Industry: Medical debt collection

Location: United States

Results: Managed overflow of 12,000+ domestic files over six months during COVID-19. Maintained 30% overall success rate.

Background:

For over four years, Cedar Financial has provided professional, People-First recovery services for a local state medical debt collection agency that serves hospitals, medical practices, labs and more.

The client initially contracted Cedar for international debt collection, but quickly started placing US accounts after seeing great results.

The Challenge:

The COVID-19 global pandemic lockdown in March 2020 significantly impacted the client’s business. With reduced work capacity, they were unable to keep up with their usual internal collections volume, so they turned to Cedar for extra support.

In April, the client began sending Cedar batches of accounts 10x their usual placement volume. By October, they had placed over 12,000 new accounts. .

How Cedar Financial Solved the Problem:

Our domestic medical debt collection team quickly got to work skip tracing, working and collecting on the new files.

Despite added challenges, Cedar Financial was able to maintain a 30% overall success rate for our long-time client.

Here’s how:

1) Cutting-edge technology for seamless remote support across all channels

As a growing company in the fintech space, Cedar Financial uses top technologies to recover more for our clients. These technologies gave us the capacity and flexibility to support our client when they needed it most.

• Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) platform enabled us to quickly transition to remote work during the crisis so we could continue to provide seamless, PCI-compliant support for phone, email and SMS.
• AI-powered Live Call Guidance software ensures our agents always know what to say on the phone, while management can listen in, coach and take over, if needed – all from a distance.
• Secure interactive voice response (IVR) system and online payment portal allowed some patients to self-serve, freeing up our team to help those with more pressing issues and questions.

2) Strategic medical campaigns drive up patient engagement

Cedar Financial worked with the client to build custom letters, scripts and emails that better engaged patients about their accounts.

By proactively addressing common disputes, educating patients about their medical bills and offering flexible payment options, we build trust with consumers, greatly increasing the success rate for our clients.

Plus, our digital email and SMS campaigns allow patients to engage on their preferred communication channels, reducing friction during this stressful time.

3) People-First Approach improves patient satisfaction during COVID-19

Many clients are hesitant to continue collections efforts during COVID-19, fearing negative PR for their business.

Familiar with Cedar Financial’s consumer-centric approach, our client trusted us to put patients first and preserve their clients’ reputations. At Cedar, we believe empathy is the best path to success and back this up with accredited memberships to ACA International and the Better Business Bureau.

When COVID-19 began, we quickly developed custom scripts and emails to address patient concerns. We continue to provide compassionate, flexible payment options for those experiencing hardship.

With real-time access online and monthly reporting from our team, the agency client was able to track our success each step of the way and provide great service for their medical clients.

The Takeaway:

Cedar Financial has what it takes to handle any challenge – even during a crisis.

With the right technologies, strategies and values in place, we have the flexibility to support clients and consumers when they need it most, while delivering the exceptional service they’ve come to expect.

No matter where your customers are or what industry you’re in, we can help.

We offer local coverage in all 50 U.S. states and 170+ countries worldwide, with custom solutions for Medical, Education, Government, Commercial, E-Commerce and more.