Not every denial deserves an appeal.
Recovery effort should go where the available facts support a reasonable next action. Spending an hour on a claim that will not move is not diligence, it is just expensive.
Soft Appeals · about
Denied-claim recovery built with a healthcare operations mindset.
Soft Appeals is a focused denied-claim recovery service founded by Nana Frimpongmaa, MHA. My background spans healthcare operations, administrative workflow, performance improvement, data and systems work, and health-system technology implementation. That experience shaped how the service is built: define the process, document the work, establish ownership, track deadlines, escalate where it belongs, and make the outcome visible. Soft Appeals applies that discipline to denied claims that need focused follow-through alongside an organization's existing billing operation.
Master of Health Administration
Healthcare operations
Performance improvement
Health-system technology and workflow
Why Soft Appeals
The problem is rarely that nobody knew a claim was denied.
More often, the denial becomes one more item competing for attention inside an already full revenue-cycle workflow.
Someone has to work out what happened. Someone has to identify the next appropriate action. Someone has to find the supporting information, watch the deadline, prepare the response, follow up on it, and reconcile what happened afterwards.
That is the operational gap Soft Appeals exists to fill. The service does not replace an organization's billing function. It creates focused ownership around the denied claims selected for recovery.
Founder background
Experience across the systems behind healthcare delivery.
Before founding Soft Appeals, my work exposed me to healthcare from several operational angles.
01
Healthcare operations
Working inside healthcare environments gave me a practical view of how administrative work actually moves across people, departments, systems and competing priorities, rather than how an org chart says it moves.
02
Performance improvement
Performance-improvement work is where I learned to find where a process breaks, document the current state, assign responsibility for it, and then measure whether the change actually altered the outcome.
03
Data and workflow
Work involving data management, forms and administrative workflow built the habit of turning fragmented information into a structured process people can follow without being told twice.
04
Health-system technology
Supporting health-system technology implementation, including Epic go-live work, showed what happens when clinical, administrative, operational and technology workflows all have to function together on the same morning.
05
Education
I hold a Master of Health Administration, which provided formal grounding in healthcare administration, operations, organizational management and the business of healthcare.
Those experiences do not replace claim-specific research or payer requirements. They shape the operational discipline behind how Soft Appeals approaches the work.
What that means for the work
Background matters only if it changes the process.
Here is where it does.
01
The denial gets a defined owner
Assigned claims do not sit in an undefined queue. They move through a documented recovery workflow with a status at every point.
02
The recommendation is documented
The assessment records the proposed next step and the information supporting it, rather than handing back an unexplained yes or no.
03
Deadlines are operational requirements
Known time-sensitive items are identified and prioritized rather than left inside an undifferentiated backlog where the oldest claim wins by accident.
04
Exceptions get surfaced
If a claim needs information or judgment outside the agreed scope, it is identified and returned to the appropriate person at your organization rather than worked around.
05
The outcome gets reconciled
Recovery work does not end when an appeal is sent. Payer responses, next actions and the applicable recovery documentation stay in the workflow through resolution.
What Soft Appeals is
Focused recovery capacity for denied claims.
Soft Appeals works alongside healthcare organizations and their existing revenue-cycle partners, providing additional capacity for the denied claims they select.
Depending on the engagement, that work can include denial review and prioritization, payer-requirement research, correction or resubmission recommendations, appeal preparation, organizing the supporting documentation, deadline and submission tracking, payer follow-up, identifying the escalation path where one applies, and recovery reconciliation.
The exact scope is established before recovery work begins, in writing, so both sides are working from the same list.
Scope and boundaries
Clear boundaries are part of responsible recovery work.
Soft Appeals is a denied-claim recovery service. It is not a replacement for every function inside a revenue cycle, and saying so is more useful to you than pretending otherwise.
01
We do not replace your billing team
Routine claim submission, payment posting, coding and the broader revenue-cycle operation stay with your organization and its existing partners, unless a separate scope expressly says otherwise.
02
We do not make clinical decisions
Anything requiring clinical judgment goes to the appropriate licensed or authorized member of your team. Soft Appeals never writes clinical rationale a treating provider has not documented.
03
We do not change coding
If a denial appears to involve a coding issue, it is flagged for review by a qualified party rather than corrected here.
04
We do not provide legal advice
Questions needing legal interpretation outside the agreed administrative recovery scope go back to your organization or to counsel.
05
We do not promise every denial can be recovered
Some claims warrant an appeal. Some need a correction. Some need more information. And some should receive no further recovery effort at all. Knowing the difference is most of the work.
Accountability
Founder-led means the work has a named owner.
Soft Appeals is founder-led. For current engagements, Nana Frimpongmaa oversees the review and recovery workflow and remains accountable for the work performed within the Soft Appeals scope.
Technology assists with research, organization, workflow management and preparing draft materials. It does not take over responsibility for reviewing the work, spotting what needs escalating, or following the agreed client-approval process.
Where additional people or service providers are involved in an engagement, their role and their information-access requirements are governed through the processes established for that work. The data and security practices page sets out how that is handled.
How we think about denial recovery
Four principles behind the work.
A recommendation should be explainable.
You should be able to see why a claim was categorized the way it was, what information was considered, and what is required next. If the reasoning cannot be written down, it was not reasoning.
The process matters as much as the letter.
A well-written appeal is worth nothing if the deadline passed, the required documentation was missing, the submission cannot be verified, or nobody followed the payer's response.
Recovery and prevention are different jobs.
Soft Appeals recovers denied claims. Where a recurring pattern shows up in the reviewed claims, it gets surfaced for your team to look at upstream. What to change is your organization's decision.
Working with your existing team
This is not built around replacing the people already doing the work.
Many organizations already have a biller, a billing company, an office manager, a revenue-cycle team or another partner responsible for claims. Soft Appeals works alongside that structure.
The question is not whether the existing team is capable. It is whether every denied claim that warrants further action has enough dedicated capacity behind it.
Assigned claims get a defined recovery workflow while the existing team carries on with everything else. When Soft Appeals needs documentation, clarification, a coding review, clinical input or another client-side action, that requirement is raised with the right person rather than worked around.
Start with the work
Evaluate the process before committing to recovery services.
That is why Soft Appeals begins with a complimentary review of 20 recent denied claims. The assessment gives your organization a clear view of six things.
01
What was denied
Payer, denial category, service information and the available denial reason, organized into one review.
02
The financial amount
The denied amount associated with each claim reviewed, in dollars rather than percentages.
03
The recommended next action
Correct or resubmit, appeal, investigate further, or close and deprioritize.
04
Known time-sensitive items
The claims where a known deadline needs attention before anything else does.
05
Information still required
What is missing, from whom, and what it affects if it does not arrive.
06
Where recovery effort may be appropriate
And, just as usefully, where it may not be.
The assessment belongs to your organization whether or not you continue. You do not have to decide whether to trust a service based on an about page. Start with the claims, look at the work, then decide.
The next step is not a sales pitch
Start with the denied claims.
Send 20 recent denials through the established secure process, once the appropriate privacy documentation is in place. Soft Appeals reviews the selected claims and returns a Denial Recovery Assessment showing recommended actions, financial value, known time sensitivity and the items still requiring information. You keep the assessment whether or not you continue. Questions before sending any patient information? Ask those first.