Cedar, athenahealth Tackle Digital-Focused Healthcare Payments

Healthcare financial technology platform Cedar on Friday (Dec. 3) partnered with athenahealth to make post-visit patient engagement and payment platform Cedar Pay available to healthcare providers through the athenahealth marketplace, according to a news release.

Cedar Pay uses insights from its interactions with more than 10 million patients that includes focused consumer testing, constant optimization and machine learning to send the appropriate communications and payment-related interventions to patients to encourage them to pay in full and on time.

“We know from experience that a digital-first, personalized financial experience benefits both patients and providers,” said Katie Jaxheimer Agarwal, vice president and head of client implementations at Cedar, in the joint announcement.

“We are lucky to already work with athenahealth clients, including Summit Health and Westmed Medical Group, and have seen great results through our partnerships,” she said. “With our inclusion in the athenahealth Marketplace, we’ll be able to help more providers reach their business objectives, guiding patients to financial clarity and bill resolution, without compromising patient loyalty or satisfaction.”

Healthcare providers that have Cedar Pay as a payment option generally see a 30% increase in patient collections and 88% overall patient satisfaction as well as clients saying they would use the platform again, according to the 2020 KLAS Patient Financial Experience report.

Related: athenahealth Deal Shows Promise and Potential of Connected Health

Last month, affiliates of private equity firms Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman announced they are acquiring athenahealth for $17 billion.

The athenaOne cloud platform “addresses the critical aspects of a physician’s practice — with modules spanning patient engagement, revenue cycle, telehealth, payments, population health and value-based care management” in a cloud-based model, according to the joint announcement on the acquisition.

“There’s a lot of challenges to innovate in healthcare,” athenahealth VP of platform services Michael Palantoni recently told industry news site Managed Health Executive. “We recognize an opportunity for athena to provide these basic utilities, these core data assets for others to use and accelerate their business.”

PYMNTS’ study, Connected Healthcare: What Consumers Want From Their Healthcare Customer Experiences, a Rectangle Health collaboration, found that “most patients want to use at least one digital method to manage their healthcare services or interactions with their providers.”

That includes digital medical histories, filling out medical forms digitally, communicating with healthcare providers securely and receiving digital payment notifications.