Novant Health adds $30M+ in net profit in 12 months with Cedar Pay

Novant Health sees 7x ROI with Cedar Pay

Challenge

Novant Health knew they had room for improvement in their consumer experience. For years, the health system had worked to modernize their revenue cycle organization. They had leaned on mail, email, and MyChart to reach patients, and while these initiatives drove incremental improvements, they needed to take a bolder step to simplify patient billing and truly move the needle on reducing bad debt.

Priority number one was combining Novant Health’s acute and ambulatory services into a single billing experience. They had previously tried to combine physician and facility billing, and were met with lukewarm responses or complex EHR upgrades that could fundamentally break their existing processes.

But consolidating two billing experiences was just the start. Novant Health wanted to make bill payment a low friction, easy to navigate experience for both patients and team members. It was time to break down the cryptic “black box” that is healthcare billing. They needed to help patients understand how payments work and how insurance benefits apply. They needed to personalize the experience for each consumer. And most importantly, they needed to enable this understanding using the simple technology that patients already had in their pockets. “It was time to take the next step and do something optimized for use on mobile devices,” said Senior Vice President of Finance Geoff Gardner.

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Solution

To address these challenges, Novant Health launched Cedar Pay, a patient engagement and payment platform that integrates into their Epic EHR system across both hospital billing and physician billing.

“Combining acute and ambulatory balances into a single patient experience was something we’d talked about doing for a long time,” said Vice President of RCM, Kelly Black. “We’d asked several vendors, but Cedar was the one who said, ‘Yes, we can do it.’”

As a result of their implementation of Cedar Pay, Novant Health has seen a material rise in collections and a sharp decrease in time to collect. Over a 12-month period, Novant Health has added tens of millions in patient revenue, while time to payment resolution has dropped by 43%—all this over and above what their existing MyChart usage had delivered to date.

These results have had significant patient impact. Novant Health’s patient satisfaction now sits at 90% after their implementation of Cedar Pay. “It’s amazing when you can increase the payment rate by as much as we have AND the patients are happy,”  Black said. These patient outcomes are the result of engaging with patients in ways they want to interact. In fact, 87% of Novant Health’s patient payments are now digital self-service.

Today, Cedar supports Novant Health as a strategic partner in helping continue their commitment to delivering a remarkable healthcare experience to their community.

“Our implementation was complex but results have exceeded our expectations,” said VP of Revenue Cycle, Melissa Masterton. “Cedar is a true partner with a very involved leadership that has been responsive to us from the very beginning of our relationship.”

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"We wanted to modernize the patient billing experience using technology patients have in their pocket as opposed to mail, email and MyChart, which we were using before. It was time to take the next step and do something enabled for mobile."

Geoff Gardner

Novant Health Senior Vice President of Finance

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"It's amazing when you can increase the payment rate by as much as we have and the patients are happy."

Kelly Black

Novant Health Vice President Revenue Cycle

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"Our implementation was complex but results have exceeded our expectations.  Cedar is a true partner with a very involved leadership that has been responsive to us from the very beginning of our relationship."

Melissa Masterton

Novant Health Vice President Revenue Cycle