After Boosting Patient Payments 42%, ApolloMD Transforms Billing Support with Agentic AI

Friction at first contact

For clinical practice management groups like ApolloMD that support and operate emergency departments, patient collections have always been complicated. Patients don’t choose their ER clinician. They show up, get treated, and weeks later receive a bill from a provider they didn’t know was part of their care.

Like much of the industry, ApolloMD had relied on a vendor model and statement-based approach. But as high-deductible health plans became more prominent, patient responsibility jumped from $20 copays to $150 or more per bill.

“We knew we couldn’t just rely on billing payers alone for revenue,” explains Tennille Lizarraga, Chief Revenue Cycle Officer of ApolloMD.

The traditional statement-and-wait strategy wasn’t built for these kinds of balances. For ApolloMD, the challenge was even more acute: how do you collect from patients who don’t recognize your brand? Who often called just to question the legitimacy of a charge?

When ApolloMD met Cedar in 2020, Amy Katnik, Executive Advisor, Revenue Cycle and Strategy, saw a clear opportunity to modernize. But she also knew that turning insight into action would require focus and enterprise-wide commitment.

“Moving from a conventional collections approach to a patient financial experience platform was a deliberate decision,” Katnik explains, “one designed to better support patients while strengthening performance.”