Josh Ehmke

All right. You’re here again with, Josh Ehmke and Jeremy Traasdahl of One Claim Solution and we’re here to answer a few more questions today that we get commonly. And, a couple topics, so should be a good one.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. So one of the topics we get a lot is just the overall OCS and homeowners and how that works. And so, the first question we got, regarding OCS and homeowners is, does OCS ever reach out to homeowners?

Josh Ehmke

This is an interesting question because, the answer is yes and no. The answer is, yes, but only when one of our contractors gives us permission to do so. You know, like we’ve touched on previously, one of the big things that contractors are super hot to trot about is their Google reviews or online reviews, right? And those obviously come from homeowners, their customers. And so we want to treat those customers with kid gloves every single time if there is a need to contact them. Most of the times we don’t ever have to contact the homeowner. The only situations where we might have to contact a homeowner is if the carrier is not wanting to process the claim because they’re trying to get in touch with the policyholder, and they need certain information from that policyholder, or if the, insurance company sends a check directly to the homeowner, we’ll try to get ahead of that as fast as we can.

Let the homeowner know a check is coming to them, that it’s not theirs. They don’t get to go to Disneyland with that check. This is actually for the contractor. But, we only really ever contact the customer the policy holder. Once a contractor lets us know that’s okay. And when we do it, it’s always very kind.

We understand that as the contractors customer, and so we treat them, gently like that. If the homeowner decides to start keeping those funds, there are further things that OCS can do. But we won’t do that without the contractors permission and the contractor telling us to. So we, again, very rarely only in those really those few situations. Or if the insurance company denies the claim, and we try to work out, you know, some sort of, a payment plan or something with the homeowner, those are really the only times we might ever contact the homeowner.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. And I would just add, like, it’s not usually on a claim by claim basis, you know, this is once the contractor knows who we are, what we do, how we do it. We have kind of full autonomy to engage with the homeowner because trust us, they know that we know how to how to handle it, you know? And so, I know this is this is really a question that comes up either in the onboarding or within the first week or two of us handling, their accounts receivables.

Jeremy Traasdahl

But outside of that, we don’t get this from our established contractors because they understand and believe in what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. And, our obvious goal is to never, ever, ever be a reason why the homeowner would be more upset or more, adversarial to the contractor. We obviously work very, very gently with the clients that, that our customers have worked so hard to get. Yep. That’s right. Okay. So how should I introduce homeowners to OCS?

Josh Ehmke

This is an important aspect of what we do. A lot of times we encourage our contractors, you know, any issues that might come through this process a lot of times come from homeowners not being super aware of what’s going to happen. For almost every single homeowner that has a water loss, it’s their first time having a water loss.

They don’t know what to expect and where we find it, super helpful is those contractors that work with homeowners to help them understand, the process every step of the process and what to expect from that process. Part of that is, hey, look, you know, we use a third party company just like doctor’s offices do, to help work with insurance companies to get this paid, who we work with is OCS.

And, most likely they won’t be contacting you. But if they do, this is who they are. And they’re here to actually help both. Both of us get this paid from the carrier, so that we can, you know, you don’t have to mess with a homeowner so you can keep worrying about putting your house back together. And, so that we can focus on putting your house back together as well while they work on the insurance part of it. And so we, the contractors that do that, that’s very, very helpful.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. But I would add, they may contact you. That’s again, our billing agency. I don’t expect them to have to contact you. If they do, that’s who they are. That’s what they’re doing. Right. We’re working with them. Just that that’s part of the work authorization and stuff. And, and so that’s as they’re explaining that it’s an easy transition. Yep. For them for sure. How does OCS handle questions from homeowners about something that the contractor did on site?

Josh Ehmke

Even rarer does this happen, right. Again, a lot of times these questions can be, you know, cut off at the past by the contractor being transparent with the customer about what they’re doing and what the process is going to look like, what their bill might look like, those types of things. But there are occasions where, you know, when a customer or a homeowner receives funds from an insurance company, OCS will reach out to them to try to, you know, instruct them on where to send that payment and, and how to process that.

And at those times, sometimes questions do pop up. They see a check, right? And it’s like, oh, did they really do all of that? Are there? I didn’t see them do this. You know. And so we do get questions from homeowners from time to time. And we handle those questions very similar to how we would handle the claims adjuster, you know, a little nicer, maybe sometimes.

And, and, you know, not necessarily dumb it down, but at least layman’s terms kind of what’s going on with the claim and why those charges are there, what they represent and why they were on there, and why the contractor had to do those, those things. And so, don’t happen a lot. But when they do, yeah, our people are very well trained to handle those types of conversations too, and help the homeowners understand.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. If I was to give an example of one that I, I’ve seen and it’s this is the one that I feel like homeowners, if ever, are the ones that they attach to. There you go. There was not 21 fans here and, they’re right. You know, there was not 21 fans there. There was probably seven fans for three days, you know, but the invoice reads like 21 air movers, you know, but it’s because it’s a daily rental of seven air movers.

And it happened to be three days, for instance, or four days at different. But that’s one that, again, these water losses are so rare that like they you can’t even really fault them for not understanding how to read an invoice, you know, because it’s probably the only time they’ll ever experience having to look at one of these invoices.

Right. But that’s like the one that comes to mind when I think of a homeowner being like, there was not that much equipment here. And it’s just because they don’t understand how the rental agreement works and how it puts, you know, it combines it. Yeah. For sure. That’s a good example. Okay. That it? That’s it for you.

Josh Ehmke

All right. Your turn. So the next this next segment that we have, deals with, OCS’s software that we use, this part of it’s called the contractor portal. Okay. So Jeremy, what is OCS’s contractor portal.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. So this this contractor portal has been something that, frankly, has been asked for from contractors from, as you know, the very beginning, this visible into their claims, their accounts receivable, what we’re doing on them, where they are in the status is what is our collection rate, what is our days?

The first payment. This is all stuff. The analytics part of the portal, is what I get really excited about. And then there’s the claims submission part of the portal, which it’s a login that you get. As a contractor, you put all the supporting documentation and there’s easy ways for us to do that. Or for contractors to do that.

They put all the claim information and they submit it through the portal. We get it on this side. We, put it all together and we submit it to the to the insurance carrier. So that’s like the interface that they submit claims to is through our OSC Portal or OCS app that is proprietary and created by us.

And then the analytics part is the one that gets me really excited is because it gives them full visibility into everything that’s happening in their accounts receivable. And frankly, there is not a software out there, a billing software. We know all of the software’s in the industry, right? A lot of them are job management software, because that’s ultimately, again, their core business.

But there is not a software out there that will give them the analytics into their accounts receivable. Better or more visibly than our OCS portal.

Josh Ehmke

Absolutely. One of the things that we get a lot from our contractors is even the really sophisticated ones. You know, once they make that transition over to OCS and kind of get involved with us, one of the one of the key pieces of feedback we always get is, man, I didn’t never realize how much I did not know about my accounts receivable until you guys came in.

I have more transparency and more accessibility into my accounts receivable than I ever had. And so, I was chuckling while you were kind of talking because, you said that you get excited about numbers, you know, and through our history, you know, I was, remembering some of the contractors that we would meet with and, and different contractors would be like, I’m a numbers guy.

Let’s talk to me about numbers. And I was chuckling because you truly do get excited about numbers. Like, you are a numbers guy and nothing gets get you more excited than being able to analyze the performance of OCS and how we are doing for our contractors. And so those, that transparency is highly driven by your fascination with analytics on that kind of stuff. And I, I freaking love it. It’s cool. So next part of that is what plans do you have for expanding the portal?

Jeremy Traasdahl

So man, we have a lot of requests already for like what would make the portal better? I think internally we have a lot of things that we believe would also make the portal better. That is going to be a long development process.

Meaning not that it’s going to take long to see version three, 4 or 5, 6, 7 of the portal, but that we will never stop making that portal better. A couple things that come to mind on the portal is this model of, well, I guess there’s two things that I think that would be really neat to see, which is, the predictability of what a claim, the predictability of a claim settlement.

Right. We have seven, eight years of historical claim documentation that says this. If this invoice is x documented like y and with carrier c and with adjuster b and we predict that this claim is very likely to settle, that would be a neat that’s one thing that we are looking at doing. And already kind of developing though, the thing that I see coming next in the portal, if it isn’t here already, is the chat feature where we’re able to communicate with our contractors via an app. Right. And they’re able to say, hey, I forgot to submit this form with this claim. Here it is. Can you go and attach it? all through the app, you know, versus through email there’s also a part of the portal right now that’s the AI function of the portal that that they can say, hey, what’s the status on this claim?

And what it’ll do is it’ll pull from all of our software, and our knowledge base, and it’ll pull from some of our, notes and it’ll say, hey, here’s what it is, here’s where the adjuster is saying is happening. And this is where we believe that this claim is going, i.e. it’s going to settle for $13,000. Right. And if they’re able to just punch in, hey, what’s status on any given claim versus having to call or email us? That’s one of the features that’s I feel like going to be used a lot.

Josh Ehmke

Yeah. That’s pretty cool. You know, we had our demo on that earlier. And it was, it was pretty impressive the kind of stuff that AI is making possible even for just this segment of the industry. Pretty cool. Yep. So super, super excited that we’re implementing and using a lot of that. It’s been cool to see. The next question on this, contractor portal segment is, how can billing data be used to inform a restoration contractors business decisions?

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. So this is this goes kind of to that predictability model that I was kind of referencing. Again, if it’s a situation where, let’s say it’s a carrier that is maybe not the easiest to work with, right? Is this a job that is X amount of size? Right. Is this a job that I want to even take? Could be one of the things, B. it’s a cash flow predictor, right? Where it says, okay, if I submitted 400 claims over the past two months, but it’s only carrier X, carrier X could be really slow to pay compared to carrier Y, and it will predict cash flow of a business.

Right. it will say I expect X cash flow to come in at Y percentage within the next 30 days. That’s huge for a business that again has to wait for their accounts receivables, right? Yeah. They and it’s an unpredictable way. Right. It’s is it going to be am I going to get paid next week or am I going to get paid in four months on this claim?

Right, right. Obviously our goal at OCS is get it paid in a week. You know, that would be ideal for everybody. But, the predictability of cash flow, I think, for these contractors is going to be huge. And that’s one of those portal enhancements that I think will make a big difference.

Josh Ehmke

Absolutely, absolutely. Just having that clarity and that transparency into your into your accounts receivable and understanding and, you know, being able to make a business decision or plan based on real data, not just a guess, but real data.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. What do I have in my accounts receivable? Like am I going to go spend on a Christmas party for my whole people? Am I going to spend 10 grand or am I going to spend 50 grand? Right. Like, what is what’s in my pipeline? And when do I expect that to hit? And at what collection.

Josh Ehmke

Yeah, absolutely.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Right. So this next segment of questions is surrounding claim negotiations. So first question is how does the claims negotiation process at OCS work?

Josh Ehmke

That’s proprietary information. I’m not going to share it. Just kidding. No, there’s no real science behind it. You know, there’s only so many ways you can skin a cat. And, OCS has developed a very successful way of handling these claims. And, and the first step is making sure the contractor is set up correctly from the beginning with the right documentation, the right work authorization, those types of things.

And, and then getting that submitted as quick as possible to the carrier, once it’s submitted to the carrier, then it just comes down to follow up, you know, constantly reaching out, making sure that the carrier received it and then, answering any questions, trying to even maybe set up a specific time where you can talk to the adjuster about that claim, schedule an appointment, whatever it might be.

Again, I was semi-joking when I said that it’s proprietary information, but it kind of is. You know, it’s a process that we’ve kind of developed over the last eight years that works. And it is what makes us really successful at what we do. But it is handled where, I think the key to it is being able to have the manpower and the ability to follow up the follow up is everything in this process, and making sure that the adjusters have what they need, that their questions are getting answered. And being able to kind of stay in their ear on that so that the invoice stays at the top of the pile.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. And I would just add to that our, our claims teams very well trained. And this is all we do. They know state regulations, they know OSHA regulations, federal regulations, they know the IICRC standards.

The difference between “should” and “may” and “shall” in the S500. And they have the citations to all of that and the access to that, so that when an adjuster comes with, an argument. Right, or, something they don’t want to pay our team is better equipped to handle that than, frankly, anybody. I feel like, in the restoration world, because it’s literally all we do for the past 7 or 8 years.

Josh Ehmke

That’s right.

Jeremy Traasdahl

And so our job is to stay on top of it and keep our people on top of it.

Josh Ehmke

Yeah. And just like our software and our programs that we use, our justifications are constantly adapting as well to what works and industry changes. So

Jeremy Traasdahl

Alright, so next question. How does OCS decide when to settle a claim?

Josh Ehmke

Yeah. OCS really likes to have the autonomy to be able to do this. But it comes with contractor trust. It comes from history with that contractor. And it comes also from what we talked about in the past as well about our onboarding process. Really being able to work with contractors to establish realistic expectations on, both their part and our part and being able to establish those parameters on the front end of what OCS is able to, settle a claim at, you know, different levels.

And so in our software, we do have different levels set up on, on where our claims advocates can, and are authorized to be able to resolve and settle a claim in order to encourage a quick turnaround on those, again, that’s all set up at the very beginning with the contractor expectations so that they, they know kind of where our parameters are.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. I don’t have anything to add to that.

Josh Ehmke

Thank you.

Jeremy Traasdahl

So the next question is “How do you handle claim denials?”

Josh Ehmke

Claim denials? This is a fun one. There’s a lot of different ways a contractor can handle a claim denial, right. and OCS has handled claim denials differently throughout its history. Currently, OCS does not challenge claim denials.

Personally, there are things that OCS will do. We might. We’ll work with the contractor to maybe get some more information that we can get to the carrier or the adjuster to really help educate the adjuster as to what really went on with the claim and why they should cover it. But when the carrier officially sends out that denial letter and it’s, it’s done.

And they’re not changing their position at that point, OCS will, turn the file back over to the contractor or, put the contractor in touch with a company or attorney that might, in their jurisdiction be able to go and challenge that denial with the carrier. Or we’ll end up working directly with the homeowner, depending on what the contractor wants us to do in order to effectuate some sort of, cash pay discount on the claim.

Depending on what that all looks like. But, claim denials can be tricky on this kind of stuff. So a contractor can absolutely help that process the with how well they document the loss. You know, are they taking good pictures. Are they, you know, taking video of the cause of loss itself, you know, water spraying out of a pipe, you know, versus just pictures of the damage after it.

You know, the water is turned off and everything. So there’s things that we can do as well working with the contractor on the front end. But once the claims actually denied, that’s typically the three places it’ll go.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Does OCS go to arbitration or litigation?

Josh Ehmke

OCS does. We do. We have we are, you know, nobody likes litigation. Nobody. Carriers don’t even really like it. And so, but it is a tool that they often try to employ in order to be able to pay less. But, OCS does have, different attorneys that we work with. In order to handle different situations. Very rarely do we do we go to arbitration or even litigation, to be honest. Those don’t happen too often. But, we do have the ability to handle them when they do come up and work with the contractor in order to, to handle that.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. It’s definitely not something we want to do. It’s definitely something we’ve done. And historically on big, big matters such as, like the assignment of benefits, we’ve litigated that all the way through the Court of Appeals. Got a favorable ruling there. 

Josh Ehmke

Twice.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Twice. When it’s big matters that we know what the law is on.

Josh Ehmke

We’ll stand up for it.

Jeremy Traasdahl

We’ll stand up for it. We will. And we’ll have to, and we’ll probably do that forever, that’s right, in terms of like one off claims situations, that’s just not something we do. We have different methods and means to go pursue balances.

Josh Ehmke

Different alternative dispute resolution processes.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. Litigation is not fun for anybody. It’s and it’s sounds nice sometimes to even a contractor until you’re in it and, that’s right. It’s messier and it’s something you definitely don’t want to be a part of. If you can help it.

Josh Ehmke

If you can help it. Okay. So in this next segment, Jeremy, we’re going to talk a little bit about OCS and, and who is the OCS team. All right. Who are your claims advocates? Question one

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. So claims advocates, man we span the horizon on this. We have some claims advocates that had zero experience in claims or property and casualty insurance. Ever. Right. They started with OCS. They could have started in a different department. They could started as claims advocate years ago. And they’ve been trained solely here at OCS. Then become certified potentially in IICRC and so we have that level of zero knowledge and then we have former adjusters right from some of the largest carriers that are our claims advocates over here.

They have the ability, all of them, whether they started with zero knowledge or have had 15 years experience as a claims adjuster. Knowledge, they all have the ability to negotiate and settle these claims because we have our internal training as well, that makes and prepares everybody for being able to settle a claim.

I would say some of the trainings that we have deployed are like the IICRC trainings, the courses for water mitigation contractors. Even though we’re not contractors, it’s good for our people to know and see and become certified in what they do and what contractors do. So they’re just more knowledgeable of the process. Right? We’ve had experts come in and teach courses on, man, I think I’m not going to name-drop people, but I think you have some of these experts that are like bio-chemists, you know, that can really microbiologists that can really talk about the science of drying a structure, the science of contaminants, the science of how that works.

And our people are well equipped now to be able to justify potentially why that on an invoice would have needed to be done. I think of like a decontamination of a piece of equipment. Right. Well, they’re well-equipped because they had a microbiologist come tell them how this gets into equipment. We’ve done ride alongs. Our people have done ride alongs with contractors, to go put them out in the field with the contractors to see what it looks like to, put a containment barrier up. Right. How they place their equipment, what it does, how quickly it does it, how to make it faster, how to put the best situation for drying standards in place. Right. And so our people just, like, become very, very well equipped in what the contractors do. And then on the flip side, we have just all the documentation in the world regarding, again, OSHA regulations and federal regulations, I think of like NESHAP for asbestos stuff, IICRC like they are, they know everything that needs to be done and should be done on any given job. And there’s no one better equipped than our claims advocates to do that.

Josh Ehmke

Yeah. Do you think it helps our claims advocates to have access to legal, help on a lot of this stuff?

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. Again, this documentation that we’ve gathered has been years in the gathering. Right. State specific, across the nation. Right. And it’s all at their fingertips in our knowledge base. They’re able to search anything and get the relevant information. and again, the legal is part of that what’s legally required of our contractors to do, and what is not right. And so, absolutely, I think that the 7 or 8 years of just gathering data in terms of local, state or federal regulations has given us the ability to really argue, invoices and justify invoices to the best of our ability

Josh Ehmke

Okay. The next question kind of goes along with, with the claims negotiation and negotiation section that we talked about previously, but, kind of carries that on a little further. How often does a claim advocate work on one of my invoices?

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah, it’s a great question. It’d be one of the questions I would have if I was a contractor. So we are and this man, this varies because of the engagement of an adjuster. But our goal is to touch every claim every 2 to 3 days. That’s a follow-up every 2 to 3 days, with an adjuster now if an adjustor’s on vacation, right, and says, hey, I’m not going to be back and there’s no one here to help. Then we’ll push that out,

Josh Ehmke

Try to respect that

Jeremy Traasdahl

We’ll try to respect that if we again, if we can. If the claims 50 days old in our system, then we’re going to go to a team member, right. And we’re going to be touching it. And the frequency of our claim follow up also increases as the claim ages. But 2 to 3 days is, I would say, like a very fair, reasonable, expectation that we meet

Josh Ehmke

And does the, does the same claim advocate work on all of a contractors invoices meaning are they assigned one claim advocate.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yes, so that’s a good question. So the answer’s no to that. The reason for that is our claims advocates are actually distinctly separated by carriers in pods. Right. And so we try to develop really good relationships with these carriers. So that one claims advocate can settle 15 claims on one phone call. Because that adjuster with that carrier has potentially 15 different contractors, that they have on their desk also. And our claims advocate can then settle that helps us with our, frankly, our speed, to payment. So we separate it not by contract but by carrier.

Josh Ehmke

Perfect. Next question kind of goes along with the previous section about the contractor portal. How can I check in or follow along with the status of my open claims?

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah, we touched on this on one of the other segments. The contractor portal gives you really hyper good visibility into your claims. The analytics, we are very transparent. And then again, the AI thing that I touched on will give you the ability to type in a claim and say, like, what’s the current status of this? And it’ll pull from our, from our internal software. What’s happening on that claim and what has happened historically on that claim? Perfect.

All right. The next segment is kind of finding out why you’re special. Josh. So it is what’s your experience doing this? That’s kind of the that the headline. First question is what states can you work in?

Josh Ehmke

I’m not sure if this question is asking specifically about, me as the attorney or I’m going to I’m going to take it as to what states can OCS work in.

Jeremy Traasdahl

That it is what it is. You’re not special, and it’s actually asking about OCS

Josh Ehmke

I just wanted to clarify that. Don’t let it go to my head. Ever.

So OCS can we can work in any state. We have contractors in many states. There are some states that are more difficult for us to work in than others. A lot of our success and ability to bring the accountability comes from the assignment of benefits. And so states where the assignment is, that are friendly to the assignment.

Josh Ehmke

Those are the states where we excel in and where we can we can work our most magic in those states.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Which that’s the majority of the states. That’s true. That’s typically going to be the answer is like, we can do we’re stronger in 90% of them. Yeah, there’s 10% that it’s just like, okay, just a more hurdles to jump over. But I would say if you’re interested, like, and you’re in any state, call us and we’ll tell you whether or not there’s a hurdle or two to jump over.

Josh Ehmke

Yep. But we can any state, we can handle it right.

Jeremy Traasdahl

How will you help me modify my contract and work authorization?

Josh Ehmke

Yeah. So the work authorization that we really encourage our contractors to use is a work product as well. It’s something that we have developed over the life of, of being in this industry, and not just over the life being in the industry, but it’s been, any modifications to a change has come as a result of, you know, potential litigation that we have been involved with where we’ve been like, hey, you know, let’s tweak it a little bit here because it’ll make it a little bit stronger as well. And so, the work authorization that we really try to encourage our contractors to use is a work product that has been developed and is it’s a short document. It’s not like a 15 pager. These homeowners are already stressed out enough, for the franchisee type of contractors. A lot of times they have their own work authorizations are required to use. And so we will try to work with them in order to implement certain portions of our work authorization that are necessary for us to do what we do. But, absolutely. Work with every contractor on that from the get go. Some prefer to keep their own, and we’ll just make the, you know, help them make the changes that that are needed there. And have, you know, their attorneys review it for accuracy. But yeah. Absolutely. That’s key.

Jeremy Traasdahl

What do contractors say about working with OCS?

Josh Ehmke

What do they say about working with OCS? You know, it’s we’ve had the ability and it’s been really good where pretty much every contractor that we’ve ever billed with, we’ve had a good relationship with, there’s been a couple, that we no longer bill for, but for the most part, once contractors come and work with us, they stay and they stay for a reason.

We’ve had, contractors that started working with OCS, and they were doing, you know, 10 to 12 claims a week, which is pretty good. That’s a good sized contractor. And once they started working with us, they were able to take that extra time and manpower and focus to really grow their business, to where they got to, where they were doing closer to, you know, 80 claims a week, which is huge.

And those contractors have really given OCS a lot of credit. For their ability to be able to grow and expand their business because they were no longer required to focus on that accounts receivable side of things. That takes so much time and energy and so much of their focus away from doing things on their business that they like to do.

And, and we really enjoy working with contractors. And the ones that work the best with us typically tend to be the ones that, you know, are looking to be able to take that increased cash flow, that increased time, that increased ability to focus on their business and grow. We love watching our contractors grow. It, puts a smile on our face when we see that.

But, by in large, from the history of OCS, we’ve, it’s not just doing their billing to, it actually a lot of times evolves into friendships with our contractors where they trust us and we almost become family with them in this process.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah, I would say I think of just all the contractors over all the years, you know, that are billing with us. And I think they’re all different. You know, what was important to them is different. Some are like, man, I love how fast you get me my money. Some are like, I actually love that I just make more money. Some are like, I just don’t want to talk to carriers ever again, you know? And each one has a different kind of.

Josh Ehmke

Yeah, it’s true.

Jeremy Traasdahl

You know, I work life balance is better. You know, I think if some of them that were like, oh, I try to give the numbers the analytics to, you know, and they’re like, oh yeah, that’s cool. I don’t actually care. Like I just don’t want to do it anymore. You know, I don’t want to talk to the carriers anymore or the adjusters anymore. So I just think like they all say different things. Ultimately we solve a different problem for, we solve a lot of problems for what contractors deal with on a regular basis.

Okay, so I guess to wrap things up. Tell me historically, as a lawyer, right your history as a lawyer dating all the way back to the medical field. But really in the property and casualty. Like how was that made OCS as a service offering better? You just frankly, with your law background, your expertise there?

Josh Ehmke

I that’s a pretty broad question. And there’s a lot of ways that I think that it has helped. One of the key things that we talked about already a lot is, is the assignment of benefits, you know, really being able to dive in, on the assignment based on my medical background and be able to apply that knowledge to this industry, has really shifted a lot of stuff here for contractors to benefit from that, the same way that doctors and hospitals benefit from it. You know, we talked a little bit about some of the wins that we’ve been able to experience through OCS on the assignment issue. Some of the wins that we’ve gotten, you know, on furthering better and more appropriate payments from the carrier. One of the things that I think is super helpful is and this is the craziest thing that we’ve found is whether you and I say the exact same thing, just because I have a law degree and have passed the bar exam, like people tend to listen a little bit more to that, which is the most ridiculous thing in the world to me, because you actually might be more educated on a certain subject than I am, and I’m just kind of regurgitating what you say. It just means something more because I’m an attorney. But the same concept actually applies with carriers, right? A lot of times at the beginning it was carriers being like, wait, wait, wait, wait, why is there an attorney involved with this already? And it’s like, well, I’m not really involved. I’m here and I’m overseeing it to make sure that everything goes correctly. Yes. and kind of put them on notice that there is that. And when we do send out our the claims submission packages on behalf of contractors, it’s my name that goes on that cover letter every time as general counsel for OCS. Again informing the carriers that there is legal involved and to be aware of that so that they process things more reasonably and legally. And I think that’s a huge help.

And I think the other thing that is a huge help to is these justifications that we’ve created since the beginning of OCS, you know, a lot of times our claims advocates, you know, being able to hear it from an attorney, it just gives them a lot more confidence to be able to hold and stick to their guns on some of these justifications that they’re pushing through. It’s just, it’s been a wild ride. You know, OCS is kind of a one-of-a-kind company. There’s really nobody else out there like us that does what we do and, and brings the legal aspect to the accountability of the claims, adjusting process. 

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. And I would say it’s interesting because I think when we first started OCS, you know, I was more on the customer acquisition side of things. And quickly we pivoted. I became very heavily involved in the operations side of things. And, and the customer acquisition and sales became your expertise as you knew, everything that we needed to know in terms of the legal, ramifications of contractors doing something right or wrong or the legal ramifications of a carrier doing something right or wrong.

And as my position changed into operations of OCS, it became very important for me to understand the operations of contractors. How do they set up their organizations? What’s important to them? What are the challenges they face? And if we know that, then we know how to set up our organization, how to create things like the portal, that tell us, oh, this is what they want to see and need to see.

I think the combination of, frankly, me being intimately involved with the restoration companies, and their operations and then obviously building out our own operations, which I led from the beginning. Combined with your expertise and your background from a legal standpoint is really what has kind of made OCS special. It’s what has made us successful in what we do because, the combination of those things

Josh Ehmke

It combines the both the best of both worlds

Jeremy Traasdahl

It combines the best of both worlds. Yep. That’s exactly right.

Josh Ehmke

Absolutely. I was I’m glad you touched on that, Jeremy, because I think a lot of your experience that you’ve been able to have with contractors, you know, or different family members or whatever, you know, really helps open your eyes to the special needs and, challenges that contractors go through. And you being able to bring that to the table and help solve for those problems here, too, is it’s, it’s good, it’s good. It’s what makes it all very special and work very well.

Jeremy Traasdahl

And I would say just to wrap things up, thanks for listening to this podcast. Listening to me and Josh talk again. If you want more information or are looking to, have a discussion or trying to find a solution to your billing needs, feel free to contact us on our website. It’s www.oneclaimsolution.com