How TPAs Can Grow Without Hiring More Employees

Growth is the goal of almost every Third-Party Administrator (TPA). More employer clients, more drug tests, more services, and more revenue all sound great, until growth also means more emails, more phone calls, more data entry, more billing, more spreadsheets, and ultimately, more employees.

For many TPAs, this creates a frustrating cycle:

More customers = more administrative work = more employees = higher payroll.

But what if your business could break that cycle?

Technology and automation are changing the way TPAs operate. Instead of adding another employee every time your testing volume increases, TPAs can use the right technology to automate repetitive tasks, centralize operations, and allow their existing team to manage significantly more business.

At US Gateway, we believe growing your TPA should not automatically mean growing your payroll.

The Hidden Cost of Growth

When a TPA is small, many processes can be handled manually.

An employee may schedule a drug test, enter information into a laboratory portal, send paperwork to the employer, check the status of the test, retrieve results, update another system, prepare an invoice, and answer questions from the customer.

That may be manageable with a handful of clients. But what happens when you have 50 clients? 500 clients? Thousands of employees being tested? The same manual processes that worked when your company was smaller can quickly become an obstacle to growth.

Suddenly your staff is spending its day:

• Entering the same information into multiple systems
• Searching for collection sites
• Switching between laboratory portals
• Checking test statuses
• Managing random testing programs
• Sending notifications
• Tracking paperwork
• Answering routine customer questions
• Preparing invoices
• Processing payments
• Managing reports
• Maintaining compliance records

At that point, many companies assume the solution is simple:

Hire another employee.

But hiring more people isn't always the best, or most profitable, answer.

Before You Add Payroll, Look at Your Processes

One of the most important questions a growing TPA can ask is:

Are we hiring people to perform work that technology could be doing for us?

Administrative employees are valuable. Their time should be spent helping customers, solving problems, building relationships, selling services, and growing the business, not repeatedly entering information that could flow automatically between systems. Automation allows businesses to shift their employees away from repetitive administrative work and toward higher-value activities.

Instead of asking, "Who do we need to hire next?"

TPAs should also ask:

"What can we automate next?"

1. Stop Managing Multiple Laboratory Portals

One of the biggest sources of unnecessary administrative work can be managing separate systems for different laboratories. Employees may need to remember different usernames, processes, collection-site networks, test panels, and workflows depending on which laboratory is being used. US Gateway brings major laboratory workflows into one centralized platform and is integrated with Quest Diagnostics, Labcorp, eScreen, and Clinical Reference Laboratory (CRL).

Instead of employees constantly moving between separate systems, your team can manage testing activity from one platform. Reducing those extra steps may seem small when looking at a single drug test. Multiply those steps by hundreds or thousands of tests, however, and the potential time savings become much more significant.

2. Automate the Drug Test Ordering Process

Every manual step requires employee time. It also creates another opportunity for something to be entered incorrectly, overlooked, or delayed. Electronic ordering can help eliminate unnecessary administrative touchpoints throughout the testing process. When ordering, tracking, results, and related information can flow through a centralized system, employees don't have to spend as much of their day moving information from one place to another.

The goal should be simple:

Enter information once and let technology do as much of the remaining work as possible.

That's how TPAs begin increasing their capacity without proportionally increasing their payroll.

3. Make Collection-Site Scheduling Easier

How much employee time is spent helping customers determine where someone should go for a drug test? Finding the right collection site can involve more than simply locating the closest clinic. The site also needs to offer the appropriate service, work with the appropriate laboratory, and meet the needs of the testing program.

US Gateway's Dynamic AI Scheduling is designed to evaluate options across its integrated network and help identify collection locations based on factors including proximity, available testing services, pricing, and the ability to complete multiple services during a visit. That means less time manually researching options and more efficient scheduling for customers. Technology can handle the search while your staff focuses on the customer.

4. Automate Random Testing Program Management

Random drug and alcohol testing programs can create significant administrative work for TPAs. Managing employee lists, random selections, employer groups, records, and reporting manually becomes increasingly difficult as a TPA grows. Spreadsheets may work at a small scale, but they are difficult to scale efficiently.

US Gateway provides tools for managing DOT and non-DOT random testing programs and consortiums within a centralized platform. Automating these workflows allows your team to manage larger programs without creating the same increase in manual administrative work.

5. Stop Building a Bigger Billing Department

Growth doesn't just mean more tests. It means more invoices, customer accounts, payments, reconciliation, and potentially more accounting employees. Billing is an area where automation can have a major impact on scalability.

US Gateway incorporates billing and payment capabilities and integrates with systems including QuickBooks Online and payment processing tools, allowing TPAs to streamline financial workflows instead of relying entirely on manual invoicing processes. If your testing volume doubles, your billing workload shouldn't necessarily have to double with it. That's the power of automation.

6. Give Customers More Visibility

Another major drain on a TPA's staff can be routine customer questions:

• "Has the employee gone for the test?"

• "Is the result back?"

• "Where can I see the status?"

• "Can you resend that information?"

Providing customers with better visibility into their programs can reduce unnecessary emails and phone calls while improving the overall customer experience. Centralized technology allows information to be easier to access and gives both the TPA and its customers better visibility into program activity. When customers can get the information they need faster, your staff has more time available for situations that actually require personal assistance.

7. Offer More Services Without Creating More Systems

Growing a TPA doesn't have to mean simply finding more drug testing customers. Growth can also come from providing more services to the customers you already have. Occupational health is one example.

Employers may need services such as physicals, alcohol testing, titers, QuantiFERON testing, and other occupational health services in addition to drug testing. US Gateway allows TPAs and CRAs to manage occupational health screening services alongside other testing workflows, helping businesses expand what they offer without creating an entirely separate administrative process.

That creates an important opportunity:

Increase revenue per customer without creating the same level of additional overhead.

8. Let Employees Focus on Work That Actually Grows the Business

Automation isn't about eliminating the value of employees. It is about making their time more valuable.

Imagine if your current employees spent less time:

• Copying information
• Searching websites
• Managing spreadsheets
• Checking statuses
• Preparing routine billing
• Completing repetitive administrative work

And more time:

• Talking to clients
• Solving customer problems
• Developing relationships
• Following up with prospects
• Selling additional services
• Retaining employer accounts
• Identifying new opportunities

Those are activities that can actually grow a business.

Your best employees shouldn't be functioning as human integrations between software systems. Technology should handle repetitive work so your people can handle the work that requires people.

Growth Doesn't Have to Mean More Payroll

There will always be times when hiring another employee makes sense. But hiring should be a strategic decision, not the automatic response to increased volume. Before adding another administrative position, take a close look at the work your existing team performs every day.

Ask yourself:

Which tasks require a person, and which tasks simply require a better system?

A TPA with the right technology can manage more employer groups, process more testing activity, offer more services, and generate more revenue without increasing administrative payroll at the same rate. That is what scalability is really about.

US Gateway: Built to Help TPAs Scale

US Gateway isn't designed to simply give TPAs another place to order a drug test. It's designed to serve as an operating system for your TPA or CRA, bringing critical workflows together, automating repetitive administrative tasks, and giving your company the infrastructure needed to grow more efficiently.

With integrations across the four major laboratories, centralized testing management, Dynamic AI Scheduling, random program management, billing capabilities, occupational health services, reporting, and additional business tools, US Gateway helps TPAs spend less time managing processes and more time growing their companies.

Your next major customer shouldn't automatically require your next employee.

Before increasing payroll, discover what your current team could accomplish with better technology.

Ready to See How US Gateway Can Help Your TPA Grow?

Schedule a demonstration of US Gateway and discover how automation, integration, and centralized management can help your organization increase capacity, reduce administrative workload, and scale without continuously adding employees.