As ophthalmology practices continue to grow — particularly in high-volume procedures like cataract surgery — administrative workflows are increasingly becoming a constraint on operational scale.
Insurance eligibility and benefits verification remains one of the most critical yet labor-intensive revenue cycle functions. While essential to preventing denials and revenue leakage, the work is still largely manual across much of healthcare.
That was the challenge facing Ideal Eye Surgery, a fast-growing ophthalmology group where cataract surgery represents a significant share of patient volume.
“We needed a way to scale critical operational work without constantly adding headcount,” said Ashleigh Gillick, Chief Operating Officer of Ideal Eye Surgery. “Magical has allowed us to automate insurance verifications, stay ahead of patient volume, and keep our team focused on higher-value work. Being able to automate with this level of reliability using agentic AI has been a game-changer.”
Manual eligibility checks couldn’t keep pace with growth
As Ideal Eye Surgery expanded its provider base, the burden on its billing and insurance team increased rapidly.
Staff were spending significant time pulling insurance information, logging into multiple payer portals, documenting copays and deductibles, and identifying referral or pre-visit requirements. Each verification typically took eight to 12 minutes — longer when phone calls were required.
During peak scheduling periods, the workload became increasingly difficult to manage. The team aimed to stay at least a week ahead on verifications but often found themselves only a day ahead, creating operational risk when payers required additional documentation.
Small misses created large downstream consequences.
For cataract surgery workflows, a missed referral or benefit detail at the evaluation stage could quickly result in multiple denials — impacting not just the visit, but the surgery that followed. The financial impact of rework and denials reached into the tens of thousands of dollars per month.
As Anna Krewet, insurance and billing operations lead at Ideal Eye Surgery, summed it up in one word:
“Time-consuming.”
Traditional tools failed to remove the labor
Ideal Eye Surgery explored conventional eligibility verification solutions but ran into a common healthcare challenge: limited compatibility with its existing technology stack.
Many tools required EHR integrations that didn’t align cleanly with the practice’s systems. Even when automation was technically available, staff still had to manually bridge workflows across platforms.
The organization needed a solution that could work directly within payer portals — the same environment where human staff were already completing verifications — while scaling alongside patient growth.
Automating payer portals with agentic AI
The practice implemented agentic AI automation through Magical to handle insurance verifications end-to-end inside payer portals.
Rather than relying on data feeds or rigid integrations, AI agents log into portals, navigate eligibility workflows, capture benefits details, and document results just as a human employee would.
Today, Ideal Eye Surgery operates a hybrid model:
- AI completes verifications for configured payer portals
- Staff manage payers without portals, those requiring phone calls, and edge cases
Both feed results into the practice’s daily charges sheet used by clinical teams.
“Magical is taking on a greater and greater percentage of the work, freeing up the humans to devote their time to other tasks while the agent is doing the repetitive clicking and copying and pasting,” Krewet said.
Staying ahead — and growing without hiring
Even while continuing to refine workflows, the operational impact has been significant.
After early stabilization, the verification team is now staying at least two weeks ahead — compared to previously struggling to maintain a one-week buffer and at times falling to just one day ahead.
At the time of review, the AI was completing more than 60% of verifications automatically and accurately, with a clear goal to exceed 80% as payer logic continues to improve.
Most notably, Ideal Eye Surgery has absorbed provider growth without expanding its verification team. Krewet estimated that without automation, the practice would have needed to hire three to four additional staff members to maintain service levels.
“Magical has enabled us to not panic about volume… You see 150 patients on the calendar and think, ‘How are we going to get this done?’ Then the agent runs overnight and that huge day shrinks down. There’s no need to panic.”
To learn more about Magical’s agentic AI platform and how healthcare providers are scaling clinical and revenue cycle operations, visit www.getmagical.com.
