Rekey Desk / Who it is for / Prior auth intake for health plans
Plan Intake Desk
Prior authorization intake keying for health plans
A prior authorization request arrives by fax with the clinical attachment behind it, and someone on your intake team types the request, the member details and the attachment list into the utilization management system before a reviewer can open it. From January 1, 2026, impacted plans must decide standard requests within 7 calendar days and urgent ones within 72 hours (CMS fact sheet, 2024-01-17), and every hour a request waits to be keyed comes out of that clock.
Rekey Desk starts with a Rekey Map of where each request lands, writes the Field Rulebook for the intake fields, builds the Keying Build into your utilization management screen, and routes anything unreadable to an Exception Queue. Clinical review decisions stay with your clinicians.
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Last updated . Rekey Desk is run by Mike Rodgers from Denver and works remotely with operators across the United States.
What lands on the intake desk
Inbound faxed prior authorization requests, the clinical pages that travel with them, and provider data forms that arrive between contracts. A person reads all of it and types it into the utilization management system before a reviewer sees it.
Medicare Advantage insurers received more than 50 million prior authorization requests in 2023 and denied 3.2 million in full or part, and 81.7% of appealed denials were overturned (KFF via AMA, 2025-04-24).
- Request cover page: member and plan details, character for character.
- Clinical attachment: requested service and dates, as printed.
- Provider data form: identifiers copied as printed.
- Missing pages: Exception Queue with a reason code, never a guess.
What the rules already changed
Impacted payers must return urgent decisions within 72 hours and standard decisions within 7 calendar days, with a specific denial reason, from January 1, 2026 (CMS fact sheet, 2024-01-17).
The FHIR Prior Authorization API is required from January 1, 2027, yet decisions may still arrive by portal, fax, email, mail or phone (CMS fact sheet, 2024-01-17). The intake desk keeps handling paper either way.
$21 billion a year in savings remain from fully automating manual and partially manual administrative transactions, and more than 50% of health plans use AI tools in administrative workflows (CAQH, 2026-02-19).
Keying into utilization management
Each field gets a source, a target, a format rule and a named decider, and the Keying Build fills exactly those fields on your screen. Missing or unreadable pages go to the Exception Queue with the source page attached.
The Rekey Map counts where the intake team currently types the same data twice, once at intake and once when the reviewer asks again.
Clinical review stays with the plan
Plan clinicians make every review decision. The build moves what the pages already say: member details, service dates, attachment lists, identifiers. It makes no clinical decisions and no coding decisions.
Bring a de-identified sample to a teardown and get the Rekey Map, the Field Rulebook and a fixed build quote.
What correct looks like
The checks behind this page
- Check: every step in the Rekey Map names the faxed page it reads from and the utilization management field it types into.
- Check: every field in the Field Rulebook has a source, a target, a format rule and a named decider.
- Check: the Keying Build keys a held-back sample your staff already keyed, and every mismatch is listed.
- Check: every exception carries a reason code and the source page, and nothing is guessed.
Named owner of mistakes: Mike Rodgers. Every field your staff mark wrong is counted in the Monthly Accuracy Report, the rule behind it is fixed, and the affected records are checked again before the next batch.
Start here
Workflow Teardown, $2,500 fixed
Readout 10 business days after your de-identified sample set arrives. The $2,500 is credited in full against the Keying Build if you sign within 30 days of the readout. If the map shows the workflow is not worth automating, the readout says so, and you keep the map and the rulebook.
The Keying Build is a fixed price quoted after the teardown, and Run and Check is a monthly price quoted with it.
What your people still own
- Plan clinicians make every review decision.
- Your team decides what to request and what to appeal.
- Your staff handle payer calls and outreach.
- You own the Field Rulebook, the exception log and the build configuration.
FAQ
Questions about this page
- What does the Workflow Teardown cost?
- It is $2,500 fixed, credited against the build if you sign within 30 days. The readout arrives 10 business days after your de-identified sample set, with a Rekey Map, a Field Rulebook and a sample run on 25 documents.
- Do you make coverage or clinical decisions?
- No, clinical review decisions stay with your plan clinicians, and the build makes no clinical or coding decisions. It only keys what the documents already say into your screens.
- Is fax still part of this?
- Yes, for now: decisions may still arrive by portal, fax, email, mail or phone (CMS fact sheet, 2024-01-17). The intake desk keeps keying paper while the API mandate covers only impacted payers.
- Where does patient data live during the work?
- The teardown needs no patient data, so the sample set is de-identified or synthetic. A build that touches PHI starts only after a signed Business Associate Agreement and runs through accounts you control and can revoke.
Request a sample run
Tell us the workflow that eats the most typing
One short form. We reply by email with what we need for the sample run. No patient data in this form, please.
- Workflow Teardown: $2,500 fixed
- Readout 10 business days after your de-identified samples arrive
- Credited in full against the build if you sign within 30 days