Quick Answers for Health Plans
Below are some questions or concerns you may have as you consider joining the Availity Health Information Network:
- What exactly is Availity?
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Availity is a leading-edge Health Information Network, providing administrative, clinical, and financial services to users ranging from health care providers to health plans to technology partners. Availity optimizes information exchange between multiple health care stakeholders through a single, secure network. We exist to strengthen these direct relationships by delivering trusted information to enable a more collaborative approach to health care operation and delivery in each region.
Availity is owned by competing health plans that joined together to reduce costs by streamlining workflow and eliminating the fees that providers traditionally pay for billing and claims transactions. Our collaborative business model is unique—and it works. In less than 10 years, we’ve become one of the nation’s largest electronic health information networks, processing more than 690 million transactions every year.
- What are the costs and benefits of partnering with Availity?
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Availity offers competitive pricing options to health plans, including individual transaction fees and subscription models. An Availity representative will be happy to discuss options with you.
In addition, health plans that partner with Availity have realized significant reductions in customer service calls, paper claims, processing errors, and more, saving millions annually.
- How do you work with health plans?
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Availity believes in collaborating with health plans on project and marketing plans that incorporate best practices and market-proven techniques. A team of professionals is dedicated to managing projects each step of the way. Availity trains health plan personnel to answer common questions and provides collateral, presentation decks, demos, branded giveaways, and other items to support marketing initiatives.
- What health plan integration does Availity support?
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Availity supports a real-time federated model adhering to X12 standards for administrative transactions and the Continuity of Care Record (CCR) standard for electronic health records. With the exception of HIPAA-mandated transaction archiving, Availity does not store information. Complete details are available in the Availity EDI Guidelines.
- How do we join Availity?
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Visit the Contact Us page of this site. Once we’ve received your information, an Availity representative will contact you to provide specification documents and answer your questions.
- If free transactions can be performed at Availity, won’t that decrease traffic to my web site?
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We’ve found that providers are reluctant to navigate multiple health plan sites and remember multiple passwords. Availity offers one solution and one connection for providers, and that’s how we prove tremendous return on investment to the health plans we serve. However, your web site may still serve as a destination for complimentary services or information that you offer to providers. In many cases, Availity can include specific link-outs to your site. Talk to your Availity representative about this option during the implementation process.