Healthcare · eye care and dental · insurance · Wichita Family Vision and Tri-Valley Dental · Live on the eye clinic's own server since 2026-10-12; the biller's first live run 2026-10-21

ClaimStride, insurance claims software for eye care and dental: every unpaid claim checked with the insurer and given its next step.

An aging report says how old a claim is, never why it hasn't paid. ClaimStride reads the practice's own report, asks each insurer where every unpaid claim stands, and puts the next step on each one, in plain words.

1,140claims read from the biller's real Compulink report, with every total adding up to hers The eye clinic's insurance receivables report, read on 2026-10-16 before her first run: every claim, every sheet, totals matched by age group.

~2min to check 97 unpaid claims with their insurers on the biller's first live run

The claims worklist for a sample eye clinic: counts for needs action, not on file, no electronic status, paid and pending, the unpaid total, and a table of claims by age with denied and not-touched counts — The week's claims, checked with the insurers and sorted by what needs action. Sample clinic, made-up patients.

At a glance

Client: Wichita Family Vision, an optometry practice in Wichita, Kansas, and Tri-Valley Dental Care in Pleasanton, California.
Who uses it: The biller at the eye clinic; the front desk and the owner dentist at the dental practice.
Shipped: Live on the eye clinic's own server since 2026-10-12; the biller's first live run 2026-10-21. About two weeks from the first version to live at the eye clinic.
Stack: Python
FastAPI
Pydantic
Stedi clearinghouse API
X12 276/277 claim status
X12 270/271 eligibility
X12 835 payment files
AWS EC2
Amazon S3
AWS SSM
pytest
Compliance: Runs inside each practice's own AWS account under its business associate agreement. Sign-in is required, an access record notes who opened or changed a claim by the tool's own reference only, and logs carry request IDs and insurer names, never patient details. The clearinghouse is the one outside connection, under its own BAA.
Cost to run: About 30 cents a check at the clearinghouse's published rate for the first 250 a month. The monthly limit and the confirm step above $10 keep the bill where the practice set it.
My role: My co-founder built the first version. I rebuilt how it reads each insurer's answers, built the eye care side and the claims worklist the biller uses, and run its releases on the clinic's server.

What I built

The build

Reads the report the practice already makes. Compulink's insurance receivables report at the eye clinic, in every format and every sheet, and the Dentrix aging report at the dental practice. Nothing has to connect into the practice software.
Asks every insurer. Each unpaid claim goes to its insurer through a healthcare clearinghouse and comes back with one status: needs action, paid, pending, not on file, or no electronic status for insurers like VSP that don't answer that way.
The next step on every claim. Where the insurer or its payment file gives a reason, it's written in plain words with numbered steps and the insurer's deadline, so the biller knows what to fix and by when.
The view the biller asked for. Primary, secondary and tertiary claims kept apart, denied against not yet touched by age group, and the deadlines due in the next 30 days at the top.
Coverage before the visit. A coverage check per patient with active dates, the deductible and what's left this year. The dental front desk ran its first live check on 2026-10-22.
A brake on spend. The price shows before a run, a monthly limit stops it, and anything above $10 asks first.

A denied Cigna claim with the reason in plain words, a note not to bill the patient, three numbered steps and an appeal deadline — A denied claim: the reason, what not to do, the steps and the deadline.

Claim cards for VSP with no electronic status, a Medicare secondary claim waiting on the primary EOB, and a Healthy Blue claim to resend — Every claim gets its own next step, including the ones an insurer won't answer electronically.

What changed

Before and after

Before

By hand

Why a claim hasn't paidA portal or a call per claim

What to do nextWorked out claim by claim

The old unpaid claimsA line on the aging report

Checking coveragePortal by portal, by hand

After

The system

Why a claim hasn't paidAsked of every insurer in one run

What to do nextWritten on the claim, with the deadline

The old unpaid claimsDenied or untouched, by age group

Checking coverageOne check, one card

Where the numbers come from. Checks go through a healthcare clearinghouse at about 30 cents each, its published rate for the first 250 a month. Every screen on this page is the sample clinic with made-up patients.

For engineers

How it's built

Architecture: A Python FastAPI service with a server-rendered page. Claim status is X12 276/277 and coverage is 270/271 through Stedi; payment files (835) supply the reason where the insurer sends one. Deterministic code reads every report format and every insurer answer, so the same claim always gets the same status and the same steps. An insurer that doesn't answer electronically is marked for a call rather than given an answer it never sent.
Where it runs: For the eye clinic, a small server in the practice's own AWS account: encrypted disk, sign-in required, code shipped from a private bucket in that account and released through SSM with a one-command rollback. The dental practice runs in its own AWS account under its BAA and moves into the practice's name at hand-off. The clearinghouse is the one outside connection.
Tests and evals: 2,596 automated tests (22 Oct 2026). Before the biller's first run, her real 1,140-claim report was read with every total matching hers. Every release is tagged and can be rolled back in one command.
Cost and latency: About 30 cents a check at the clearinghouse's published rate for the first 250 a month. The monthly limit and the confirm step above $10 keep the bill where the practice set it.
Guardrails: It never guesses. A missing detail says what to ask instead of sending a guess, an insurer with no electronic answer is marked for a call, and the price is shown before anything is sent.
The tradeoff we chose: Why this way and not the other
No direct connection into Compulink or Dentrix yet. The reports the practice already exports are enough to run on, and an approved integration costs thousands up front. A direct connection comes once enough practices on the same software are using it.

In their words

“I'm really impressed with what you guys have done so far.”

The biller, Wichita Family Vision, after her first live run