Why Multiple Portals Are Slowing Down Credentialing

Healthcare credentialing has come a long way from the days of fax machines and filing cabinets. But for many credentialing specialists, the digital age has replaced one challenge with another: too many portals.

Instead of juggling stacks of paperwork, today’s credentialing specialists typically juggle logins, interfaces, and workflows. Each payer, regulator, and even internal department uses its own portal, and none of them are talking to each other.

It’s like television. It started as very limited black and white TV. Now you’re likely juggling multiple streaming services. It’s clunky to move between them and downright irritating every time you have to login. But, the fact is, no one ever talks about going back to black and white TV. Just like no one talks about going back to a paper credentialing process.

For healthcare organizations, all that bouncing between systems is quietly costing time, accuracy, and revenue.

The Real Cost of Too Many Portals

Every time data has to be re-entered or uploaded again, the process slows down. Each extra click, login, and form submission adds up to hours of manual work every week, only further delaying provider onboarding and patient care. Multiple portals can trigger missing information and inconsistent records that lead to denials or compliance gaps.

These delays also have a major impact on revenue. The average provider generates about $9,000 in billable revenue per day, so even a one-week credentialing delay can cost more than $45,000 for a single provider. Multiply that by several open positions, and the impact is undeniable.

The irony is that digital transformation was supposed to make this easier. Instead, the tech stack has grown cluttered with separate systems that don’t communicate, leaving credentialing admins to bridge the gaps manually.

Payer vs. Internal Portals

One of the reasons portals are such a challenge is that they each only serve their own purpose. Typically, they fall into one of these three categories:

Payer portals: Systems like Medicare PECOS, Medicaid, and commercial insurer portals are mandatory for enrollment, but none of them connect to one another. While payer portals are unavoidable, you can significantly reduce how often you have to re-enter information into them.
Regulatory portals: Systems like the Office of Inspector General’s LEIE (List of Excluded Individuals and Entities) and the NPDB (National Practitioner Data Bank) are needed to ensure providers are eligible to practice. Most states also maintain their own exclusions databases, and most licensing is done at the state level.
Internal credentialing portals or tools: Separate systems used for verifications, exclusions monitoring, enrollment tracking, and document storage. They all have their important use, but the challenge comes when they’re used and managed individually. When various credentialing portals are disparate, you end up with a pile of logins, data silos, and no real source of truth.

The combination of external payer portals and fragmented internal tools creates a perfect storm of inefficiency – and confusion. Navigating more portals than you need to is time consuming and risky! When information gets out of sync or a renewal slips through the cracks, applications will stall, revenue takes a hit, and compliance visibility goes out the window.

Why Multiple Portals Slow Credentialing Down

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. A typical credentialing day might look like this:

Logging into CAQH to verify provider details
Logging into NPDB to pull or review queries
Checking multiple exclusion databases on separate sites
Updating an internal spreadsheet or enrollment tracker
Then logging into multiple payer portals just to upload everything again

With a back-and-forth approach like this, it’s no wonder portal fatigue exists. Each system works fine on its own, but together they create a fragmented workflow that forces you to fill in the gaps manually. Over time, that constant back-and-forth adds up to unnecessary stress and hours that could be spent moving providers forward instead of moving between screens.

How to Simplify the Process

You can’t eliminate payer portals, but you can eliminate the friction between them. That’s where integrated healthcare credentialing platforms like MedTrainer come in. Rather than adding another login to the mix, a centralized platform acts as your hub for all credentialing activity, bringing together everything that happens before, between, and after payer submissions. Here’s how credentialing software can simplify your process:

Connect Key Systems Automatically

Integrations directly with CAQH, NPDB, and HRIS securely pull provider information into your credentialing platform, which acts as a single source of truth. This eliminates the need to separately log into these systems, saving an incredible amount of time. Plus, without duplicate, manual data entry, provider information stays accurate and gives all credentialing team members access to the same verified information.

Streamline Payer-Specific Packet Submission

Not only do you have to submit provider information separately in every payer’s portal, but you also have to meet their specific requirements. This payer requires a conflict of interest form, another payer wants a face sheet, and the next payer has a specific order for the packet. Simplify the process by creating payer-specific credentialing packet templates that automatically compile all required provider documents into a single, ready-to-send PDF that updates whenever new or corrected files are uploaded. Leading credentialing software offers a similar capability with forms. Artificial intelligence can identify and connect form fields to provider data within the software, so the forms are automatically completed. You still have to login to each payer’s portal, but at least you’re confident in the accuracy!

Quickly Spot Issues

With credentialing software acting as a single source of truth, all credentialing data is available in customizable dashboards that make it easy to see exactly where things stand. With a quick glance, you can check each provider’s status, spot missing information, and get ahead of upcoming expirations. You no longer have to log into multiple internal portals to find information and add it to a spreadsheet for analysis. Everything is in the credentialing platform. In fact, you can even use the credentialing platform to keep up with what has been submitted in payer portals!

From Many Portals to One Platform

Credentialing will always involve multiple parties, but it doesn’t have to involve multiple systems. By consolidating systems and automating repetitive work, you can reclaim time, improve accuracy, and accelerate provider onboarding without adding more complexity.

MedTrainer healthcare credentialing software centralizes every step into one intuitive platform, automating the rest, and ensuring every team member is working from the same accurate data. By unifying workflows, automating packet creation, and integrating trusted data sources, MedTrainer removes the friction from credentialing so providers can start seeing patients (and generating revenue) faster.

Check out the 6 Best Time-Saving Features in MedTrainer Credentialing.

Why Multiple Portals Are Slowing Down Credentialing (and How to Simplify the Process)

Increase Credentialing Speed and Accuracy With Next-Gen Technology