High Labor Costs in Decentralized PA Processing

$1,000–$1,500 per month in pharmacist and support staff time spent on low-volume but high-touch workers comp PA cases, representing a non-trivial share of the decentralized PA labor overrun. • $1,020 per month (Medicaid-specific PA coordination; lower volume than commercial but high manual effort) • $1,020 per month (overtime and temporary staffing to handle PA surge; typically 15-20% increase in labor during peak periods)

Calls to 5-10+ different insurance carriers; hold times 10-20 minutes; manual spreadsheet tracking by carrier; fax follow-ups; no consolidated view of PA status • Centralized PA coordinator handles calls to multiple insurers; paper-based resident medication cards; manual reconciliation of approvals; batch fax submissions • Clinical pharmacists manually track and chase PAs using paper folders, sticky notes, shared Excel trackers, and ad‑hoc EMR notes while spending large blocks of time on phone calls and faxing forms to multiple plans.