Insurance blog series: Automated reading of claims documents with IDP – 01 pharmacy receipts

How do insurance companies receive claims documents today? Partly physically, partly digitally, and increasingly directly via the insurance company’s own app. The problem for many insurers, however, is that their systems cannot handle poor quality claims documents. Accordingly, automated processes are rendered impossible, resulting in manual and slow claims processing.

In this blog series for insurance companies, we will look at different claims documents for which Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) can be used to automatically extract the relevant data for insurance companies.

In part 01 of the ‘Insurance blog series’, we look at the automated processing of pharmacy receipts.

Insurance companies use IDP to automatically read pharmacy receipts and thus accelerate their claims processing.

Pharmacy receipts are being photographed directly in the app

Nowadays, the various claims documents for which clients are eligible for reimbursement are photographed and uploaded directly in the insurance company’s app. This is also the case with pharmacy receipts.

Clients place the claims document in the form of the classic and familiar pharmacy receipt in front of them on the table or on the floor and take a photo of it in the app. What is done for the client now triggers manual processes at most insurance companies, which end in expensive claims processing.

Poor quality of photographed pharmacy receipts

Compared to a PDF or physical document, pharmacy receipts in photo format are often uploaded to the insurance company’s app in relatively poor quality. Due to photos taken at skewed angles, various quality issues arise, including light effects and distortions, for example, making it difficult for systems to differentiate pixels.

Insurance companies are thus unable to read the submitted pharmacy receipts using conventional OCR solutions. The result is manual processing by employees or by a BPO.

With IDP: Insurance companies read out all relevant data from pharmacy receipts

With Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), on the other hand, the photos of pharmacy receipts are qualitatively enhanced in a first step after they have been received in the app.

As shown below in the two sample photos from the platform, IDP now automatically reads out all relevant data and information (and only the data relevant to insurance companies in the case of pharmacy receipts) from them. Among other things, the following information is extracted:

  • Vendor: Pharmacy name, complete address of pharmacy, phone number, etc.
  • General information of the pharmacy receipt: Receipt date, receipt number, currency, etc.
  • Line items: Name of the drug, VAT etc.

No-Code App for individual customizations to pharmacy receipts

When there are additional, specific requirements for a claims document, in this case pharmacy receipts, insurers can use the No-Code App to easily make customizations to the document type on their own.

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