How Rula Accelerated Payment Velocity by 25% to Support Rapid Scaling

Overview

Rula is a comprehensive behavioral health solution that makes high-quality mental health care more accessible and affordable. With a nationwide network of licensed providers, Rula offers next-day availability for therapy and psychiatry and a seamless digital experience that connects patients to the right care quickly. Rula has a network of over 23,000 licensed providers. “My team handles the administrative side for our providers, including credentialing, enrollment, onboarding, and payments,” says Nick Limoncelli, Director of Operations at Rula. “Our provider network is central to our mission, and we are dedicated to delivering an exceptional experience. Teaming with Wingspan aligns perfectly with this goal, enhancing how we support and engage our providers.”

Challenge

As Rula grew to support tens of thousands of providers, 1099 processing and compliance started to get a lot more manual and complex, requiring a significant amount of effort. “We found our team had to put in a lot of extra coordination during tax season to keep up with our growing scale,” says Limoncelli.

With a large network of nationwide providers, it became difficult to process payments and tax compliance, in an efficient way. “We were doing all of our own 1099 processing, which was complex and time consuming,” says Limoncelli. “TIN validation was handled manually – and tax season was arduous as a result.”

Solution

Rula decided to migrate to Wingspan to gain a unified contractor platform with full 1099 compliance capabilities and capacity to handle their scale. In addition, Rula consolidated provider payments across multiple business entities.

Rula integrated Wingspan directly for real-time reporting on payouts, visit types, and contractor eligibility. “Our product facilitates the initial email from Wingspan to our providers to sign up, and then all of that information gets back into our product which we can use to make sure they’ve completed their entire onboarding flow, like their identity verification, before they see their first patient,” adds Limoncelli.

Once providers start meeting with patients, Wingspan manages the payout cycle on an ongoing basis. Every two weeks, the Rula team sends a file to Wingspan to process payments down to the visit level, and providers can see exactly how each visit matches up to their final total in Wingspan.

Says Limoncelli, “Wingspan’s impact was felt immediately. Now, all of our pre-validation happens during onboarding when the contractor is at their most engaged. The streamlined process offers an elevated experience for our providers.”

Impact

Since implementing Wingspan, Rula has been able to keep pace with their growing invoice volume while dramatically reducing administrative burden. “We reduced the time it takes to process the data by 25%,” says Limoncelli. “Everything works faster and better with Wingspan.” In addition to the identity verification and TIN validation at scale, Wingspan also provided fraud detection capabilities.

What’s more, Rula’s operations and accounting teams have access to a wealth of data including payment and visit data. By viewing this data directly in the platform, Rula’s accounting team saves a significant amount of time.

“With payments, it just has to work. Our KPI for on-time payments is 100% because anything less is unacceptable. Our providers tell us that they love the additional benefits that Wingspan offers, like instant payout and tax withholding. It’s one more way we make it easier for them to get their job done,” says Limoncelli.

Final Thoughts

Wingspan will continue to support Rula as their platform grows. “Wingspan is committed to keeping up with our volume and making sure the platform works. Not just for the payments we’re processing today, but also those in the future.”

About Rula

Rula is a comprehensive behavioral health solution that makes high-quality mental health care more accessible and affordable. With a nationwide network of licensed providers, Rula offers next-day availability for therapy and psychiatry and a seamless digital experience that connects patients to the right care quickly. Patients can match with a provider in minutes, verify insurance coverage and out-of-pocket costs upfront, attend secure telehealth sessions, and track their progress—all within a single, easy-to-use platform. Rula partners with most major insurance networks, including Aetna, Anthem, Cigna, Kaiser, UnitedHealthcare, and many Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans, covering more than 180 million lives across the U.S. Learn more at Rula.com