Cedar - Novant Health Improves Patient Collection Rates and Satisfaction Through Partnership With Cedar

Novant Health Improves Patient Collection Rates and Satisfaction Through Partnership With Cedar

One of the nation’s largest health systems sees a 7x ROI with Cedar Pay; demonstrates impact of investing in the consumer experience

Novant Health, one of the largest healthcare systems in the Southeast, has significantly improved its patient financial experience by partnering with Cedar, an enterprise healthcare engagement platform that improves the end-to-end consumer financial journey. By investing in Cedar Pay, Cedar’s post-visit billing and payment platform, Novant Health continues to lead the way when it comes to bringing digital innovation to the revenue cycle.

For years, Novant Health had worked to modernize their revenue cycle organization, leaning on mail, email and EHR communications to reach patients. While these initiatives drove incremental improvements, the health system identified two key opportunities in 2019 to truly enable a more consumer-centric experience for their patients:

  1. Combining Novant Health’s acute and ambulatory services into a single billing experience. While the organization had tried to combine physician and facility billing for years, they had always been met with pushback from vendors or complex EHR upgrades that could fundamentally break their existing processes. 
     
  2. Making bill payment a low friction, easy to navigate experience for both patients and team members. Novant Health wanted to help patients understand how their payments work and how their insurance benefits applied. In order to do so, they needed to personalize the experience, using mobile technology that consumers were already familiar with. 

To address these challenges, Novant Health invested in Cedar Pay. Cedar Pay delivers personalized billing through outreach, messaging and bill resolution based on a variety of unique factors and preferences. The platform is fully integrated with Novant Health’s existing Epic EHR system across both hospital billing and physician billing. 

As a result of their implementation of Cedar Pay, Novant Health has seen a material rise in collections over a 12-month period, amounting to tens of millions of dollars, as well as: 

  • 90% patient satisfaction score
  • 87% of collections now completely self-serviced
  • 43% drop in days to collect

“Investing in a consumer engagement platform like Cedar is something we had wanted to do for a long time as part of our digital transformation strategy—we wanted to create a singular financial experience that allows our patients to pay with the technology we keep in our pockets,” said Geoff Gardner, senior vice president of Finance at Novant Health. “Cedar has been a great partner to us in our commitment to delivering a remarkable healthcare experience to our community; the results truly speak for themselves, as we have been able to increase collections while also improving patient satisfaction.” 

“At Cedar, we know that engaged, happy patients lead to better outcomes, and the best way to improve patient satisfaction is by implementing consumer-friendly technology,” said Florian Otto, CEO and co-founder of Cedar. “It’s been a privilege working with such an innovative health system like Novant Health, and we look forward to continuing our partnership and continuing to impact the lives of their patients.” 

To learn more about how Novant Health has seen a 7x ROI through its strategic partnership with Cedar, read the full case study here.

About Cedar

Cedar is committed to improving the healthcare billing experience for all. With an innovative platform that connects providers and payers, Cedar empowers healthcare consumers with a personalized journey—all powered by data science and interactive design. For Cedar clients, this leads to increased collections, more efficient operations and greater consumer loyalty. To learn more about why leading U.S. healthcare organizations trust Cedar to manage the end-to-end consumer experience from pre-registration to post-visit billing, visit www.cedar.com and join us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

About Novant Health

Novant Health is an integrated network of physician clinics, outpatient facilities and hospitals that delivers a seamless and convenient healthcare experience to communities in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia. The Novant Health network consists of more than 1,800 physicians and over 35,000 employees who provide care at nearly 800 locations, including 15 hospitals and hundreds of outpatient facilities and physician clinics. In 2021, Novant Health was the highest-ranking healthcare system in North Carolina to be included on Forbes’ Best Employers for Diversity list. Diversity MBA Magazine ranked Novant Health first in the nation on its 2021 list of “Best Places for Women & Diverse Managers to Work.” In 2020, Novant Health provided more than $1.02 billion in community benefit, including financial assistance and services.

For more information, please visit our website at NovantHealth.org. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Contact

For Cedar
Jenny Fiegoli
PR & Communications Manager
[email protected] 

For Novant Health
Novant Health media relations
844-536-3288 (this number does not accept text messages)
[email protected]