Digitizing Dental Provider Registration Using AWS End User Messaging with Sun Life US

Sun Life provides employee benefits, health solutions, and digital capabilities for employers and has been operating in the United States since 1895. In 2022, the company acquired DentaQuest, a major dental benefits provider in the United States, complementing its established commercial dental network of more than 130,000 unique providers.

Some parts of DentaQuest’s legacy portal had not been updated in years. For example, a provider who wished to register as an administrator had to contact a call center and provide a business application code that had been sent through the mail. The inefficient registration process resulted in a large user dropout rate during registration. Even common tasks such as searching for member eligibility were slow and cumbersome. Sun Life wanted to remove such legacy issues by moving toward full digitization and giving dental providers a more efficient system.

Sun Life spent 4 months conducting focus groups and interviews with dental providers to determine what they wanted from the new portal. Providers were looking for faster, more efficient electronic authentication. They wanted an easier way to sign up and access critical information like member eligibility or clinical histories. Providers also sought to simplify practice management and the process for setting up payment methods.

Sun Life chose to build DentaQuest’s provider portal application using AWS, which was already the company’s preferred vendor, because there would be benefits from simple integration with Sun Life’s existing AWS services. The company set up its provider authentication system using AWS End User Messaging, which offers dependable, cost-effective messaging without compromising safety, security, or results. That solution sends one-time passcodes electronically to providers through SMS, facilitating quick authentication and granting of admin access to the portal. “We started with a proof of concept of the functionality we needed, and AWS End User Messaging quickly knocked it out of the park,” says Patrick Phelan, director of application architecture at Sun Life.

The time from inception to product implementation was less than 2 months. That work included digitizing the entire dental provider registration process, which was vital for letting the company confirm provider identities and protect the personal information of its members.

While building the portal, Sun Life needed to submit the solution to third-party regulators who would come back with changes necessary for meeting compliance standards. The company turned to the AWS team for guidance. “Whenever we got a little bit stuck in the process, the AWS team was extremely helpful in guiding us over the last hurdle or two,” says Phelan. “We could iterate our solution and resolve problems very quickly.”

Where the legacy solution had taken a week or more to obtain new provider phone numbers, using the new portal, the process is completed online as part of registration. Identity verification is done using the provider’s taxpayer identification number at a secure step in the authentication process. “I found the text messaging option of AWS End User Messaging to be very convenient,” says Phelan. “Even the process of obtaining new phone numbers was seamless for us using AWS.”

Having instant access to tools and features improves not only the providers’ experience but also that of the end customer. Within the first 7 months after implementing the new solution, over 85,000 dental providers had registered. The new funnel saw a 24 percent improvement in successful provider registrations during the first 5 months.

An additional benefit is the decreased traffic to call centers. “One of the main goals in building this next-generation self-service provider portal was to reduce the volume of call traffic to our contact center,” says Phelan. Sun Life projects that it will reduce call center traffic by 20–30 percent as providers move from the legacy portal to the new solution. As call center traffic declines, company’s savings will increase.

The dental provider portal was Sun Life’s first use case with AWS End User Messaging, and its success will lead to global scalability as other teams begin to use it for alternative use cases. One example is to expand its use from one-time passcodes to notifications for processed claims, customer alerts, and more. The new portal is only one part of Sun Life’s broader digital transformation effort.

“As we continue to use AWS End User Messaging, down the road we will naturally be more proactive, sending information to members about their unused benefits,” says Phelan. “We want AWS End User Messaging to be a one-stop shop for delivery of all our notifications.”