LaVan & Neidenberg quadruples customer base

Headquartered in Plantation, Florida, the Law Offices of LaVan & Neidenberg, P.A specialize in disability compensation and long-term disability cases. It represents disabled veterans and Social Security disability claimants nationwide.

Attacking benefits claims process bottlenecks

For returning veterans and people with disabilities, seeking compensation and benefits can be difficult. Few applicants are knowledgeable about the benefits to which they are entitled. Many who apply face denial of coverage, not because their claims aren’t genuine, but because they do not understand the process. A further complication is that legal firms frequently handle only parts of the process and often have systems that require significant manual effort.

Like other small and midsize firms, LaVan & Neidenberg faced mounting paperwork and workflow bottlenecks as the number of veterans filing claims continued to rise. It had information stored in many applications, which made accessing required content for a single disabilities benefit claimant highly labor-intensive. Staff members found it increasingly difficult to manage all the data and the one million or more documents associated with thousands of current customers and nearly 10,000 completed claims. It took hours to prequalify customers coming in, hours to organize the information for full qualification and hours to pull together everything for submission to the appropriate set of agencies. This time-consuming, manual process delayed aid to claimants and restricted the firm’s ability to compete effectively against larger firms with more resources.

“About three years ago when we had 40 employees, we realized that to increase profit margin and to compete on a higher level required tying everything together by utilizing technology to streamline our business,” says Ken LaVan, president of the Law Offices of LaVan & Neidenberg, P.A.

Fostering a more efficient and social business with EZ Claim

After evaluating available vendors and technologies, LaVan & Neidenberg determined that none of those assessed offered the range of functionality IBM provided. Some excelled at customer data management, others at document management. None were good at both, and none had robust enough workflows to automate as much of the claims process as possible. To address the range of functionality needed, LaVan & Neidenberg contracted with IBM Business Partner Group Business Software to implement a solution based on IBM® Lotus® software for social business.

The Group Business Software project team created the EZ Claim system (patent pending) by integrating the IBM Lotus Domino® application platform with the IBM Lotus Symphony™ office productivity tools and IBM Sametime® instant messaging software. The EZ Claim solution not only manages all the data and documents in one place but also provides automated workflows, wizards, templates and built-in intelligence that help ensure timely help for claimants. Further, native functionality such as the Lotus Domino Attachment and Object Service (DAOS) and full-text indexing allows for highly streamlined document handling and archiving.

The law firm used IBM Lotus Domino Designer software to configure the EZ Claim solution. And IBM Lotus Enterprise Integrator® software helped staff members integrate the application into the firm’s IT infrastructure.

Helping claimants determine their benefits quickly

Using the EZ Claim intake wizard, the administrators guide applicants quickly through a set of questions designed to assess whether there is a valid claim. The solution streamlines the process of capturing and evaluating customer information and also measures administrator performance. It tracks the number of claimants each administrator handles, the amount of time spent with the claimant and the number of applicants turned away and why. Instead of having to make unilateral decisions about eligibility, administrators prequalify applicants based on recommendations supplied by the EZ Claim system, helping enable greater objectivity and consistency in dealing with a diverse customer base.

“The first year after the EZ Claim implementation, we accelerated the application phase of the claims process by 66 percent,” says LaVan.

Streamlining claims processing

All the information gathered during the intake process is transferred to the EZ Claim application wizard and repopulated into the appropriate government forms using preconfigured templates from Lotus Symphony software. The system is designed to deduce much of the additional information the federal and state government agencies need. Items that are not prepopulated or automatically deduced by the system are flagged so the administrator can get the information from the applicant.

“We can now track all the data associated with a claim—such as contact information, job history, medical conditions, military service and filing dates—as well as manage all claimant documents. With an average of 40 documents per applicant, this accessibility saves significant time,” says LaVan.

The solution also provides sophisticated workflows and built-in analytics. The majority of user interface views and workflows are configurable, helping management prioritize what employees see in the system, depending on their specific functions. Using the EZ Claim workflow engine, the firm configured 150 processes that help speed the claims process. The system reminds people of what still needs to be completed and advances the process step to step, prompting for approvals and sign-offs before proceeding to the next phase. Workflow views, calendar reminders, and automated assignments notify all team members of due dates for items requiring their attention. “In essence, we took everything that our employees do manually and created software to automate the workflow,” says LaVan.

Using solution wizards, templates and token analytics functionality, as well as configurable views and workflow and records tracking, the firm saw dramatic gains in process efficiency.
● Within the first five months following the EZ Claim solution deployment, the firm was able to help 53 percent more veterans and disabled people with the same staff.
● Within a year, the time required to fill out and submit government forms fell by 35 percent.
● More than 200 weeks of training time was saved in 2011 alone.

Quickly manage any appeals

If the applicant is denied benefits, the EZ Claim solution filters out the relevant data and the EZ Claim appeal wizard prompts the administrator to complete all the additional information needed to undertake an appeal.

During the hearing phase, the EZ Claim system streamlines the medical file development by automating request creation, tracking open record requests, logging record receipts, flagging records for review and submitting records to the appropriate government agency. Lawyers can easily check in and check out the disabled applicant’s electronic file from anywhere in the United States. Authorized people inside and outside the firm can edit applicant information online. All forms and documents are automatically updated, synchronized and submitted when the file is checked back in.

Moreover, the EZ Claim system stores data on judges, Social Security Administration (SSA) offices, veterans’ offices, and more than 20,000 doctors and health facilities throughout the United States. With this information, the system identifies the appropriate office, personnel, and location so employees do not have to keep track of thousands of data points in order to find and request the information they need to help customers. EZ Claim tracks who sees what content and helps protect confidential data and records as they are sent back and forth.

When a claim has been pending for a significant period of time, LaVan & Neidenberg can quickly determine what may be causing the delay. As a result, the process time for appeal of a denied claim decreased by 35 percent within the first two releases of the EZ Claim implementation.

Profitably grow the business

Improved customer service is paying off for LaVan & Neidenberg. In 2009, the firm represented roughly 5,000 customers with 40 employees. At the end of 2011, 120 staff members served approximately 20,000 customers. “While increasing our client base by a factor of four and our revenues by nearly 80 percent, we only increased staff by a factor of three. We also reduced our operating costs by 25 percent annually,” says LaVan.

For more information

To learn more about IBM social software, please contact your IBM marketing representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit the following website: ibm.com/software/lotus

For more information about the Law Offices of LaVan & Neidenberg, P.A., please visit: www.disabilitylawclaims.com