"We needed a way to scale critical operational work without constantly adding headcount. Magical has allowed us to automate insurance verifications, stay ahead of patient volume, and keep our team focused on higher-value work. Being able to automate with this level of reliability using agentic AI has been a game-changer.”
- Ashleigh Gillick, Chief Operating Officer, Ideal Eye Surgery
About Ideal Eye Surgery
Ideal Eye Surgery (IES) is a fast-growing ophthalmology practice. A large portion of the practice’s volume is cataract surgery, where fast, accurate insurance verification is critical to preventing downstream denials and revenue leakage.
The Challenge: Eligibility checks couldn’t keep up with growth
As IES scaled, the billing/insurance team was forced to spend an outsized amount of time on manual insurance verifications (eligibility + benefits checks). Staff had to pull insurance info, log into payer portals, and document copays, deductibles, and referral requirements.
Before Magical, eligibility work was:
Highly manual and time-consuming: checks typically took 8–12 minutes each (longer if a phone call was required).
Resource-intensive during peak periods: verifications were handled by a small team that often had to flex with overtime or temporarily add more people to keep up.
Hard to stay ahead: the goal was to be a week ahead, but at times the team was operating only one day ahead, increasing risk when a payer required PCP referrals or other pre-visit requirements.
Prone to “paper-cut” errors: minor misses could create a chain reaction—requiring rework, retracing eligibility steps, and retraining to prevent repeat issues.
As Anna Krewet, Insurance & Billing Operations Lead at Ideal Eye Surgery, described it in one word:
“Time-consuming.”
For cataract surgery workflows, a missed referral or benefit detail at the evaluation stage could quickly turn into multiple denials—impacting not just the eval, but the surgery that followed shortly after. Anna estimated the impact of missed items and downstream denials as “in the tens of thousands” per month.
The Constraints: Traditional tools didn’t fit their tech stack
IES explored more conventional verification solutions, but ran into a common blocker: their EHR didn’t integrate cleanly with some of the available options. That meant even “automated” tools would still require a lot of manual work to bridge systems.
IES needed a solution that could:
Work within their existing portals and processes
Reduce repetitive clicks/copy/paste labor
Scale with provider growth without forcing constant hiring
The Solution: Magical automates payer-portal insurance verifications
IES implemented Magical to automate insurance verifications by navigating payer portals and capturing eligibility/benefits details. Magical and the team currently run a hybrid model:
Magical completes verifications for payers/portals that are fully configured.
Humans handle:
payers without portals
payers that require phone calls
edge cases where data in the patient chart prevents the agent from picking up the verification automatically
Today, both Magical and staff write results into spreadsheets used to create the practice’s daily “charges sheet”—a single-page reference clinic staff relies on for estimated patient charges.
“Magical is taking on a greater and greater percentage of the work, freeing up the humans to devote their time to other tasks while the agent is doing the repetitive clicking and copying and pasting.”
- Anna Krewet, Insurance & Billing Operations Lead
The Results: More runway, less panic, and growth without hiring
Even while still optimizing workflows, IES has seen meaningful operational lift.
1) IES is now staying further ahead
After early tweaks and stabilization, Anna noted the team is now “at least two weeks ahead” on verifications, compared to previously struggling to maintain a one-week buffer.
2) Magical is handling a majority of eligible volume
At the time of the interview, Magical was completing over 60% of verifications automatically and accurately, with a clear goal to get to over 80% as upstream triggers and payer logic continue to improve.
3) Growth without adding headcount
As the practice scaled to more providers, Anna shared that without Magical they likely would have needed to hire an additional 3–4 people to support verification volume at the same service level.
“Magical has enabled us to not panic about volume… You see 150 patients on the calendar and think, ‘How are we going to get this done?’ Then the agent runs overnight and that huge day shrinks down. There’s no need to panic.”
- Anna Krewet, Insurance & Billing Operations Lead