Capital District Physicians Health Plan Cuts Down Contract Time With Docusign CLM

Established in 1984 by a team of physicians, Capital District Physicians Health Plan (CDPHP) has a strong commitment to its roots. Even today, eight of its 15 board members are physicians, working closely with local healthcare providers on care decisions. The CDPHP’s promise? Revolutionizing primary care to reward doctors for quality, not quantity. Currently, CDPHP and its affiliates serve members across 24 counties in New York with a full family of products, from preventative care to gym memberships and vaccinations. In fact, the CDPHP has been on the  front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, facilitating testing and vaccine administration.

The company is proud of its superior customer experience, but internally, CDPHP struggled with manual and slow paper processes that bogged down operations. As a healthcare organization, its contracts—used to secure agreements between CDPHP and physician, facility and ancillary partners—were complex and subject to regulatory compliance. For example, CDPHP was required to submit any changes to its contract templates to the Department of Health, and ensure they meet evolving regulatory standards.

Relying primarily on Microsoft Excel for contract and data management, CDPHP knew it needed a more sophisticated solution to effectively work with its partners—and continue to provide quality care and customer experience.  

Docusign CLM integration with Salesforce was key for CDPHP

Of the various parties that CDPHP works with, facilities partnerships produce the most negotiated and highest-value contracts. But historically, these contracts could take six to 12 months to finalize because of the amount of redlining involved. Plus, CDPHP was storing all contract data in Microsoft Excel, making it susceptible to errors and security breaches. 

CDPHP knew that it could accelerate the timeline and reduce risk by implementing a contract management application. The need became ever more urgent and apparent, however, after their network crashed in the middle of a major deal.

Timing played a big role in CDPHP’s technology decision: CDPHP had started using Salesforce’s Sales Cloud CRM as a company-wide, primary source of contract data. The company recognized that this would be the perfect opportunity to add a contract lifecycle management tool as well, and began considering technologies that would integrate seamlessly with Salesforce. As a Salesforce Platinum Partner, Docusign CLM provided the integration and the product flexibility that CDPHP needed. 

“We live in a grey world—we need to be able to get from point A to point B in three different ways sometimes. Docusign CLM gave us that flexibility in functionality,” Sarah Kennedy, network operations coordinator at CDPHP, said.

From paper contracts, to the cloud

Once CDPHP implemented Docusign CLM, the company quickly moved its pre-existing contracts and documents to the cloud. From there, Docusign CLM enabled CDPHP to build a custom, digital workflow that decreased the time it took to create a new contract and walk through the negotiation phase with facilities clients by at least 50%. 

“We are using Docusign CLM to assist with going paperless and storing all contract documents and artifacts electronically, while also managing the lifecycle of our contracts,” Kennedy said.

Today, CDPHP benefits from Docusign CLM’s automated workflow processes, reducing risk and making the long redlining process faster and easier. CDPHP has eliminated its paper-based system entirely—now, all of CDPHP’s documents are in one organized, secure, searchable location.