CASE STUDY: MDLAND

Frictionless Identity Proofing Helps MDLand Improve Patient and Physician Experience While Adhering to Government Mandates

Founded in 1999, MDLand is a leading digital health technology company bringing advanced solutions for healthcare problems. Since its inception, MDLand has worked closely with its physician customers to digitize and modernize practices with a focus on the comprehensive Value-Based Payment (VBP)-ready enterprise EHR, new-generation population health, clinical analytics, and digital health platform to support disease management, patient monitoring, and virtual health. In recent years, MDLand expanded its cloud-based digital health platform to support customers and partners, including physician organizations, payers, and governmental agencies to increase productivity, improve quality, ensure compliance, enhance revenue, and engage patients to improve care and outcomes.

Challenge

MDLand was using a vendor to verify physician identity as part of the approval process for electronically prescribing controlled substances (EPCS), in accordance with NIST-800-63-3 guidelines. But that vendor was acquired by another organization that decided to sunset the product, forcing MDLand to seek a new solution.

MDLand wanted to make sure its new technology partner offered great customer support and the highest possible pass rates to prevent physicians from getting locked out of the system.

Green Quotation

We used to have a few providers who could not pass through via the previous third-party identity proofing solution. So it is very challenging for them not to access the EPCS system when they need it. It also imposed a challenge for our customer support team as our first priority is to provide the best quality and timely support to our providers and their patients.

Christopher Puccio
Senior Manager of Service Delivery at MDLand

Solution

After conducting research and evaluating several vendors, MDLand learned about the ID.me identity proofing solution for EPCS and quickly knew it would be a good fit.

“I remember seeing a demo of ID.me, and it felt similar to our previous solution in terms of process, but there was a bonus that the other solutions didn’t have: video chat,” Puccio said. “It was something we liked and a good backup in case physicians experienced issues getting verified.”

The rapidly growing ID.me network includes nearly 300,000 physicians. That played in to MDLand’s decision because those physicians would not need to re-verify with MDLand.

MDLand also appreciated the ID.me emphasis on user experience.

“A lot of times with these solutions, organizations don’t get to see the UX because they can’t go through it themselves,” Puccio said. “ID.me showed us step by step exactly what the user experience would be, which is critical. Having it laid out for us was so important.”

MDLand worked with ID.me to implement Identity Level of Assurance Level 2 plus liveness into the workflow, in accordance with NIST guidelines.

Results

The transition from the old system to ID.me, as well as the entire onboarding process, went very smoothly.

“Communication between our two teams was very good,” said Sara Liu, Project Manager at MDLand. “If we needed to jump on a call, ID.me was there. The fast response times made the onboarding process very clean and efficient. We could kick things into gear very quickly.”

Since implementing ID.me, the entire verification process has become much simpler for both providers and staff. Providers verifying through MDLand have experienced a 97% pass rate overall, which is significantly higher than what they experienced with their previous vendor.

For the small handful of providers who are not able to verify through the self-service flow, ID.me customer support reps can quickly verify them through video chat so they can resume work and help patients get the care they need.

The rapidly growing ID.me network includes nearly 300,000 physicians.

Man speaking in headset
Green Quotation

In speaking with providers over the last nine months since we launched, the feedback has been very positive,” said Jonathan Colon, Customer Support Supervisor. “Some of these providers have been customers for over 10 years. When ID.me came in, it was a whole different world for them, so easy to use.

Identity Verification for Patients

Three months after going live with its EPCS solution, MDLand reached a point at which it needed an identity proofing solution for its patient app, iClinic Health.

To access the app, patients had been forced to call the front desk to verify their identity and receive a registration code. That process created a poor experience for patients and staff and made it challenging for MDLand to scale. Adding an identity-proofing layer to iClinic Health would enable patients to schedule appointments, join telehealth appointments, and access health records online without requiring assistance from front desk staff.

MDLand was also beginning to see a larger percentage of new patients outside of the existing EHR, so adding an identity-proofing layer would also enable the company to scalably verify identities and grant access to the app.

The MDLand team immediately approached ID.me for assistance in overcoming that challenge.

“The process had gone so smoothly for EPCS, so we thought of ID.me right off the bat,” Liu said.

ID.me also has lower implementation costs and offers an easier-to-use system with less friction compared to other solutions on the market. MDLand worked with ID.me to integrate a knowledge-based authentication replacement policy into the app’s workflow. The onboarding process went very smoothly, and the MDLand team saw immediate time and cost savings.

“We’re looking to expand usage of iClinic,” Liu said. “Having ID.me as our identity-proofing layer is essential for protecting PHI.”

MDLand is growing rapidly, having almost doubled in size in the past year. With a current focus on the New York/tri-state area, the company wants to expand into other regions in the coming months and years.

Green Quotation

What we’re doing now with ID.me will enable us to expand our reach and grow our network,” Puccio said. “More customers, more providers – that’s our goal and vision.

IDme logo

Want to learn more?

Hear Blake Hall, CEO of ID.me; Genevieve Morris, senior director of clinical interoperability at Change Healthcare; and Dr. Colin Banas, chief medical officer at DrFirst, discuss how organizations are deploying solutions to meet new legislative mandates while streamlining the user experience.