It was March 26, 2024. Chip Holland, president and CEO of Total Sleep Management (TSM), read a Forbes article about a health tech startup built out of the Stanford AI lab. The startup was Tennr and the article claimed the company automated the manual work that gets patients seen and providers paid.
Chip immediately picked up his phone and dialed the pesky sales development rep who had been filling up his voicemail the past few weeks.
He had one question: “Is it true?”
The Challenge
When Chip made that call, TSM, a Florida-based sleep diagnostics company, was drowning in a referral backlog due to their slow, error-prone manual intake processes.
- 5 FTEs working the referral queue
- Processing ~400 sleep test referrals per month
- 1-2 week referral turnaround time
The intake bottleneck was costing them patients and damaging critical physician relationships. Chip observed that if TSM didn’t contact patients within 3 to4 days of receiving the referral, most would choose to go without treatment.
Plus, the added pressure of getting through the backlog caused his team to rush and make costly mistakes. “They would go too fast and end up deleting referrals instead of entering them. At which point we’d just have to hope the provider would send another fax,” said Chip.
And when providers did resend referrals, they weren’t happy about it. “They’d say, ‘We sent it before. How many times do we need to send it?’”
“We were experiencing a loss—bleeding referrals simply because our operation was choking itself. We had no way to get to all the referrals because we were dealing with stacks of PDFs,” said Chip.
Life with Tennr
“Not only is it true, it works,” said Chip.
Since partnering with Tennr, TSM’s revenue has increased 9% year-to-date and 30% from July to October 2025.
Their operational performance transformed:
- Reduced from 5 to 3 FTE doing intake
- Doubled monthly sleep test referral processing from ~400 to nearly 1,000
- Engaging with patients within 24 hours of receiving the referral
“We’re like a lightning bolt now,” said Chip.
Tennr has had a ripple effect on TSM’s operations. Faster turnaround times have strengthened physician relationships and increased referral volume.
“Doctor’s offices want to see their patients’ sleep tests and are looking for a reliable lab to get them the results. With our fast turnaround times, we’re now that lab for them.”
Going forward
With Medicare reimbursement cuts on the horizon for 2026, TSM is relying on continued workflow efficiencies through Tennr to maintain profitability. Chip is exploring all of Tennr’s product offerings and Chip is keeping a close eye on their roadmap.
As Chip put it, “I want it all.”