Mar 31
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Cherokee Legal Holdings Positioned for Growth, Hires Michael Byman as Vice President of Sales and Marketing

By | Press Releases

Cherokee Legal Holdings’ 5-Year Compound Annual Growth Rate Exceeds 50 Percent, Hires Vice President of Sales and Marketing to Lead the Company Through the Next Phase of Growth

March 31, 2021 – Atlanta – Today, Cherokee Legal Holdings (“Cherokee”), a full-service direct legal and medical services company, providing financial assistance for plaintiffs, payment for medical care and the servicing of third-party, torte action receivables for medical providers, announced the hiring of Michael Byman as Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Michael began with Cherokee at the beginning of the year.

“Michael’s extensive experience in the healthcare space combined with his focus on customer service and his competitive edge from being both a collegiate and professional athlete fits perfectly with Cherokee’s growth initiatives. We are here to change the healthcare and legal playing fields to the benefit of providers, attorneys and patients and he is the ideal leader for these goals,” said Cherokee CEO, Reid Zeising. “Michael has proven to be successful at every stage in his career and this latest challenge is one that he is ideally suited for.”

Prior to joining Cherokee, Michael worked as Regional Vice President for Jackson Physician Search, a Jackson Healthcare Company, where his region experienced 180 percent growth under his leadership, making it number one in region (2016-2020) for both growth and revenue. Additionally, Michael worked for Merritt Hawkins, part of AMN Healthcare, as Director of Business Development and Marketing, Smart-Tek as Divisional Vice President – Healthcare, and CompuPay Inc. as District Sales Manager.

The announcement of Michael comes as part of a series of promotions and new hires as Cherokee prepares for the next stage of company growth. Cherokee also recently announced the launch of Gain Servicing (www.gainservicing.com), a SaaS-based, AI-enhanced third-party servicing platform.

About Cherokee Legal Holdings

Cherokee Legal Holdings (“Cherokee”), parent company of Cherokee Funding and Gain Servicing, is the fastest growing legal funding and medical lien servicing company in the United States. Cherokee has built a best-in-class technology platform with core competencies designed specifically to effectively service and manage tens of thousands of third-party liability liens simultaneously – this has proven to be much more effective than if a provider were to manage any volume of liens in-house.

More about our companies:

  • Cherokee Funding (cherokeefunding.com) provides monetary advances for personal injury victims to pay for their life needs and medical procedures while they await fair settlements.
  • Designed for healthcare providers, Gain Servicing (gainservicing.com) is built on a SaaS based, AI-enhance lien servicing platform and provides revenue cycle management (RCM), financial, underwriting, risk management, settlement, collections and reporting services to healthcare providers who treat personal injury victims.

Fundamentally, Cherokee believes that uninsured and underinsured patients who have suffered injuries in an accident, through no fault of their own, should have access to the same high-quality medical care as insured victims. In addition to Cherokee Funding and Gain Servicing, Cherokee has established a non-profit organization built around personal injury victim access to medical care. Stay tuned for more details, www.allpatientaccess.com.

Mar 22
0

Danika Ransom Promoted to Senior Director of Operations, Richard Harrison Promoted to Director of Corporate Development & Finance

By | Press Releases

Cherokee Legal Holdings Announces the Promotion of Two Senior Team Members, Makes Two Additional Hires as Part of Company Growth Plan

March 22, 2021 – Atlanta – Today, Cherokee Legal Holdings (“Cherokee”), a full-service direct legal and medical services company, providing financial assistance for plaintiffs, payment for medical care and the servicing of third-party, torte action receivables for medical providers, announced the promotion of two senior team members.

Danika Ransom was promoted to Senior Director of Operations. Starting with Cherokee in June 2016 as a Case Manager, Danika has held multiple roles, including most recently overseeing both case management and risk management. In her new role, Danika will oversee underwriting, case management and risk management, as well as lead the development and roll out of Cherokee’s healthcare provider and law firm portals. In tandem with her promotion, Danika has hired Director of Operations, Paul Palladino.

Additionally, Richard Harrison has been promoted to Director of Corporate Development & Finance.  Richard began his career with Cherokee as Manager of Financial Planning & Analysis. His curiosity, talents and thirst for knowledge led him to take on additional challenges including deal origination, merger and acquisition activity and systems development. Richard has also been actively involved in Cherokee’s artificial intelligence initiative. In his new role, Richard will lead corporate development efforts in addition to the Cherokee finance department. With his promotion, Richard has hired Matthew Winstead as Senior Corporate Development and Financial Analyst.

“These are the first of many organizational announcements to come as we prepare for the next stage of our growth,” said Cherokee CEO Reid Zeising. “We are proud to promote from within, especially individuals like Danika and Richard who are representative of the ‘can do’ attitude that exemplifies our commitment to employees, customers and partners. Our objective is to ensure that we have the best workflow possible in order to create the best user experience for our customers, and to make our process as smooth and efficient as possible. Coupled with the latest cutting-edge technology employed across our portfolio, individuals like Danika and Richard make that possible.”

The announcement of Danika and Richard comes as part of a series of promotions and new hires. Cherokee also recently announced the launch of Gain Servicing, a SaaS-based, AI-enhanced third-party servicing platform.

About Cherokee Legal Holdings

Cherokee Legal Holdings (“Cherokee”), parent company of Cherokee Funding and Gain Servicing, is the fastest growing legal funding and medical lien servicing company in the United States. Cherokee has built a best-in-class technology platform with core competencies designed specifically to effectively service and manage tens of thousands of third-party liability liens simultaneously – this has proven to be much more effective than if a provider were to manage any volume of liens in-house.

More about our companies:

  • Cherokee Funding (cherokeefunding.com) provides monetary advances for personal injury victims to pay for their life needs and medical procedures while they await fair settlements.
  • Designed for healthcare providers, Gain Servicing (gainservicing.com) is built on a SaaS based, AI-enhance lien servicing platform and provides revenue cycle management (RCM), financial, underwriting, risk management, settlement, collections and reporting services to healthcare providers who treat personal injury victims.

Fundamentally, Cherokee believes that uninsured and underinsured patients who have suffered injuries in an accident, through no fault of their own, should have access to the same high-quality medical care as insured victims. In addition to Cherokee Funding and Gain Servicing, Cherokee has established a non-profit organization built around personal injury victim access to medical care. Stay tuned for more details, www.allpatientaccess.com.

Mar 03
0

How to Increase Cash Flow from Letters of Protection

By | Blog

For many healthcare organizations, managing cash flow is a regular challenge. While insurance carriers demand more and reimburse less, the time between date of treatment to when a carrier issues payment continues to increase. This time lapse adds to the difficulty of managing cash flow – and this, of course, is just speaking to the cases where patients have insurance AND have met their deductible.

Cash flow challenges increase substantially for practices that treat uninsured and underinsured personal injury patients on liens or Letters of Protection (LOPs).   The payments awarded in these cases can take anywhere from six months to seven years, and there is no way to predict when settlements will occur and when payment will be issued. Thus, LOP account receivables (AR) build up over time as do delays in payment. Most practice management systems are not set up to handle these types of claims with relative ease.

Furthermore, when LOP account balances are paid, the vast majority are not paid in full.  Almost all payments come with reduction requests.  Not only do healthcare practices not have comparative data to understand what reduction amounts are equitable, but most do not have an attorney or paralegal on staff to assess reductions or underwrite cases prior to seeing personal injury patients.

When personal injury patients are treated on LOPs, ongoing communication with attorneys is required to avoid instances where cases settle without the practice being reimbursed.  Properly tracking cases requires a significant amount of time and resources from practice staff.

Adding to this challenge is the fact that most practice management systems do not provide even the most basic tools for revenue cycle staff to manage LOP account balances. These systems are built to help providers submit electronic claims to payers like Medicare and Blue Cross, where electronic payment is received shortly thereafter. The fields, workflow, error handling and reporting capabilities do not account for the nuances of LOPs.  This leads staff to create manual workarounds that are labor intensive, not to mention prone to error.

Partnering with an LOP Financing Company

Many practices who treat on LOPs will periodically sell their LOP AR to third-party lien financing companies, also referred to as medical funding companies. This approach has two primary advantages. First, practices are paid promptly and can maintain more stable cashflow predictions.  Second, medical practices are able to avoid all of the work that goes into managing each balance for the months or years it takes for these cases to settle and for payment to be received.

Choosing an LOP Financing Company

LOP financing is a viable and attractive option, but medical providers should be selective when choosing which LOP financing company to work with. All LOP financing companies are the same in that they offer your practice cash for LOP AR; the business terms and services, however, vary greatly. There are obvious factors to consider, like cost and reputation and some less obvious criteria, like the technology platform and internal efficiency of the financing company.  There are many LOP financing companies, but few that are established, well capitalized, and expertly managed.

We recommend using a simple decision matrix, an example of which is provided below. A comparative matrix like this allows you to cross-reference companies and rank them to ensure you select the best fit for your practice. For subjective criteria, like reputation, we suggest using a 1-10 scale to help rank each company.

What terms are they offering?
How quickly will you receive funds?
How long has the company been in business?
Do they know your geographic market?
Are you confident in their servicing and collection methods?
What is their competitive advantage?

Do not underestimate the value of an LOP financing company’s competitive advantage. Gain Servicing, for instance, has an AI-powered platform that creates efficiencies for the healthcare practices that have chosen to partner with us. Take the time to ask prospective financing companies about their current capabilities and services as well as their future plans. In essence, they will be serving as an extension of your business, or, at the very least, an extension of your AR team, so make sure you land on a financing partner that you can see yourself working well with and that will deliver the most value to your practice.

About Gain Servicing

Gain Servicing specializes in the servicing and financing of personal injury patient receivables. Gain Servicing experts handle day-to-day, transactional accounts receivables functions on behalf of medical practices while office staff and providers focus on delivering exceptional care and services to patients.

Gain Servicing’s technology platform is powered by artificial intelligence and is built to track, manage and optimize returns from Letter of Protection (LOP) account balances. Gain Servicing’s financial solutions can provide immediate cash flow and the highest returns on a healthcare practice’s assets. Gain Servicing’s solutions are proven to provide higher returns, at a lower cost, than in-house or other third party LOP financing options.