In this blog series, we will discuss various claims documents from which leading insurance companies can automatically read and process data using Intelligent Document Processing (IDP).
Clients can only expect cost sharing for glasses or contact lenses if they are covered by a supplementary insurance policy. The volume of service documents such as optician bills received by insurance companies is rather small compared to other claim documents. Very few insurance companies have integrated automation solutions for processing optician bills.
Despite the small volume, this means a lot of work for insurance companies due to manual data entry. Even worse, it slows down the entire claims processing workflow.
With Intelligent Document Processing (IDP), however, insurance companies can finally handle small-volume document types such as Optician invoices automatically and speed up their claims processing.
In part 03 of the ‘Insurance blog series‘, we addressed the automated processing of gym bills.
In part 04 of the ‘Insurance blog series’ we address the automated processing of optician bills.
Unstructured optician bills cause problems
Optician invoices are received by insurance companies in various ways: physically by mail, electronically via customer portal or as a photo directly via the insurance company’s own application on the client’s smartphone.
The problem for insurers here is that while the optician invoices are similar in content, they differ greatly in form and layout depending on the optician.
Many insurance companies cannot process the unstructured optician bills automatically due to the complexity of the layout. Employees have to manually type and enter the data from the Optician’s invoices. This tedious work not only causes frustration for the employees themselves, but also bottlenecks in the entire claims processing. Ultimately, this leads to a reduction in customer satisfaction due to the long waiting times before costs are reimbursed.
With IDP: Insurance companies read optician bills automatically
With the integration of Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) into their existing system, insurance companies can now finally read and process small-volume document types such as optician invoices automatically.
As shown in the example photo from the platform, IDP automatically recognizes, captures and reads even poor quality optician invoices through weak scans. Algorithms enhance the quality of the data in a first step.
Insurance companies can then convert the structured data into their internal, insurance-specific classes using business logic. This is crucial, especially for various line items such as in optician invoices, in order to be able to decide whether the claimed services are covered and the costs are assumed by the insurance company or not.
With IDP, the following data, among others, can be read out automatically from the optician’s bill:
Header data: Invoice date, document language, invoice number, VAT number, total amount, and currency.
Line items: Detailed line items, e.g. the description of the spectacle frame and the spectacle lens, are read out 1:1.
By extracting all relevant data from the optician bills in detail, insurance companies can optimize and accelerate their claims processing as a whole.
No-Code App for individual customizations on the document type
If there are further requirements for a document type in claims processing, for example additional line items, insurance companies can use the No-Code App to easily make independent adjustments to the document type.
In part 05 of the ‘Insurance blog series’ we discuss the automated processing of dental invoices with IDP.
