Wellmind automates EFT enrollment and payment tracking with Stedi Treasury
Wellmind is a clinician-founded mental health platform. They connect thousands of patients to in-network therapists and psychiatrists, primarily in California but across the U.S.
One of the reasons patients love Wellmind is the ease of intake and provider matching. Patients fill out a short questionnaire. Then a clinician on Wellmind's team matches them with a vetted, in-network provider. Care is virtual, in-person, or hybrid, and next-day appointments are always available.
Challenge
Most of Wellmind's payers pay by Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). The problem is there's no standard EFT enrollment process.
Some payers ask for a voided check or a bank verification letter. Others require micro-deposit verification. Many payers don't handle EFTs themselves. They route payments through third-party payment processors, each with its own portal, account, and paperwork.
Every one of those paths has its own workflow. Wellmind's team has to learn each one, write it down, and follow it for every payer. Each new payer adds another standard operating procedure (SOP) to maintain.
"Wellmind exists to protect the relational power at the heart of mental healthcare. But more and more of our team's time was going to billing and payments instead," says Laura Beann, founder and CEO of Wellmind.
"More and more of our team's time was going to billing and payments instead."
When EFTs aren't set up, payers mail paper checks instead. Each check needs to be scanned and deposited by hand. That ends up creating even more work for Wellmind's staff.
Even when EFTs are set up, the payment and the remittance – the payer's explanation of what it paid – arrive separately. The electronic version of the remittance – the Electronic Remittance Advice (ERA) – arrives at the healthcare clearinghouse. The payment arrives as an EFT deposit in Wellmind's bank account.
The process of matching the claim, ERA, and payment – called reconciliation – is manual.
"Every missed payment is money we earned for care we already delivered. When the payment and the remittance live in different places, it's hard to know what's missing," says Laura.
"Every missed payment is money we earned for care we already delivered."
Most clearinghouses can't complete EFT enrollment for the provider because they don't control the bank account. They deliver the ERA, but they never see the payment.
Wellmind needed a partner to take EFT enrollment off their plate and bring payments and ERAs together in one place.
Solution
Wellmind joined the private beta of Stedi Treasury.
With Stedi Treasury, Stedi provisioned an FDIC-insured bank account, called a Stedi Treasury account, in Wellmind's name. That lets Stedi manage EFT enrollment for Wellmind from end to end.
Stedi works with its partner bank, Grasshopper Bank, to generate voided checks and bank verification letters, verify micro-deposits, and handle other payer requests that come up in the enrollment process.
Wellmind only needs to submit an enrollment request using Stedi's API or the Stedi portal, which supports bulk CSV imports. Stedi handles the work in payer and payment processor portals on Wellmind's behalf, automating whenever possible.
"EFT enrollment used to mean a new portal, a new login, a new form, and a new set of instructions for every payer," says Laura. "Now, we just submit an enrollment request. Stedi's team takes it from there."
"Now, we just submit an enrollment request. Stedi's team takes it from there."
Once an EFT enrollment is live, that payer's payments land in Wellmind's Stedi Treasury account. Stedi automatically links each payment to its ERA using the reassociation trace number, the number that ties an EFT to its ERA.
Wellmind can trace any payment back to its ERA and claim in the Stedi portal's claims view.
Once the funds settle in their Treasury account, Stedi issues a same-day payout of the full amount to Wellmind's operating bank account, without delaying or batching the funds. Each payout keeps the trace number, so Wellmind's downstream reconciliation keeps working.
"Before, we didn't have a reliable way to make sure the payments referenced in an ERA were actually sent to us and deposited," says Laura. "With Stedi Treasury, we're getting the visibility to make sure promised funds actually make it to the bank."
"With Stedi Treasury, we're getting the visibility to make sure promised funds actually make it to the bank."
Results
Wellmind now receives EFT payments from their largest payers through Stedi Treasury. That includes some of the payers with the toughest enrollment steps.
"Stedi handled EFT enrollment for our most difficult payers. Once those payments started flowing through Stedi Treasury, I knew we were moving the rest of our payers over," says Laura.
"Stedi handled EFT enrollment for our most difficult payers."
Building on that success, Wellmind is now working with Stedi to set up Stedi Lockbox.
With Stedi Lockbox, Stedi scans and deposits incoming paper checks into Wellmind's Treasury account. It also turns paper remits, like Explanations of Payment (EOPs) and Explanations of Benefits (EOBs), into PDFs and attaches them to the electronic claim record. That'll help with the few paper checks and remits that still come through.
"Every payer we move to Stedi is one less workflow for our team to manage. That's time we can now give back to our clinicians and patients," says Laura.
"Every payer we move to Stedi is one less workflow for our team to manage."
Stedi is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by Grasshopper Bank, N.A., Member FDIC. The FDIC's deposit insurance coverage only protects against the failure of an FDIC-insured bank. Payout timing subject to standard cutoff times, Federal Reserve operating days, and settlement reviews.