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. Cedar plans to use the funding to further invest in the next generation of its innovative platform as well as build out its existing team
Founded in 2016, Cedar provides a smarter way for hospitals, health systems and medical groups to manage the patient payment ecosystem. Cedar’s patient financial 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.
“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.”
Cedar plans to launch new features and functionality that will enable healthcare organizations to further engage with patients, both prior to and after their visits later this year.
