National Physician Group Lifts Patient Payments by 82% with Cedar Pay

The Challenge

This physician group is a leading acute care provider to health systems across the United States. The nature of their work—staffing clinical teams in emergency departments—brings a unique set of patient payment challenges.

Patients often are unaware that the provider is a private practice because they work seamlessly wih their health system partners. That means their bills can come as a surprise. On top of this, the provider serves a large uninsured population, as their patients cannot access other care settings that require coverage. This leads to a high volume of self-pay emergency care bills with an average balance of $698, which is more than what most Americans have available to cover an unexpected medical expense.

The provider had tried using Flywire (formerly Simplee) to address these challenges, and while they saw some progress, they needed a more robust solution that was flexible enough to meet their specific needs. After a competitive evaluation process, the provider selected Cedar. Their goal was to communicate with patients—through the right channel, with the right offer, at the right time—to maximize engagement and payments while delivering a best-in-class financial experience.

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The Solution

The provider launched Cedar Pay, a patient billing and paymentsolution that integrates with athenahealth, nationally in January 2020.

With Cedar Pay, the provider establishes trust with the patientat first contact. Billing communications via text, email, paper, andthe online portal clearly convey who the provider is and referencethe place of service so patients can understand the charges in the context of their visit.

The provider also leverages these touch points to nudge self-paypatients to upload their insurance cards, as some may have activehealth plans. Since the launch of Cedar Pay, about 1 in 2 patients whohave viewed the online prompt added their insurance without calling in.

For patients without active insurance, the provider uses an advanceddiscounting strategy powered by machine learning (ML). Specifically,Cedar built an ML model that personalizes discount offers, helpingthe provider strike a balance between increasing patient affordabilityand payments.

With ML-powered discounts, the provider saw a 10% relative increasein patient collection rate among the target population,4 over thefirst six months, helping more patients affordably resolve their bills.

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I love that you offer a discount for earlypayment. The trauma of ER visits andhaving to deal with bills after was madea bit lighter to deal with because youhelped me save money.”

-Real Patient Feedback

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Results

For the two years since launch of Cedar Pay, the provider realized an 82% lift in patient collection rate—over and above what their Flywire usage had delivered.

The solution also had a significant patient impact: 86% ofpatients now report an exceptional billing experience, with 77% of payments self-serviced online.