Danean Tedford

I have been in the workers' compensation industry for over 20 years, and my journey has been one of continuous growth and innovation. I started at Walmart when they were administering their own workers' comp claims as their own TPA, and they had just started their own bill review department. I began as someone who simply processed bills, but I was eager to learn more. Early in my career, I earned my Certified Professional Coding certification, which at the time wasn't as common as it is today. This certification required several prerequisite courses including CPT coding, medical records, and anatomy, and the test itself was pretty comprehensive and difficult. After I got certified, several people in the department followed, and we ended up with 15 to 20 certified coders. As I grew in my role, we started really digging into whether we were doing things correctly and whether legislation was backing up the way the system worked. I took on different roles managing teams and training teams on how to properly review medical bills, and we expanded to doing more states. One of my proudest achievements was piloting a contract vendor program at Walmart where I proposed that they contract with different people who could work part-time and get paid by the piece. I was one of the first four contractors to do this, and the program evolved to include 20 to 30 contracted vendors. I trained people, recommended people I thought were good, and it resulted in a lot of good savings and strong business relationships. Currently, I work for RefMed, a newer company in the workers' comp industry where I serve as the compliance manager. We produce data files for workers' comp and automobile medical fee schedules, and I do state consulting with different state entities, helping them develop their fee schedules and fees. We send data files to multiple bill review companies and entities that need the medical fee schedule data for revenue cycle management or to review medical bills. I've been with RefMed for a year now, and I'm excited about the work we're doing.