Faster Approvals & Stronger Appeals: Family Allergy & Asthma’s Prior Authorization Transformation
As one of the largest independent allergy practices in the country, with 700+ employees across nine states, Family Allergy & Asthma contends with the same prior authorization (PA) and appeals pressures every specialty practice faces – but at a much larger scale. With Tandem, PAs and appeals have become one of the practice’s clearest operational wins.
Tandem’s Impact at a Glance
Location
Midwest and East Coast
Size
~100 providers across 9 states
Specialty
Allergy
The Challenge: A System Strained by Manual Workflows
Before Tandem, Family Allergy’s PA process was highly manual, leading to delays. It often took a full week just to initiate a request, followed by another week or more of waiting for a payer response.
Nursing staff were forced to handle complex administrative loads while juggling dozens of patient care priorities, making every step a challenge. When denials occurred, appeal letters were written by hand while juggling dozens of other priorities, often lacking the comprehensive clinical context required to successfully overturn inappropriate denials; when PAs were approved, they were still often guessing which specialty pharmacy was in-network.
An Onboarding Experience That Has Outperformed Every Vendor
That’s why upon first hearing about Tandem, Family Allergy moved forward quickly with onboarding. The practice’s EMR had historically been a friction point for third-party vendors, but Tandem broke the mold by deploying resources to move quickly.
“Of all the third-party vendors we've used, Tandem has been the most attentive and the quickest to get implemented…
Our EMR is very much a struggle for other vendors to integrate with. Tandem stayed on it and got us live in record-breaking time compared to our other experiences.”
— Chrissy Susshine, VP of Clinical Operations
A New Rhythm for the Clinical Team
With Tandem, the "Monday prescription" no longer sits until Thursday. PA initiation now happens same-day, creating a faster, more predictable operational rhythm. By identifying insurance- preferred specialty pharmacies instantly, Tandem eliminates guesswork and delays that previously stalled therapy.
Same-Day Initiation: PAs are now initiated the moment the prescription is written, with time to approval at a median of 1.1 days.
Total Staff Relief: The administrative workload on nursing staff has been reduced by 70%.
Intelligent Pharmacy Routing: Tandem identifies the insurance-preferred specialty pharmacy instantly, eliminating manual rerouting.
Proactive Patient Communication: Patients receive real-time text updates and proactive support for bridge programs and copay assistance.
“This was a really big burden lifted off our nursing staff's shoulders. We can just send the prescription electronically, and Tandem takes it from there.”
— Megan Chancey, Director of Immunotherapy
Transforming Post-Denial Outcomes
The most significant clinical win has been the transformation of the appeals process. Previously, many denials led to grueling cycles of second-level reviews or peer-to-peer calls, because staff didn't have the time to mine years of clinical data for every letter.
Tandem’s system automatically pulls the patient’s full clinical history to generate a comprehensive letter whenever needed.
“We've seen an increase in appeal approvals through Tandem compared to what our team could do before, with more appeals approved and fewer pushed to second-level or peer-to-peer. This comes down to the quality of the Tandem appeal letters. They're pulling in all of the patient's clinicals, not just the last year or so that our nursing staff would only have the time to dig into on their own.”
— Megan Chancey, Director of Immunotherapy
Tandem’s "Glass Box" Supporting Data-Driven Leadership
Tandem has replaced administrative blind spots with a "glass box" view of the entire PA lifecycle. Leadership now has a real-time pulse on approval rates, turnaround times, and payer-level patterns, while team members can track the status of any specific prescription with a few clicks.
“With the glass box view Tandem provides, I can pull up a patient account and see in real time everything that's been done. I can see at a much more granular level.”
— Chrissy Susshine, VP of Clinical Operations
That same visibility has strengthened Family Allergy's broader strategic conversations. With real performance data at their fingertips, leadership can surface patterns, pinpoint where the process can improve, and drive more productive discussions across the full medication access workflow.
“Having those numbers allows us to identify issues and drive much more productive discussions.”
— Chrissy Susshine, VP of Clinical Operations
The Freedom to Focus on Patients
With Tandem, nursing staff have traded paperwork for patient care, and providers prescribe with confidence knowing the backend is handled.
“Tandem automates the administrative heavy lifting behind the scenes so our clinical team can stay focused on the patient.”
— Megan Chancey, Director of Immunotherapy
This shift has been so transformative that the practice now treats Tandem as foundational to how it operates. As the team explores more clinical tools, upholding the Tandem workflow is a part of the conversation, because it is a platform the team is not willing to go without.
Supporting Your Practice
If your allergy or specialty practice is ready to streamline prior authorizations and accelerate access to therapy, sign up your practice for Tandem today or book a demo to learn more.