How Ignite Medical Resorts saved $900,000 annually by centralizing admissions and managed care with exacare ai

By centralizing admissions and managed care with exacare ai, Ignite reduced referral response time by 80%, cut managed care processing time by 52%, and generated $900,000 in annual savings across more than 30 facilities.

Introduction

“By centralizing our admissions and case management departments, we were able to realize approximately $900,000 in annual savings.”

Ignite Medical Resorts runs one of the highest-volume short-term rehabilitation models in skilled nursing. Most of Ignite’s buildings complete more than 100 admissions per month, and the organization expects to care for more than 22,000 admissions this year.

The team had already built a strong admissions and managed care operation before exacare ai. Ignite knew its markets, had deep hospital relationships, and held itself to a clear standard: respond quickly, be easy to work with, and give referral partners accurate answers.

But as Ignite expanded across states, referral volume increased, and managed care became a larger share of the business, the work became harder to manage through building-by-building processes and disconnected systems. The workflows that helped Ignite grow were starting to create too much manual coordination for the scale of the business.

With exacare ai, Ignite centralized admissions and managed care into one shared workflow. The result was faster referral decisions, cleaner authorization submissions, real-time portfolio visibility, and approximately $900,000 in annual savings.

Key Results

• $900,000 in annual savings through centralized admissions and case management with exacare ai
• 80% reduction in referral response time, from a 30-minute benchmark to 6 minutes
• 52% reduction in managed care processing time, from referral receipt to submission

The Customer

Ignite Medical Resorts is a post-hospital rehabilitation company built around short-term skilled nursing and rehabilitation. Its model combines advanced clinical care with a hospitality-driven experience: private rooms, chef-prepared food, concierge service, robotics, virtual reality, and modern therapy environments.

As Tim describes it, Ignite’s model is built to “raise the bar and extinguish the stereotype of typical skilled nursing facilities.”

Ignite operates 32 facilities across Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas, with expansion into North Carolina underway.

The company is also unique in how much of its business is managed care. It makes up roughly 60% of Ignite’s volume, “probably more than anybody in the country,” as Tim describes it. That payor mix makes speed, accuracy, and authorization workflows central to how the business runs.

The Stakeholders

Tim Fields, CEO and Co-Founder

Tim Fields has spent more than two decades building and leading post-acute care organizations. Before co-founding Ignite in 2018, he held senior leadership roles across skilled nursing and post-acute networks, including Symphony Post Acute Network and Lexington Health Care. At Ignite, Tim brings both the facility-level perspective of a skilled nursing operator and the strategic perspective of someone scaling a short-term rehab model across multiple states.

Nicole Jablonski, Chief Development Officer

Nicole Jablonski has spent more than 20 years in healthcare development, marketing, admissions, and post-acute growth strategy. Before joining Ignite in 2019, she held business development and marketing leadership roles across Symphony Post Acute Network, NuCare Services, and other organizations. At Ignite, Nicole oversees marketing and admissions across the portfolio, which puts her close to referral volume, hospital responsiveness, admissions workflows, and the data leaders need to manage performance across markets.

Justin Meara, Senior Vice President, Managed Care

Justin Meara leads managed care operations at Ignite, including the prior authorization workflows that support a heavily managed care business. With roughly 60% of Ignite’s volume tied to managed care, Justin’s team plays a critical role in moving patients from referral to admission. His team works across referral packets, benefits information, payor requirements, and clinical documentation to submit authorizations quickly and accurately.

The Challenge: Scaling a High-Volume Model Across Markets

Ignite’s admissions model was already fast by industry standards. The team had set a clear expectation for hospital partners: every referral should receive a response in 30 minutes or less.

That said, as they expanded across markets, the operational load increased. Many buildings were managing more than 100 admissions per month, with referral volume often much higher. Teams were working across 6+ referral systems, each with separate logins and workflows. Admissions teams reviewed clinical packets, coordinated with hospitals, communicated across stakeholders, and tracked performance through building-specific processes.

The work was getting done because Ignite had experienced people who knew how to move quickly. But too much of that speed depended on manual coordination.

Nicole described the breaking point simply:

“We knew we needed a solution when our teams were getting bogged down due to constant back and forth communication, and having to use different platforms to complete the process of conversion from referral to admission.”

The benefits seen immediately included:

1. One intake workflow across referral platforms: exacare ai could connect Ignite’s referral platforms into a single workflow, so admissions teams no longer had to move between separate systems to understand what was in the queue or what action was needed next.

2. Faster clinical review: Instead of reading every packet from scratch, teams could use exacare ai to surface the key clinical and operational details needed to make a decision. This would help Ignite respond to hospitals faster and more consistently.

3. A clearer path from referral to authorization: For managed care, exacare ai could help Justin’s team move from manual benefit verification and authorization prep to a faster process for reviewing packets, preparing submissions, and getting authorizations out the door.

4. Portfolio-level reporting: Nicole relied heavily on Excel spreadsheets completed by admissions directors. With exacare ai, Ignite could see referral data by hospital, physician, payor source, win rate, loss rate, denial rate, and denial reason. That visibility would help the team identify trends across the portfolio and make better decisions about programming, clinical capabilities, and market performance.

The Implementation: Five Buildings to Full Rollout in Two Weeks

Ignite started with a five-building pilot. Nicole’s team wanted to validate the workflow, confirm users could adopt it quickly, and make sure the platform supported the way Ignite actually worked.

“Seeing the first five buildings up and running in exacare ai in just a couple of days gave us the confidence to accelerate a broader rollout in just two weeks.”

Tim’s requirement for implementation was simple: patient flow could not be disrupted. With approximately 22,000 admissions expected that year, the rollout had to improve the process without slowing down the people responsible for getting patients admitted.

Once admissions was live, managed care was the obvious next step. The case management team already knew the platform, had seen the admissions workflow working, and could apply the same operating model to prior authorization.

“Because our admissions team was already working in exacare ai, it made the case management team’s integration a lot easier.”

Within a few short weeks, 32 buildings were rolled out on managed care in exacare ai.

The Impact

Referral response time decreased by 80%, from 30 minutes to 6 minutes

Before exacare ai, Ignite’s internal standard was to respond to hospital referrals in 30 minutes or less. After implementation, Nicole’s team saw that number drop significantly.

“At Ignite, we’ve always prided ourselves on speed. We wanted to always be the fastest and the easiest to work with, and we would set an expectation that all of our referrals were being responded to in 30 minutes or less. Once we implemented exacare ai, we saw that number go down to 6 minutes.”

Admissions could provide a clear yes or no faster, helping hospitals move patients to the right post-acute setting with less back and forth.

Managed care processing time dropped 52%, from 22 minutes to 10 minutes

Once the managed care workflow went live in exacare ai, Justin’s team cut the time required to move a referral from receipt to prior authorization submission nearly in half.

“We noticed positive operational change right away. We used to take about 22 minutes to process a referral on average, from receiving to submission. That went down to roughly 10 minutes immediately.”

For Justin, the value was not only speed. The managed care team was able to move faster while improving accuracy around the level of care requested upfront, supporting faster authorization times and more efficient billing. In some cases, full authorizations have come back from health plans in as few as 10 minutes.

Centralization created $900,000 in annual savings

exacare ai also gave Ignite the infrastructure to redesign how admissions and case management work across the organization.

Historically, Ignite followed a more traditional building-based model, with admissions resources aligned to individual facilities. As the platform created more visibility, faster referral review, and a shared intake workflow, Ignite moved toward a centralized intake and referral management model, supported by centralized case management for managed care.

The savings came from restructuring the operating model around centralized teams and more efficient workflows, not from simply cutting capacity. Instead of duplicating the same manual work facility by facility, Ignite could align the right people around a shared queue, consistent processes, and better data across the portfolio.

“By centralizing our admissions and case management departments, we were able to realize approximately $900,000 in annual savings.”

Reporting moved from spreadsheets to real-time operating visibility

Before exacare ai, Ignite relied on manual tracking and Excel spreadsheets completed by admissions directors. Now Nicole can see referral data across the portfolio: hospital referrals, physician patterns, payor source, win rate, loss rate, denial rate, and denial reasons.

That visibility transformed referral data into actionable operational decisions. If denial reasons point to a clinical gap at a specific building, the team can evaluate whether programming or clinical capabilities need to change. Instead of waiting for patterns to surface manually, Ignite can see what is happening across the portfolio and act faster.

What's Next

Ignite now sees exacare ai as a partner in broader operational transformation.

Nicole is interested in expanding the partnership into medication management and medication pricing. Justin sees opportunities around reauthorizations and continued stay reviews. Tim’s longer-term vision is broader: the admission packet becomes the starting point for every department.

Today, a single referral packet can be hundreds of pages and involve admissions, therapy, clinical, physicians, nurse practitioners, and the business office. Tim sees an opportunity for AI to read that packet once and route the right information to the right department at the right time.

“Everything starts with this admission packet. It impacts therapy, clinical, physicians and nurse practitioners, and our business office. So many things we envision doing come from having this admission packet. We see opportunity for AI to intelligently route information to the right department at the right time.”

For Ignite, the future is not just faster admissions. It is removing manual work from the handoffs that surround every patient so each department has the information it needs sooner, and teams can spend more time on care.

“I would recommend exacare ai because I believe they understand day to day operational realities, and are building technology around those needs. The technology and the innovation they’re bringing is quick, it’s fast, it’s efficient, and it makes our team members better.”