Case Study
Brightree Drives $1.88m in Patient Collections with AI-Powered Virtual Agents
Success by the Numbers
stage debt
agent transfers
Brightree Improves Debt Collection with an AI-Powered Virtual Agent
Challenge
Brightree, a subsidiary of ResMed Inc., is one of North America’s largest providers of technology solutions and services for out-of-hospital organizations in home medical equipment, home infusion, hospice, and more. As part of their Revenue Cycle Management offering, Brightree helps these organizations resolve payment issues before accounts are turned over to third-party collections.
As demand for this service grew, Brightree reached operational capacity for the number of patients they could make contact with on a daily basis. Meanwhile, patients increasingly demanded self-service options to settle their accounts without waiting to speak with an agent.
With the goal of maximizing the quality and frequency of their human conversations, Brightree set out to:
- Automate conversations that were better suited for self-service
- Help their partners achieve business goals by recovering lost revenue
- Above all, deliver a frictionless patient experience
Solution
Brightree chose to partner with SmartAction for their ability to customize their conversational AI solution — and meet both Brightree’s and their partners’ unique business needs.
SmartAction developed an intelligent virtual agent to proactively call thousands of customers per day to remind them of upcoming or overdue payments. During the call, the customer can negotiate payment arrangements, request an extension, or settle their account in its entirety — all in natural language and without the need to engage a live agent.
With secure and complete access to Brightree data, each call path is personalized for each consumer, based on the amount that they owe and the stage of their debt. If the patient does not answer the call, the virtual agent leaves a voicemail and requests a call back.
Results
Jennifer Leon, Vice President of Patient Collections at Brightree states, “With our virtual agent, we have been able to provide our partners with cost-effective ways to collect patient-pay receivables without the cost of additional headcount.” Moreover, patients are empowered to make payment arrangements and settle their debt through easy-to-use, conversational self-service.
Currently, more than 400 of Brightree’s partners utilize SmartAction’s intelligent virtual agent for proactive outreach and collections. In addition to collecting more than $4.75 million from past-due accounts, the AI-powered virtual agent has helped collect $6.5 million from agent transfers of inbound and outbound calls.
As a result of partnering with SmartAction, Brightree generates $1.88 million per year in payments—in turn, assisting many of their partners to achieve an ROI of 200% or more.
