehensive, and compassionate care to patients in the greater Rochester area. As a private practice, EWBC competes directly with hospital systems for the same patients on a fraction of the reimbursement.
“We don’t have big pockets or get the big reimbursements for the same procedures that hospitals get. We get a tenth of that,” said Dr. Stamatia Destounis, Partner & Attending Radiologist at EWBC.
For EWBC, this means that efficiency is everything.
“For any practice now, time is money. Especially with reductions in reimbursement and all the cuts we’ve been seeing in radiology, it’s very important to keep goodwill with our referring physicians, and our patients.”
— Dr. Destounis
Yet their manual processes were holding them back.
Staff spent hours chasing down missing information from incomplete scripts. Even when a script came in clean, someone still had to reach out and convert that script into a scheduled patient, creating a queue of outbound calls that prevented staff from answering pressing inbound calls from worried patients and their referring providers.
On top of that, the work required to enter new scripts into EWBC’s systems was time-consuming and error-prone, creating patient delays and downstream denials.
“If you don’t call the patient back because you don’t have the right information, you’re losing that patient. They’re going to go somewhere else, or they sit and worry waiting,” said Dr. Destounis.
For a breast imaging practice in particular, timing is critical. Patients are already extremely anxious awaiting their results, and the speed at which they’re delivered can directly impact their outcomes.
“That’s what patients worry about: having delayed care and a delayed diagnosis. We want to make sure we are not part of that delay.”
— Dr. Destounis
The switch to Tennr
To scale under thin margins, EWBC brought in Tennr with three goals in mind: increase staff throughput, decrease time spent on administrative tasks, and reduce MRI denials, all while avoiding the need to hire across departments.
The partnership kicked off with Tennr’s team coming on site to observe each department’s workflow in real time, mapping exactly how the work moved through the practice.
“If you are a practice that hasn’t used AI, you’re not going to know where your inefficiencies are until you have a team like Tennr’s come in and sit down to see what you do.”
— Dr. Destounis
That process surfaced operational bottlenecks that EWBC didn’t realize existed. Some of the blockers were removed by the simple elimination of a step, while the rest became the blueprint for what Tennr would orchestrate.
“Tennr’s team is very smart and they just get it. They’ve been great with onsite visits, they’re accessible, and they address any questions or issues quickly. You’re not going to get that with many vendors,” said Dr. Destounis.
Today, EWBC’s core operations run on Tennr, with custom workflows across intake operations, automated communications, eligibility and benefits, and qualification reviews on rails.
The results
Since going live with Tennr, EWBC has seen:
- A 48% reduction in staff-made outbound calls to patients
- 3+ hours of patient admin work saved per day
- 4x faster record request fulfillment, from 48 hours to under 12
The effect on the call center was almost immediate: in just 3 months, there was a 48% reduction in staff-made outbound calls to patients. Moreover, two staff departures were absorbed without backfilling.
“The texts that Tennr sends to patients once they have a script from a referring provider have reduced the number of calls our staff is making by half,” said Dr. Destounis. “Our staff are now spending time on the pressing appointments that require their attention.”
Tennr’s automated workflows have dramatically reduced delays in processing medical records.
“When a patient is requesting documents or their images, Tennr has cut the turnaround time from a few days to getting back to them within the same day.”
— Dr. Destounis
Before Tennr, MRI and high-risk programs were where denials hit EWBC hardest. They were also where EWBC spent the most time on manual verification. Now, Tennr runs eligibility and benefits checks up front, so coverage is confirmed and documented before the patient is scheduled.
“The MRI and high-risk department spend a lot of time looking at the eligibility and benefits for the patients that come through. With Tennr, we’re getting more efficient, and that’s really helpful for the billing team. We’re able to define who’s eligible for the exam, preventing denials from insurance companies after the fact.”
— Dr. Destounis
Beyond efficiency gains, Tennr has unlocked EWBC’s ability to go the extra mile for their patients.
As Dr. Destounis put it, “The patients that are calling in are very anxious—they all think they have breast cancer. So, we want to be able to spend time with them, not cut them short because there’s a list of 1,000,000 faxes to send out and 48,000,000 scripts to go through and 500 calls to make.”
With Tennr handling the patient processing workflows, EWBC’s staff can focus on what they do best: spending time with the patient.
What’s next
With outbound call volume down and turnaround times cut, EWBC is continuing to grow its partnership with Tennr to see where they can expand capacity and convert more patients, providing them with service-oriented care.
As more of EWBC’s workflows run on Tennr, the through-line remains the same: get the patient through with the right information and the right answer, the first time.