case study
PGL/PCL Case Study of 25K+ transactions demonstrates 20%+ decrease in payer denials and 13%+ net revenue increase when clinics order through Shadowbox
Client Overview:
PGL/PCL is a multi-state, medium-sized diagnostic laboratory operating in a competitive and high-pressure healthcare environment. PGL/PCL faced the all-too-common downstream consequences of incomplete, incorrect, and fax, portal or paper-based orders. Like many labs, they tested nearly every specimen that came through the door regardless of order quality due to turnaround time pressures, often resulting in revenue loss and operational inefficiencies.
The Challenge: Poor Order Quality Was Dragging Everyone Down
Poorly completed test orders are one of the biggest drains on lab resources and revenue. PGL/PCL experienced every type of bad order imaginable, including:
- Incomplete or inaccurate patient and insurance data
- Illegible handwritten forms and missing paperwork
- Non-compliant or medically unnecessary test orders
- Manual entry errors from faxed, portal, or verbal orders
- This disorganized front-end process didn’t just burden the lab operationally. It also limited what the lab’s ability to recover revenue. Most importantly, it caused disruption and rework by the referring provider offices resulting in delays to optimal patient care.
The Solution: Fix the Front-End with Shadowbox
Clinics submitted clean digital orders to the lab through Shadowbox with no need for HL7 integration or IT support.
We deployed a custom, secure ordering application to high-volume referring clinics that:
- Captured all required data at the time of order
- Included the lab’s required business and payer logic by test modality
- Delivered clean, complete, and compliant orders
- Eliminated faxing, scanning, and manual retyping
During the case study period, more than 50 clinics were onboarded, using 13 different EHRs , with an average of just four days from on-boarding request to go-live with the first order. The lab saw immediate operational relief.
Impact of our Solution
Shadowbox didn’t just improve workflows—we turned broken orders into bankable revenue:
- $336,000+ in direct financial impact in the first year (2024), through avoided EHR/LIMS fees and increased revenue per order
- 412% ROI with payback realized in just months
- 3% increase in net collections on Shadowbox-enabled orders
- 21% drop in claim denials, reducing rework and write-offs
- 7% higher reimbursement on average compared to non-Shadowbox orders
Clinics and the lab experienced meaningful efficiency gains:
- Orders placed in under 30 seconds, down from 3 minutes
- No more scanning, faxing, or manual retyping—just clean, digital orders
- Several high-volume clinics (ie., 500+ orders/month), observed a direct monthly reduction in administrative staff time of 20+ hours, with avoided rework time reduced by 20%+ due to fewer first pass payer denials
- Shadowbox deployment completed in an average of four days per clinic with no IT involvement
“This case study proves that fixing the front end with a clean, digital ordering process has a transformative impact. With over 25,000 transactions analyzed, we saw a 21% drop in denials, over 13% increase in net revenue, and a 412% ROI—all without any IT lift. Shadowbox not only streamlined operations but turned broken processes into measurable financial wins for PGL/PCL,” said Adrian Brown, Director of Revenue Strategy, PGL/PCL.
These results underscore the broader impact Shadowbox delivers across the revenue cycle.
“Thanks to our collaboration with PGL/PCL, we showed the true power of Shadowbox to improve performance across the board. The case study didn’t even capture soft cost reductions like rework, or the increased volume made possible by going live in just four days—benefits we believe multiply the financial ROI many times over. There is no clearer evidence of the power of Shadowbox than this,” said Gregory Stein, Founder & CEO, Shadowbox.
Conclusion:
By giving clinics a fast, intuitive ordering solution that worked with their existing systems, Shadowbox helped PGL/PCL improve collections, reduce denials, and streamline workflows, all without a single integration. No interfaces. No IT burden. Just clean orders and better revenue.
case study
Shadowbox’s No Touch Results Processing Enhances Efficiency and Saves Time for Pacific Spine and Pain
Client Overview:
Pacific Spine and Pain, a premier clinic specializing in comprehensive pain management, provides exceptional care through personalized treatment plans and advanced medical procedures. MedScan Laboratory partnered with Shadowbox to provide EHR integration to their LIMS on behalf of Pacific Spine and Pain.
Challenge & Solution:
In prior roles, Jacob Green, MS, CLS, of Pacific Spine and Pain had used many electronic tools for processing results into patient charts, all of which he describes as “incredibly clunky and outdated”.
MedScan Laboratories, a diagnostic laboratory providing test results to Pacific Spine and Pain, partnered with Shadowbox to implement electronic integration through Shadowbox, including no touch results processing. This innovative feature was designed to automate the processing of incoming results into the patient chart in the practice EHR. No touch results processing significantly reduces the burden of manual data entry. Green describes Shadowbox as “very effective, user-friendly, intuitive, and easy to use” and shares that it saves him “a ton of time”.
With the implementation of no touch results processing, results from MedScan are seamlessly delivered to the EHR at Pacific Spine and Pain, ensuring that vital patient information is promptly available for clinical review. Utilizing this feature has reduced the time spent on manual data entry by Green by 50 minutes per week.
Impact:
The adoption of the no touch results processing feature impacted Pacific Spine and Pain’s operational efficiency in the following ways:
Time Savings
Green reports a decrease in 50 minutes per week spent processing test results, allowing him to focus on other critical tasks.
Reduced Workload
Roughly 100 test results per week from MedScan are currently being processed by the no touch automation provided by MedScan and powered by Shadowbox.
Enhanced Accuracy
The integration also reduces the risk of human error associated with manual processing, ensuring that accurate results are consistently available to the clinical care team at Pacific Spine and Pain.
According to Natalie Bova, Director of Client Relations at MedScan, “MedScan Laboratory is committed to providing cutting-edge technology to enhance the laboratory experience of our clients and their patients. Through our partnership with Shadowbox, we have taken a significant step forward in streamlining the delivery of lab results. We have enabled healthcare providers to access critical diagnostic information more efficiently and securely with Shadowbox's No Touch Results Processing”.
Bova continues, “This collaboration has redefined the way our clients interact with laboratory data, reducing administrative burdens and improving patient care outcomes. With real-time result integration, healthcare providers can make faster, informed decisions, ultimately benefiting the patients they serve. MedScan Laboratory’s partnership with Shadowbox exemplifies our dedication to innovation and our clients' success."
Conclusion:
The collaboration between Pacific Spine and Pain, MedScan Laboratories, and Shadowbox exemplifies how healthcare technology can drive meaningful change. By leveraging the no touch results processing feature provided by MedScan and powered by Shadowbox, Pacific Spine and Pain is improving workflow efficiency and saving valuable time, empowering the clinic to focus on what matters most—delivering exceptional patient care.
case study
Lab Genomics – Shadowbox’s Ingenuity Improves Data Accuracy While Reducing Cost
Client Overview:
Lab Genomics, a leader in molecular and genetic diagnostics, is dedicated to delivering individualized medical care through state-of-the-art testing to provide the best quality of life for patients. Their mission is to deliver a suite of unmatched molecular diagnostics to provide preventive, predictive, personalized healthcare services.
Lab Genomics came to Shadowbox with multiple goals:
Improve efficiency for their team
Reduce excessive costs created by redundancy; and
Ensure compliance.
Lab Genomics struggled to seamlessly deliver complete, consolidated test results to their clients. Results data transferred via HL7 message did not precisely match the PDF version of their lab report. These discrepancies led to increased costs, fragmented reporting and poor data accuracy.
Challenge & Solution:
Lab Genomics partnered with Shadowbox to automate lab orders and results workflow with their clinician customers. During the integration process, Shadowbox’s VP of Implementation & Product Brian Hood identified that Lab Genomics' existing lab report PDFs did not incorporate all necessary results from HL7 data, causing issues with data integrity and increased costs per transaction from EHR vendors.
To address this, Shadowbox developed the perfect solution for Lab Genomics, aligning the discrete data extracted from HL7 messages and providing comprehensive PDF results reports. This transformation ensured all critical patient data points were captured and displayed accurately in a standardized format. Shadowbox implemented an automated process to merge these newly generated PDFs with existing lab report PDFs seamlessly.
Conclusion:
By leveraging innovative thinking and patented technology, Shadowbox successfully resolved Lab Genomics’ data discrepancies while reducing costs. As Lab Genomics' President, Leena Dalal noted, “Our physician clients don’t want fragmented data. They need everything in one clear PDF, not just discrete data points.” Shadowbox's innovative, client-centered approach delivers healthcare IT solutions that prioritize accuracy, efficiency, and client satisfaction for all stakeholders.
case study
Birdrock Laboratories - Realizing 10x return on Shadowbox tech
San Diego, CA-based Birdrock Laboratories is a blood, toxicology, and molecular diagnostic lab, providing services to healthcare providers seeking fast turnaround times on clinically actionable results. As a high-complexity, COLA-accredited laboratory, Birdrock seeks to expand services beyond the local community and has licensed Shadowbox as its EHR automation provider.
When customers want to begin ordering tests and receiving results electronically, Birdrock can now provide them with their own branded ‘Birdrock’ easy-order application, which instantly connects to the clinics' EHR. Because each clinic uses its own EHR, training its staff takes just a few minutes. Birdrock can begin receiving electronic orders in just a couple of days, not weeks or months, and they can be confident that those orders are accurate.
In an industry where the standard for EHR integration is costly to implement and slow to complete, Shadowbox is lightyears ahead of the alternatives.
Staff is trained on Shadowbox in few a minutes
Electronic orders can be initiated within days not weeks or months
Each order is complete and accurate
Since August 2018, Birdrock has implemented Shadowbox in more than seventy practices across eleven states. Jonathan A., an executive at a multi-location intensive outpatient treatment facility, said, “At one point, we considered switching lab providers, but then we found out the new lab didn’t offer Shadowbox. That was the end of that discussion.”
With Shadowbox, Birdrock increased revenue through more successful insurance claim collections, reduced staff costs previously spent on tracking down missing billing information and appealing denied claims, and dramatically reduced the time needed to onboard new customers.
“Every time we convert a practice from paper to Shadowbox, we reduce claims with missing billing information by more than 90%. As a result, Birdrock is realizing a 10x return on our investment every month.”
case study
Myriad - Finding Shadowbox
Info Box
Discover how one of the nation’s largest genetic testing and precision medicine companies began solving their interoperability challenges.
Myriad's Urology division provides state-of-the-art genetic testing supporting risk factors related to men's health. This rapidly growing division at Myriad struggled to automate the test ordering process for their customers as the internal IT department already managed a hefty pipeline of scheduled projects with limited bandwidth to code more traditional or API integrations. That’s when Sam Sgambati, Myriad’s National Director for Sales and Strategic Accounts found Shadowbox.
They asked Shadowbox to enable their clinician customers to implement an electronic ordering and resulting process for the Prolaris and MyRisk Hereditary Cancer tests without requiring the use of Myriad’s internal IT resources. That’s exactly what happened. Shadowbox digitized Myriad’s order forms and embedded them in a white-labeled “Myriad Test Ordering Application” installed on the clinician’s desktop computer. With a single click, a patient’s critical diagnostic, demographic, and insurance information is transferred to the digital order form. The clinician completes the order and submits it electronically to Myriad where the order awaits for the specimen to arrive at the lab. This out-of-the-box solution can be installed in a new clinician’s office in a matter of minutes with zero use of Myriad’s internal IT resources.
As a result of the successful easy-ordering solution, Myriad commissioned Shadowbox to add a feature that automatically notifies the referring physician (usually the pathologist) that a Myriad test has been ordered and once completed, automatically provides them with an electronic copy of the results. Following this implementation, Myriad continues to identify and consider other opportunities to implement Shadowbox across the enterprise.
