Straight through processing (STP) has long been a staple in finance and logistics, but it’s now making serious inroads into healthcare workflows. From referral intake to prior authorization, STP is automating repetitive administrative tasks, enabling providers and payers to focus more on patients and less on paperwork.
We connected with Kevin Hodak, Vice President, Strategy & Integration at Concord Technologies, to discuss how STP is being applied in real-world healthcare settings — and why this approach may be the key to unlocking long-overdue administrative efficiencies.
Straight through processing (STP) is common in the finance and logistics sectors. How can healthcare benefit from it?
Kevin: In finance, data is highly structured — think EDI feeds, invoice numbers, or standardized SWIFT messages. That makes automation easier. Healthcare, on the other hand, has massive variability. You’ve got PDFs, faxes, scanned documents, and emails, all containing different types of clinical and administrative information, and primarily in an unstructured format.
It’s a harder problem to solve technically, but the need is massive. Staff are spending countless hours reviewing documents, matching them to patients, and manually routing them. That’s where STP comes in — automating those “first touch” processes to reduce repetitive work and speed up care delivery.
So, what does STP look like in a healthcare setting? Can you give an example?
Kevin: Sure — one of the most impactful areas is referral intake. Let’s say you’re a behavioral-health provider. Every day, you receive dozens or even hundreds of referrals via fax. Without STP, someone has to open each fax, recognize it as a referral, figure out which service line it belongs to, and manually route it.
With STP, that process is automated. The system identifies the document as a referral, extracts key data such as patient name, date of birth, and in some cases keywords that help identify the type of care the patient needs, matches it to a patient or provider, and routes it to the right intake team. In some cases, it even pre-populates EHR fields.
This matters because timing is everything. If multiple providers receive the same referral, the first to act usually wins. STP increases speed and accuracy — getting patients into care faster. It also supports a provider’s operational objectives, providing insight on where referrals are coming from, the time to disposition, and where process bottlenecks exist, enabling providers to manage their business more effectively.
That’s a clear win for providers. What’s another area that benefits them, as well as improve operations for payers or other healthcare organizations?
Kevin: A major area of concern across healthcare is the slowness of prior authorization processing. With STP, our Concord Connect platform can classify a document as a prior-auth response, determine whether it’s an approval or denial, and route it immediately to the right person or system. That’s crucial in avoiding delays.
Providers benefit from those faster prior authorization responses. These are time-sensitive documents — an approval or denial could mean the difference between moving forward with care or rescheduling a procedure.
For prior-authorization and other paperwork, payers can leverage our AI and OCR tools to extract data from documents and push it into their proprietary systems. They don’t need to rip and replace their workflow; they just integrate STP where it helps most.
How does the system know when it can act autonomously and when to involve a human?
Kevin: That’s where confidence scoring comes in. Each document classification and data extraction has a confidence level. If the confidence is above a certain threshold, it can go straight through — no human intervention needed. If it’s below, it’s flagged for review.
A great example is a radiology department we work with. They were receiving all imaging orders — MRI, CT, X-ray — via the same fax line. Staff had to manually sort and route them. We trained the system to distinguish between order types with high confidence. For instance, MRI orders go directly to MRI scheduling. If the system isn’t sure, it goes into a review queue. Over time, as the AI learns from human corrections, the confidence improves, and fewer documents need human eyes.
Once the document has been processed and routed, what’s the next step in the process? Where do the documents and data go from there?
Kevin: Interoperability has long been one of the most pervasive challenges in health care, and that is where STP can really make an impact. Once the document and the data have been processed and routed, the “last mile” of STP is integration of those documents into the EHR. Using a number of methods including HL7/FHIR, custom APIs, etc. we can now integrate documents and data from disparate systems into the EHR or other system of record.
Is this technology accessible to smaller or mid-sized healthcare providers? Or is it only for large health systems?
Kevin: It’s definitely accessible. One of our longtime customers is an EHR vendor for physical therapy clinics. They’ve used our cloud fax platform for more than a decade and recently started adding STP features.
These clinics often receive progress notes and referrals via fax. Previously, staff had to open each document, classify it, find the patient in the system, and manually enter the data. With STP, much of that happens automatically. Through this automation, the goal is to reduce number of manual steps as much as 80%, from 10 to 2 or 3.
It’s not about replacing people. It’s about letting them focus on higher-value work instead of spending hours reviewing paperwork.
You just mentioned one of your longtime customers is an EHR vendor. How do EHR vendors benefit from STP?
Kevin: We have been working with EHR and other software vendors for decades, helping them extend the functionality of their platforms with our cloud fax and document processing capabilities. Through the integration of our technology into their platforms, these vendors are able to help their customers improve the transmission and processing of fax documents within the application they are already using. It adds value to the EHR application and improves efficiency for their customers. It’s a win-win.
What makes Concord’s STP offering different from generic OCR or automation tools?
Kevin: We’ve been building this platform for more than seven years, focused specifically on healthcare. It’s not just about scanning text — it’s about understanding context, document type, and clinical intent.
We support mass customization — every organization has different workflows and data needs. For one provider, a referral might go straight into an intake queue. For another, it might be used to trigger insurance-eligibility checks. Our platform allows for that detailed level of tailored automation.
Also, many of the tools available for OCR and automation stop once the document has been processed, but, as I mentioned, we help take that document the last mile and integrate it into the EHR or other system of record, so it becomes part of the patient record.
How does STP impact staffing and labor shortages in healthcare?
Kevin: It’s huge. Most organizations are trying to do more with fewer people. Burnout is real. You’ve got nurses, medical support staff, and administrative staff spending hours each day on low-level document processing.
STP relieves that burden. It frees up those people to focus on patient communication, scheduling, clinical coordination — things that actually move the needle in terms of care quality and patient experience.
We’ve had customers tell us it felt like hiring two or three full-time staff just by reducing the need for manual review.
What about organizations that aren’t quite ready for full automation? Can they still benefit from STP?
Kevin: Absolutely. STP isn’t all or nothing. Many customers start by using AI to assist with classification and routing — even if humans still review everything before final action. Over time, as confidence grows, more steps are automated.
We work with each customer to map out a phased approach. You can start small — maybe just automating intake triage — and expand to other document types later.
What’s the long-term vision for STP in healthcare?
Kevin: Today, most STP is focused on administrative tasks — referrals, prior authorization, progress notes, etc.. The future is clinical. Imagine being able to extract structured clinical data from unstructured documents and use that to support care coordination, pre-charting, or even predictive analytics.
We’re laying the foundation for that now. The key is building trust, accuracy, and interoperability so STP becomes a natural extension of how healthcare is delivered.
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