Challenge: How Do We Solve For Revenue Maximization, Coding Accuracy, And Compliance?

Med First added over 6% revenue uplift after implementing autonomous coding with Arintra. This was more than twice what CFO Wes Edwards expected. But when he spoke at a recent webinar co-hosted with Arintra, he highlighted something else: what it takes to build the right vendor partnership.

Challenge: How Do We Solve For Revenue Maximization, Coding Accuracy, And Compliance? 

The 27-location primary and urgent care group processes over 220,000 patient encounters annually across North and South Carolina. Before Med First started evaluating coding solutions, Edwards’s boss kept asking him the same question: "How do we ensure that we're billing every stitch of revenue for services we’re performing and doing so compliantly? Revenue is awesome, but non-compliant revenue is a non-starter. It has to be durable revenue uplift, meaning compliant.”

The honest answer was that there was no way to know, not without auditing every chart, which wasn't realistic. Providers coded their own encounters, billing specialists ran claims through front-end scrubbers, and a small team sampled a fraction of charts for trends analysis. This system caught errors, but missed what providers weren’t coding in the first place.

During the webinar, Edwards explained how that challenge led them to explore AI solutions capable of surfacing hidden documentation gaps at scale. He walked through their implementation process and stressed that choosing the right vendor isn't just about the technology; it's about finding a partner who understands the nuances of clinical workflows.

Solution: Exploring Scribing but Investing in Coding

Edwards went into the evaluation process expecting to invest in AI scribing.

“I only happened upon Arintra because they were offering a different solution. The first AI introduction I got was AI scribing. This is what my providers were interested in. But we were trying to solve revenue maximization, accuracy, and compliance. So coding became the priority.”

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The distinction matters. Scribing helps with the documentation burden, but it doesn't directly solve revenue integrity or compliance. Autonomous coding resolves both issues while improving compliance by eliminating the variability that comes with 80 providers coding 80 different ways.

Med First evaluated options through the athenahealth Marketplace. Arintra stood out for its seamless Athena integration, transparent and audit-ready coding logic, and clear ROI model. But this wasn't a quick decision. Med First's compliance officer flagged early on that the Department of Justice was paying close attention to autonomous coding in healthcare. That scrutiny shaped everything that followed.

Implementation: A Rigorous Pilot

Med First didn't flip a switch overnight to turn on autonomous coding. They ran a rigorous five-month pilot, reviewing every single Arintra-coded claim during a period they called "hypercare." They completed months of manual validation alongside Arintra’s team before they trusted the system.

Med First treated Arintra like a new provider and used external auditors to validate accuracy, while in-house coders reviewed every chart. The compliance officer worked directly with the implementation team. Providers continued coding their own encounters throughout the pilot, giving Med First a true baseline to measure against. With Arintra coding a majority of claims, the results followed.

Revenue Impact: Finding and Stopping Revenue Leakage

Med First built their business case with Arintra around a 3% revenue uplift expectation, but what they actually found was a 6-8% uplift. These gains came from services that providers performed but never coded: missed X-rays, incorrect E/M levels, and under-coding where documentation supported a higher level. 

Over 60% of the uplift came from E/M coding corrections alone. Because they built the system logic together, Med First could trace exactly where they were leaving money on the table. No more guessing.

Compliance: One Consistent Coder

With providers coding their own charts, every audit meant checking individual judgment calls. The system had variability baked in. "As we moved to Arintra, we now only have one decision maker coding things in a uniform way," Edwards explained. "The machine is consistent. As long as we audit the machine, we don't expect variation, and this improves our compliance footing. We programmed the logic with Arintra, so we're confident in how it's making decisions."

When payer audits arrive (and they always do), Med First can explain and defend their coding methodology. Every coding decision includes an audit-ready logic trail, which is tied to clinical documentation. Auditing ten charts now also validates the entire system’s accuracy, because coding is uniform and consistent. Compare that to auditing ten individual providers, which only shows how those ten people made coding decisions in the moment.

CDI and Provider Burden: Better Support for Physicians

Med First didn't expect Arintra to improve provider training. But Arintra delivers specific, actionable feedback at the individual provider level, and that changed how they approach clinical documentation improvement (CDI).

"We use very specific feedback from Arintra to help providers document better," Edwards said. "Providers are busy. We need to be focused with their time, so the CDI guidance has to be targeted, not generic."

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The shift has proved fruitful for Med First. Pre-Arintra training was generic and hard for providers to act on. Now the trainer flags specific gaps, such as missing medication strength or incomplete visit complexity details.

“We’re in value-based care, so specific diagnoses are important so payers get an accurate picture of the burden of illness. We’re spending time focusing on specificity in documentation.”

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The Partnership Factor: “Someone I Can Go to War With”

Throughout the webinar, Edwards returned to one theme: partnership. Technology solves problems, but implementations surface new ones. What matters is how your vendor responds when things go sideways.

"You have to choose the right vendor partner," Edwards said. "Things will not go correctly. Issues will happen. You need to ask, 'Is this someone I can go to war with?' When we run into issues, are they going to fight for us? We feel Arintra is that partner."

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That trust has allowed Med First to remove exclusions that initially routed claims to human review and push toward higher autonomous coding rates. They started at 60% autonomous coding after exiting hypercare. With confidence in the system and the partnership, they've reached 80% and plan to go further.

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For organizations evaluating autonomous coding, the technology questions matter. But so does choosing the right partner.

‍Watch the full webinar to hear Edwards's complete breakdown of Med First's evaluation process, implementation timeline, and advice for healthcare organizations considering autonomous coding.