NewsStories Of Opportunity: Innovating To Better Serve Our Customers & Patients

This article was originally published on Jan. 7, 2026, as part of the full release of the 2025 Stories Of Opportunity. The Stories Of Opportunity is VGM Group’s annual report, showcasing the successes of VGM and its employee owners.

HOMELINK is one of VGM’s largest business units with nearly 700  employee owners. The work Patient Care Coordinators (PCCs) do there requires many touch points and ultimately impacts more than 30 million patients each year. That’s why HOMELINK constantly invests in new and more efficient ways to serve their customers and ensure every patient receives the highest quality of care.

Contact Engine

Previously, many touchpoints in a HOMELINK order involved making calls to confirm service completion, appointment scheduling, and various other follow-ups. These touchpoints are important, but time-consuming. That’s time that could have been spent coordinating care for an injured worker or patient.

Contact Engine is an AI tool that automates many of these follow-up touchpoints by sending text communication, such as appointment details. With help from VGM Corp IT, Contact Engine was developed and integrated into HOMELINK’s order management system. HOMELINK saw a decrease in patient no-shows and an increase in PCC output across all lines of service. It’s no wonder HOMELINK’s Contact Engine team were the winners of the 2024 Cheer Each Other On Award. 

Supply Sourcing

Checking for the best rate is time consuming. Previously, PCCs would need to go through multiple supply companies manually to find the best rates. Partnering with a new supply program changed all of that. Now, PCCs are able to order the supplies needed directly from the customized e-procurement platform, which systematically checks for the best rates for each individual item and places the order, allowing PCCs to spend more time where they can make the most impact.

Auto-create Referral Program

This past year, HOMELINK’s IT team began rolling out Auto-create Intake, which can take orders submitted digitally and enter them automatically so they can be staffed. This significantly reduced the number of manual entries needed. And it allows the intake team to focus on the orders received over the phone, which accounts for over half of all orders.  

New Provider Portal

On top of the many calls HOMELINK receives from patients or adjusters, they also hear from providers checking the status of payment. HOMELINK had a provider portal for this, but there was room for improvement.

They collaborated with Lean TECHniques, a program development partner based in Des Moines, Iowa. And the result was a new portal with a seamless and intuitive interface that greatly improved efficiency and satisfaction. The project made such an impact, it was nominated for the Outstanding UX/CX Achievement at the 2025 Technology Association of Iowa Prometheus Awards.

ScreenScribe

There’s a common phrase in HOMELINK, “If it isn’t in the notes, it didn’t happen.” While emails could be copied over, phone calls needed to be typed out manually. This can be a time-consuming process, especially if a PCC needs to relisten to a call to ensure important details weren’t missed. 

ScreenScribe, a program created by VGM’s Corporate IT team, automatically transcribes incoming or outgoing calls: a perfect fit for HOMELINK’s needs. Now, when a call is made or received, a pop-up appears and begins transcribing the entire call, even adding extra details like which order number the call is related to before automatically updating the notes.  

To read the 2025 Stories Of Opportunity in full, click here.