For physician groups, MSOs, and physician enablement companies, reducing administrative work is central to supporting practice growth and provider independence. Yet one significant task often remains with the provider: medical coding.

After delivering and documenting care, providers may still need to select billing codes, review and approve them, and enter charges. This takes time away from patients. It also creates challenges for revenue cycle leaders because most providers are not coding specialists. Concern about audits or denials can lead them to code more conservatively than the documentation supports.

Vanova Health saw this challenge across the independent physician practices it supports. The physician enablement company needed a more consistent approach to coding without adding another system, login, or manual step to already busy provider workflows.

The answer was not simply to make provider coding easier. It was to remove coding and charge entry from the provider workflow altogether.

Removing coding without changing provider workflows

With Arintra’s autonomous medical coding platform embedded in athenahealth, Vanova’s providers continue to document the visit and sign the note as they normally would. They no longer have to select codes, review and approve them, or enter charges.

“The providers didn’t have to log into a new system or change their workflow. Administrative work was taken off their plates. They no longer had to code, review and approve codes, or enter charges,” said Daimion Haughton, Director of Revenue Cycle at Vanova Health.

Removing providers from coding raises important questions for revenue cycle leaders: 

• Can autonomous coding consistently apply organizational, specialty, and payer requirements? 
• Can every decision be validated and defended?

Vanova designed its implementation around these requirements, building confidence before scaling. The complete case study explains how.

Greater coding accuracy and more focus on patients

Vanova Health’s average E/M level increased from 3.49 to 3.63 after implementing autonomous coding. Providers were already delivering and documenting more complex care, but often coding it too conservatively. Arintra helped ensure the coding more accurately reflected the documentation.

The change also gave providers more time and attention for patient care.

“There’s less stress about the coding aspect of the visit, so I have a greater ability to focus my energy on patients, clinical documentation, and patient flow through the office,” said Dr. Sally Mravcak, Medical Director at Vanguard Medical Group, an independent practice supported by Vanova Health.

See how Vanova Health removed provider coding

Vanova removed coding and charge entry from provider workflows while improving coding accuracy and giving providers more time to focus on patients. But reaching that point required a thoughtful approach to validation, provider trust, and scale.

The complete case study shows:

• How Vanova validated autonomous coding and built confidence before expanding it
• How it scaled the model across athenahealth-based practices and specialties while maintaining accuracy and compliance

See how Vanova transformed coding. Download the complete case study.