Always Striving to Be Better Than We Were

In 2020, Principal Agile Product Owner Keerthi Bathija and Agile Team 13 set an ambitious goal, only to quickly realize the complications of a global pandemic would present some very real problems for the Surescripts Network Alliance. But with no intention of letting Surescripts become one of those problems, they went to work.

When she talks about her work at Surescripts, it’s clear that Bathija is passionate about raising the bar for excellence. Joyful, grateful, results oriented and driven by the chance to have a positive impact, she explains how the results she achieves only deepen her personal connection to our purpose, which was sparked by her own past healthcare experiences.

“For me, everything we do is about being better than where we were.”

Bathija explains: “A few years ago, I had several patient experiences where a ton of time was lost at the clinic providing my basic information, clinical history, medication history and insurance details. You sometimes have to educate your providers on your entire illness history before they can really focus on your care. But today, they have access to patient records, which is huge. My past experiences and the way Surescripts has been able to innovate since then make me a true believer in the value of our work.”

The team set out to create automated billing payments, and they knew that customers would be sunsetting NCPDP SCRIPT v10.6 and moving to NCPDP SCRIPT v2017071.

Then came the pandemic, which shifted the sunset date, so Bathija and the team used this time to automate the invoicing process for both versions.

“We stayed connected via Teams chats and worked across all four offices to meet our goal on time and with an expanded scope,” Bathija said. “We took advantage of an unexpected opportunity and were able to deliver—and then some—despite the many challenges we all were facing.”

With the advantage of the very best technology, Bathija and her team made tremendous improvements to financial processes to accommodate new billing models, contracting and more. And they increased the timeliness, accuracy and quality of billing and payments as well.

As they were on this journey, the team made some interesting discoveries. Bathija recognizes that customers have always appreciated the transparency and attention to detail that everyone at Surescripts demonstrates and believes in. And when they saw the immediate value of the invoicing improvements that were created, they expressed a ton of gratitude, which only reinforced that Surescripts was doing the right thing for them in a time of crisis.

“We ensure that the provider can stay focused on the most important thing at hand—patient care—rather than getting bogged down in the details of things like data quality or billing issues,” Bathija said. “They don’t have to divert critical resources. And at Surescripts, we really strive to make the whole experience better.

Learn more about the people and organizations Surescripts is proud to serve and how we’re making an impact on patients together.