Turning backlogs into breakthroughs: A revenue cycle success story

How Access Healthcare Empowered Exact Sciences to Scale, Streamline, and Automate

Exact Sciences—makers of Cologuard®, the groundbreaking at-home colon cancer screening test—has rapidly become a household name in diagnostics. But with this growth came a new challenge: evolving their revenue cycle operations to keep pace with their clinical breakthroughs. Surging patient volumes, expanding service lines, and skyrocketing demand stretched internal teams to their limits. Backlogs grew. Staffing capacity hit a ceiling.  

 That’s when Access Healthcare stepped in.

“Our partnership with Access Healthcare has yielded cost-effective and highly efficient outcomes without compromising quality.”
— Vice President of Revenue Cycle

A Partnership Built for Scale

From day one, Access Healthcare worked hand-in-hand with Exact Sciences to pinpoint operational bottlenecks and craft a strategic roadmap for transformation. The first mission: eliminate order entry and A/R backlogs—critical for delivering timely care and capturing revenue.  

 Within just three weeks, Access Healthcare rolled out a tailored solution featuring:  

  • Rapid staff recruitment and onboarding  

  • Automated workflow design  

  • Six Sigma®-inspired quality audits  

  • Real-time, collaborative performance monitoring  

The first big test arrived almost immediately—during the holiday crunch.  With revenue targets on the line, both Exact Sciences and Access Healthcare tracked daily progress. The outcome? More than 90,000 backlogged orders cleared—cementing Exact Sciences’ confidence in the outsourcing partnership.

“Every phase of the transition exceeded the productivity and quality metrics, amazing!”
— Executive Vice President, Revenue Cycle

From Overflow Support to Enterprise Transformation

Early wins quickly turned a tactical project into a strategic alliance. Impressed by Access Healthcare’s results, Exact Sciences expanded the partnership to include mid-cycle RCM functions such as: 

  • Order quality and validation 

  • Patient data review  

  • Billing readiness and follow-up 

Competing for talent in the bustling upper Midwest tech corridor, Exact Sciences made Access Healthcare its first blended-shore RCM partner—a move that delivered immediate productivity gains and laid the groundwork for scalable, long-term growth. 

Results That Speak for Themselves  

Exact Sciences’ RCM improvements weren’t just incremental—they were game changers. Access Healthcare helped Exact Sciences overcome operational constraints, accelerate cash flow, and boost productivity across the revenue cycle.  

  • Insurance verification volumes dropped from 55,000 to 18,000  

  • Daily A/R follow-up queues fell from 26,000 to 15,000  

  • Reimbursement denial inventory shrank from 9,000 to 1,500 for major payers like UnitedHealthcare, Aetna, and Cigna  

  • Lag days for insurance verification decreased from 30 to just two, with special projects processing 6,000 claims in five days—driving $2 million in collections  

All this was achieved within the robust, self-contained Epic EHR ecosystem. Access Healthcare’s deep platform expertise enabled seamless optimization—reducing denials, increasing throughput, and safeguarding compliance and security.

Driving Margin Improvement with Tech-Enabled Performance

Today, more than 330 Access Healthcare professionals support Exact Sciences across the revenue cycle. But this collaboration is about more than just people—it’s about building the future:  

  • Reducing manual work through automation  

  • Accelerating billing cycles  

  • Improving accuracy and reporting transparency  

  • Creating a tech-enabled model that scales with demand  

The shared vision: shift from labor-intensive operations to intelligent, technology-driven processes that continuously improve margins and elevate the patient experience.

A Revenue Cycle Built for Tomorrow

Exact Sciences is transforming from an entrepreneurial lab network into a fully integrated, publicly traded diagnostics powerhouse. And Access Healthcare provides the operational backbone to scale with speed and precision. Together, we’re proving that smart outsourcing isn’t just about cutting costs—it’s about gaining a strategic advantage.


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