Providing a Human Touch Behind Health Insurance Companies

Founded in 2011, Concordia Care Inc. is a specialty risk transfer care-coordination company that services insurers, government entities, self-ensured plan sponsors, and other managed care organizations. They aim to reduce the overall cost of quality healthcare by putting the patient first, understanding each individual patient, their needs and developing a personalized recovery plan. Concordia Care has two offices in Florida, and two in New Jersey each requiring call center capabilities.

“We take catastrophic cases, injuries in the workplace, like burns, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, and we actually carve out…the clinical and financial risk and manage it here—so we’re kind of an insurance company for other insurance companies,” said Joseph Berardo, CEO of Concordia Care, Inc.

An Accommodating Phone System with Healthcare Industry Features

When the company was planning to expand in 2016, they needed a phone system that was scalable, flexible, and could provide features to accommodate the healthcare industry’s privacy requirements.

Concordia’s previous provider was a PBX solution that required ongoing maintenance and support.

Additionally, they were reaching their limit on the number of users the phone system could handle.

As a result, they started looking for another communications provider to meet their unique needs.

Humberto Moya has been Director of IT since joining Concordia in 2015. His responsibilities include supporting operations and ensuring phones are working efficiently.

Moya began conducting research into a range of providers and found that while most offered similar features and services, many did not provide HIPAA compliance or were not serving Concordia’s geographic location needs.

HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is a law designed to protect patients’ medical records and other health information provided to health care providers.

The Best Choice for Customer Care

When Moya began speaking with Nextiva, he said everything was seamless.

“The price we get with Nextiva, the flexibility, support… understanding what we could do with the Nextiva system was unbelievable, and at some point, we said, ‘let’s not compare anybody else.’”

Concordia then made the decision to switch to a VoIP solution and chose Nextiva as their provider of choice.

Berardo said that an important factor in switching to a VoIP provider was the ability to stay in touch with customers at all times.

The vision for the company was and is to grow to require a platform that is built to scale and handle the mobile and remote and dynamic nature of its staff.

Nextiva mobile capabilities delivered within the Nextiva App coupled with easy transferring made this a turnkey solution. The team was enthusiastic about the Call Center functionality, Interactive Voice Responses, and Call Recording offered through Nextiva.

Most importantly, Nextiva provides a HIPAA-compliant offering they could trust would meet the unique regulations of the healthcare industry.

“Ensuring that we were on a secure, HIPAA-compliant platform that was tested and validated was the highest priority. Knowing that the system you communicate on has that security just makes our business much more efficient,” Berardo said.

“I feel confident that I’m not going to have any issues related to privacy, whether with one of our customers, or any regulator who might be looking at our business for any reason in the future.”

A Worry-Free and Quick Transition

Concordia’s implementation took less than a month including training the management team how to use the Nextiva App, Call Center, and more.

“We didn’t face any major issues with implementation; we had the transition happening on a Friday and on Monday morning, everybody was on the new phone system with absolutely no disruption,” Moya stated.

Concordia gives each of their customers a dedicated toll-free number with most requiring different IVR (interactive voice responses).

During implementation, Moya’s primary concerns included centralizing and porting over the toll-free numbers and the number of local DIDs.

With the help of Nextiva Support, Concordia Care ported over the toll-free numbers to Nextiva when the old system was still running.

They then redefined the different IVRs, working with Nextiva’s engineering team to set up eight IVRs seamlessly.

The Call Center agents found the new system simple to learn and use. By utilizing Nextiva Office Pro along with the Call Center, employees use call queues and Supervisor Dashboard to serve customers effectively.

Receiving about two hundred calls per day, these tools help control the call volume and flow.

The Mobile Office

The company uses the Nextiva App extensively. It allows users to login on their cell phones and have desk phone capabilities.

This offers mobility and flexibility, which are of utmost importance to Berardo.

“What’s important to me is that when my office phone rings, no matter where I am, I want to be able to have access to it.”

With a couple of quick button pushes, the team can take calls between cell phones and desk phones with ease and without interruption.

Relationships Matter

Since signing with Nextiva, Concordia Care has maintained a relationship with their Nextiva channel manager.

Concordia found the channel manager to be flexible and provided needed information on demand and accommodated their business needs.

They also know if they need to call into support, they can resolve issues and answer questions if needed.

“One of our problems- support and redundancy of the phones went away immediately. I don’t have the pressure of managing and controlling the phone system; Nextiva is doing most of the work for us. If we need to open a ticket with them or call them, we get the immediate support we’re looking for,” Moya explained.

“All of those things allow us to move forward with confidence in the phone system as we grow. As a tech-enabled company, everything we’re doing is next generation, and the phone system that we’ve chosen through Nextiva fits into that very well,” Berardo said.

“We went from the Flintstones to the Jetsons in a matter of a few months, which was fun to see.”

Concordia Care is satisfied with the features and capabilities Nextiva offers and will continue to utilize Nextiva as their communications provider as they expand their staff, locations, reach, and make a difference in the lives of their customers.