ArkCloud Access capabilities

Access covers the front door: an inbound referral, the registration and intake that follow, the consent that has to be signed, the waitlist a cancelled slot is offered from - and, from one workspace, the booking, check-in, coverage and messages that come next.

Those last steps are not a second copy of anything. Online booking, check-in, copay, benefits and reminders run on ArkCloud Rehab's calendar and episodes; eligibility and prior authorization on the organisation's shared payer records; patient messages on Rehab's care-team threads and the billing office's inbox. A visit approved from Access is on the same calendar the clinician works from, and a reply sent from Access is in the same thread. So the parts that run on ArkCloud Rehab need Rehab as well, and say so on the screen when it is missing.

Eligibility is a real 270/271: in real time through Availity, or, without Availity, queued as a batch through the clearinghouse mailbox and answered when the payer's 271 comes back. Both are configured once for the whole deployment rather than per organisation. A simulated eligibility response is worse than no answer at all - somebody acting on a fabricated "covered" result has been actively misled - so with neither connected, as on the hosted service today, no check is made, and nothing is ever shown as coverage that a payer did not return. Benefits verification is the human alternative: staff record what the payer stated by phone or on its portal, labelled with how and when it was obtained.

Prior authorization is tracked, not transmitted. Access records the request, every contact with the payer and the determination, and watches the visits used against what was approved - but ArkCloud does not send a 278 to the payer. Somebody submits it by phone, fax, mail or the payer's portal, and Access records that they did.

Four capabilities are built but wait on something outside the code, and are listed that way below: eligibility needs Availity credentials; reminders, and telling a patient a reply is waiting, need an email or SMS provider; copay collection needs a connected Stripe account. Online booking and check-in are switched off until an organisation turns them on.