How Meru Health processes a month's payroll in just one day for 100+ providers

Overview

Meru Health, a US-based telehealth provider specializing in mental health and wellness, has providers located across 26 states. For Courtney Knitter, Supply Chain and Network Manager at Meru Health, onboarding new providers and coordinating with clinical team leads on payouts created a huge logistical headache, especially as Meru Health sought to grow their provider network. They wanted to build a better provider experience that reflected their commitment to improving mental health.

"Our providers are a huge part of what we do," says Courtney. "For them, it's about building trust. We want to use a tool that we know works, that we're confident in, that can build a relationship with them and that they can trust will pay them on time."

Challenge

Within the last year, Meru Health has grown their provider network from 65 providers to more than 100. Their previous vendor didn't offer itemized invoices, leaving providers in the dark about what activities drove their final total payment amount. The lack of payment transparency also meant Courtney's team fielded a high volume of support tickets every pay period.

"One of our biggest frustrations was that providers didn't have any transparency," says Courtney. "If they're getting paid a set amount per month, that's all they would see, instead of the different categories we offer, like the initial call, program calls, and active participants. It was hard for providers and led to a lot of questions on how it was calculated, which didn't work for anyone."

Behind the scenes, tracking what each provider actually did was equally painful. Work data lived across more than 3 tools including a project management platform, a payroll provider and a cloud database. Calculating pay across multiple service types required manual reconciliation every payroll cycle.

Solution

With Wingspan, managing payments has become much easier. "In Wingspan, we can break down those categories on each invoice so providers can see every line item, by client, and the totals. It's much easier for them to have an understanding of what they're being paid for, and when they do have a question, Wingspan's support is super responsive, which has been so helpful for our providers," she explains.

At the core of that transparency is Wingspan's Work Logging feature. Providers log their work directly in Wingspan by service category--an initial consultation, a program session, an active participant visit--each tied to a rate card. Wingspan converts those entries into itemized invoices automatically, eliminating the manual calculations that previously consumed hours of Courtney's team's time. Wingspan supports a hybrid approach. About a third of Meru Health's providers submit their own work logs; Courtney's team handles the rest through Wingspan's API, giving the ops team flexibility without sacrificing consistency.

The transition to a new tool can always be tricky, but for Courtney's team, they didn't miss a beat switching to Wingspan. "Our first month we ran payroll went super smoothly," she says. "We had such great support from the Wingspan team. It's so user-friendly and straightforward that it's easy for our team to manage and our providers to use."

Impact

As a result, onboarding new providers has become quick and easy, which is a key priority for Meru Health as they continue to grow. As Meru Health increases the number of providers, they also see a growing drumbeat of payments with an average of 500 payments per month and over 3k payments made in the past year.

"I've seen very positive feedback about the process from our HR team," says Courtney. "Getting contract signatures and all the important data is 10 times smoother now. We can get those out in a matter of 10 minutes." Meru Health hires a range of providers including doctors, nutritionists, psychiatrists, and therapists and can now store all their signed agreements and varying licensing requirements in Wingspan.

Courtney went from being hands-on dealing with support tickets and provider issues to mostly hands-off with Wingspan. "I get so few questions from providers now, when it used to be a constant stream," she says. "In terms of our monthly payroll runs, it used to take five business days to process a month's worth of payroll, and now it's done in about a day. It's made my life so much easier."

Final Thoughts

More than anything, Wingspan has made their provider experience better--so much so that it's become a major angle in recruiting new providers to the platform. Says Courtney, "I think having a great contractor experience makes it easier for existing team members to say, 'Hey, this is great,' to their colleagues and friends. That's huge for us."

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