NEW YORK, June 25, 2018 – Cedar, the patient financial management platform for hospitals, health systems and independent medical groups, today announced a Series B fundraising round of $36 million, led by the global investment company Kinnevik. Participants in the round include existing investors Founders Fund and Thrive Capital, as well as Lakestar, Sound Ventures, Kevin Systrom of Instagram and Nat Turner of Flatiron Health.

“In recent years, patient responsibility for healthcare payments has steadily increased. However, few existing revenue cycle solutions are fully targeted toward resolving patient payment challenges, driving increased friction between healthcare organizations and patients,” said Florian Otto, Co-founder and CEO, Cedar. “We founded Cedar to transform the patient financial experience. Based on our rapid growth, it’s clear that a digital health platform that simplifies patient billing transactions, drives increased engagement and optimizes provider processes is sorely needed. We’re pleased with the strong show of support from our investors and partners, and look forward to further enhancing our platform for patients and providers.”

The Cedar platform features an intuitive, engaging patient interface and an enterprise-level customer relationship management (CRM) system for healthcare organizations. Leveraging machine learning and data science, Cedar generates the optimal outreach strategy, unique payment plan and preferred method of payment for every patient. Healthcare organizations use the platform to manage patient engagement, view previous billing interactions, monitor financial activity and track key metrics such as collection rate, cost-to-collect and time-to-collect in real-time.

Cedar’s client base includes Montefiore Medical Center, U.S. Anesthesia Partners and Westmed Medical Group, among a number of other healthcare organizations across the country. Currently, Cedar interacts with nearly 100,000 patients nationwide on behalf of its clients, facilitating tens of thousands of billing transactions per month. Clients have seen a 35 percent increase in collections, greater than 50 percent reduction in A/R days and 95 percent patient satisfaction rate. In addition, more than 80 percent of patients pay after accessing the platform’s live chat functionality.

“Today, it’s more critical than ever to deliver a patient-first experience, particularly given the changing dynamics in the healthcare payment space,” said Chris Bischoff, Senior Investment Director, Kinnevik. “Cedar uniquely understands these needs and has built a platform that enables healthcare organizations to engage with their patients in a seamless, delightful manner while realizing significant ROI results.”

“At Westmed, we are focused on raising the bar and partnering with patients to deliver comprehensive, lifelong care. We care deeply about the patient experience and believe that modern technology such as Cedar’s plays a fundamental role in helping us achieve that goal,” said Vicki McKinney, Chief Operating Officer, Westmed Practice Partners.

Cedar will use the funding to further invest in the next generation of its innovative platform as well as build out its existing team. Later this year, the company plans to unveil new features and functionality that will enable healthcare organizations to further engage with patients, both prior to and after their visits.

About Cedar 

Cedar provides a smarter way for hospitals, health systems and medical groups to manage the patient payment ecosystem. Our platform delivers modern intelligence to dramatically improve billing operations and ensure a personalized billing experience for patients. To elevate your patient experience, visit cedar.com.

Strong Q1 sets the tone for 2018; expansions planned across customer base, team, capabilities and more

Following Cedar’s entry into the health technology market late last year, the company has already made measurable progress towards helping its provider customers reinvent revenue cycle operations and deliver a consumer-centric billing process. Fueled by industry demands to improve the patient experience, Cedar has added several provider customers to its growing roster and anticipates a steady stream of new clients to come on board through the end of the year. Its quick growth has prompted Cedar to add key roles in engineering, business development and client service, and expand its philanthropic efforts in 2018 and beyond.

Cedar works with hospitals, health systems and medical groups across the US. Its ability to optimize all patient interactions in the revenue cycle has helped its customers significantly improve collection rates and increase operating margins by more than four and a half percent.

Transforming the patient billing experience

With multiple practice locations in New York’s Hudson Valley and lower Catskill region, Cedar customer Crystal Run Healthcare (Crystal Run) is one of the fastest growing multi-specialty group practices in the US with more than 400 physicians in nearly 50 medical specialties. It’s also a physician-led accountable care organization (ACO) and member of Montefiore Health System. Crystal Run partnered with Cedar after vetting technology solutions providers to help the group improve patient satisfaction and the accounts receivable component of its revenue cycle operations.

In just four months, Cedar transformed Crystal Run’s patient billing experience by:

• Increasing the practice’s percentage of collections
• Decreasing collections time to an average of 25 days
• Achieving a 95 percent patient satisfaction score
• Significantly reducing operating costs

“Cedar’s recognition of the integral role patients play in providers’ ability to meet operational and financial goals was especially appealing,” said Sue Gillies, Vice President of Revenue Cycle Management, Crystal Run. “Cedar has helped us find efficiencies in our patient billing process, largely due to its platform’s short iteration cycle and ability to quickly incorporate feedback. They’re now the only post-visit revenue cycle vendor we work with, a change that’s allowed us to streamline operations. We’re confident our continued partnership will enable us to achieve financial success while meeting our commitment to best serve our patients.”

Continued growth planned for remainder of 2018

In addition to expanding its team of professionals and broadening the scope of its work with existing customers, Cedar is focused on continually growing its customer base to support organizations beyond provider groups. This includes plans to work with additional academic medical centers and national staffing agencies. It’s also committed to increasing sophistication of its machine learning capabilities specific to communication and payment options.

“Our rapid growth is a testament to our unique, patient-first approach to the patient billing experience,” said Florian Otto, co-founder and CEO of Cedar. “We’re enthusiastic about all we’ve accomplished to-date and optimistic about our ability to continue to positively impact the consumer experience in healthcare.”

Lastly, the company today announced the launch of Cedar Cares, its new community-focused philanthropic program. The first initiative of Cedar Cares will support the Colorado Rehabilitation Services Volunteer Partnership (RSVP) Clinic, which provides outpatient rehabilitation services to children and adults with brain, stroke, spinal cord and amputation injuries. Cedar has given $100,000 to the clinic. It’s also donating time and operational resources to boost the Colorado-based organization’s mission of providing outstanding rehabilitative care that maximizes independence, wellness and community participation for uninsured individuals with catastrophic injuries.

About Cedar 

Cedar provides a smarter way for hospitals, health systems and medical groups to manage the patient payment ecosystem. Our platform delivers modern intelligence to dramatically improve billing operations and ensure a personalized billing experience for patients. To elevate your patient experience, visit cedar.com.

HITRUST Certification validates that Cedar’s application meets key healthcare regulations and protects sensitive private healthcare information

BluePrint Healthcare IT’s client, Cedar Inc’s. application hosted at Amazon Web Services (AWS) and corporate office has earned certified status for information security by HITRUST.

HITRUST CSF® Certified Status confirms that Cedar’s application meets key healthcare regulations and requirements for protecting and securing sensitive protected healthcare information. By including federal and state regulations, standards and frameworks, and incorporating a risk-based approach, the HITRUST CSF helps organizations address these challenges through a comprehensive and flexible framework of prescriptive and scalable security controls.

As an Approved HITRUST CSF Assessor, BluePrint Healthcare IT guided the Cedar team through an exhaustive analysis of existing security and privacy measures, strengthening policies and procedures as needed.

“Our goal at Cedar is to disrupt the status quo in patient billing. We offer a smarter way to manage the patient payment experience and earning the HITRUST CSF certification demonstrates our compliance and competence in ensuring our platform offers the most rigorous security and privacy controls in healthcare. Blueprint has been a valuable partner in helping us navigate through the HITRUST CSF Certification process,” stated Florian Otto, MD, PhD, co-founder and CEO.

“We’re very proud of Cedar’s mission and desire to transform the revenue cycle space, and are pleased to be their partner throughout the HITRUST CSF certification journey. Achieving this certification is evidence of their dedication and pledge to superior security, which is a necessity for patient billing operations,” added Vikas Khosla, President and CEO, BluePrint Healthcare IT.

The two-year certification requires continued monitoring of security controls, no reportable data security breaches, and timely completion of an interim review.

About BluePrint Healthcare IT

BluePrint Healthcare IT (“BluePrint”) has been a leader in healthcare privacy and security for over a decade. Unlike many other information security companies, BluePrint is 100% focused on serving the needs of the healthcare industry. BluePrint was one of the first organizations to publish a comprehensive roadmap for hospitals and health systems to comply with the HIPAA Security rule in 2005. Since that time, BluePrint has worked as a trusted partner with dozens of healthcare systems, medical centers, physician networks, business associates and hospital associations to help protect their healthcare data. As the longest-tenured, exclusively healthcare-focused Approved HITRUST CSF™ Assessor, BluePrint is a leading proponent of a common security standard for the industry. In addition, BluePrint is active in the HITRUST™ community and brings the HITRUST CSF™ in to all of its engagements. For more information about BluePrint visit www.blueprinthit.com or contact info@blueprinthit.com. Follow on LinkedIn and Twitter.

About Cedar

Cedar provides a smarter way for hospitals, health systems and medical groups to manage the patient payment ecosystem. Our platform delivers modern intelligence to dramatically improve billing operations and ensure a personalized billing experience for patients. To elevate your patient experience, visit cedar.com.

Cedar today announced its entry into the health technology market with a smarter way to manage the patient payment ecosystem. The Cedar platform, which powers solutions for hospitals, health systems and medical groups, delivers modern intelligence to alleviate collections challenges, dramatically improve billing operations and ensure an elevated, personalized billing experience for patients.

In support of Cedar’s efforts, the company has raised $13 million in Series A funding from investors including Founders Fund, Thrive Capital, Martin Ventures and SV Angel.

Patient collections are a critical, yet often overlooked component of the revenue cycle. With patient payments now accounting for 35 percent of provider revenue (the third largest source behind only Medicare and Medicaid)¹, it is clear that a better system is needed—which inspired Cedar’s founders, Florian Otto and Arel Lidow, to form the company.

“At Cedar, we study everything from a patient’s billing history, to their level of engagement with previous communications and general payer and demographic information. Putting all of these signals together, our platform provides data-driven recommendations for providers to optimize all interactions with patients,” said Florian Otto, co-founder and CEO of Cedar. “We are excited to work with innovative, consumer-centric healthcare providers that see patient billing as an opportunity to vastly improve the patient experience and their own operations.”

A Data-Driven Payment Solution for Hospitals and Medical Groups

Today, the majority of revenue cycle offerings look at one or two transactional aspects of patient billing. Cedar instead offers a comprehensive view of the overall patient payment ecosystem, leveraging millions of internal and external data points to inform the communication method, messaging and payment options that an individual patient may see. These are optimized over time via machine learning algorithms to continually ensure the best possible response from patients.

“The consumer experience in healthcare lags behind nearly every other industry—this is painfully obvious when you look at the current patient billing process,” said Kareem Zaki, Thrive Capital. “We see Cedar doing much more than providing a Band-Aid solution to this problem. They’re approaching the patient billing experience from a completely different viewpoint than other vendors, and creating a new standard for revenue cycle operations.”

Through the Cedar platform, providers can consolidate billing information across multiple caregivers while delivering clear invoices detailing exactly what patients owe, with personalized click-to-pay options. In parallel, provider billing teams can keep track of all activities via a powerful patient CRM and financial dashboards. The Cedar platform can be integrated with any electronic health record (EHR) or practice management system (PMS), and implemented in ten weeks or less.

In initial testing, providers using the Cedar platform saw an average of:

• 22 percent increase in collections;
• 33 percent reduction in A/R days;
• 62 percent increase in self-serve payments; and
• >90 percent patient satisfaction when using the Cedar platform.

“With patient payments being a critical component of the revenue cycle, it is necessary that hospitals and health systems provide patients with the best possible experience,” said Joel Perlman, advisor to Cedar and former EVP/CFO, Montefiore Health System, New York. “Cedar truly understands what it means to bring a patient-first approach to healthcare technology, and will allow providers to improve on the often confusing and emotional process of patient payment. In turn, hospitals and health systems will not only see an improvement in collections, billing operations and days in AR, but receive better patient satisfaction scores across the board.”

About Cedar

Cedar provides a smarter way for hospitals, health systems and medical groups to manage the patient payment ecosystem. Our platform delivers modern intelligence to dramatically improve billing operations and ensure a personalized billing experience for patients. To elevate your patient experience, visit cedar.com.

¹ Forbes