"What Automation Really Did for My PA Team"

A Day in the Life of a PBM PA Coordinator as told by a Current Banjo Health Customer

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A few years ago, my mornings as a prior authorization coordinator felt more like navigating a maze than starting a workday. I’d login, glance at the cluttered interface, and immediately feel the weight of everything I knew I’d have to wrestle with: required fields buried in different corners of the screen, cases piled into the same general queues, and no easy way to see who was working on what. Before I even touched a clinical review, I was already burning time just trying to get oriented.

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The real challenge wasn’t the clinical complexity — it was the administrative noise. Without queue separation, assigning work was guesswork. Productivity tracking was almost impossible, because the system gave us no reliable visibility into individual workloads. Even staying compliant required constant manual monitoring. Turnaround times had to be checked and rechecked, and any reporting involved stitching together documents and spreadsheets by hand. We couldn’t even export PA packets cleanly; instead, we combined PDFs manually, hoping nothing was out of order. Days blurred together in a rhythm of searching, sorting, and double-checking.

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Everything changed when we implemented BanjoPA.

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The Banjo Way

For the first time, the system felt like it was working with us. The interface became intuitive — more like a guided form than a scavenger hunt. Mandatory fields were clearly marked. The information I needed appeared logically, right when I needed it. Instead of spending half my energy navigating the software, I could finally focus on reviewing cases. That shift alone transformed our productivity. Technicians who previously averaged 10 cases a day were suddenly able to complete 17without feeling overloaded. Pharmacists saw efficiency gains as well. For the first time, we had breathing room. When inventory dipped, we actually had the capacity to take on projects instead of scrambling to fill gaps. Work no longer felt like an incessant race against the clock.

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BanjoPA also reshaped how we monitor compliance. Now, we can configure plan-specific turnaround times and track our performance automatically. The anxiety that once surrounded regulatory deadlines has all but disappeared. Reports are accurate, instant, and built into our daily workflow. And the decision-making process? More consistent than ever. With drug-specific and general decision trees guiding the intake process, every reviewer collects the same information up front. That means fewer RFIs, fewer delays, and far more consistency across reviewers — something that matters deeply when policies must be applied fairly and reliably.

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Our relationships with providers improved almost immediately. With electronic PA and appeal submission in place, faxes became the exception rather than the norm. Providers could send us clean, complete requests, and decision trees ensured we asked only for what was necessary. Even our letters became easier to generate. With a configurable library of templates, we were able to communicate clearly and consistently, without spending extra time formatting or rewriting content.

If BanjoPA were to disappear tomorrow, the loss I’d feel most deeply would be the queue management. Separate queues with built-in assignment logic are the backbone of our entire process now. They allow us to direct cases to the right reviewer, prevent bottlenecks, and avoid the silent buildup of cases that once put our turnaround times at risk. Losing that structure would send us straight back to the uncertainty and inefficiency that used to define our days.

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The Impact

Looking back, the transformation isn’t just measured in productivity metrics or compliance scores — though those improvements are real and meaningful. The true return on investment is the shift in how it feels to do this work. Our time is no longer consumed by manual tasks that add no value. We spend our day on clinical review, not on administrative cleanup. Automation hasn’t taken our jobs; it has removed the friction that kept us from doing them well.

For payers and PBMs searching for a way to streamline prior authorization and boost both accuracy and efficiency, this kind of automation isn’t just helpful — it’s essential. And for people like me, working behind the scenes to make sure every request gets the review it deserves, it has changed the workday in all the right ways.

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