Case Study: Healthcare

Supporting DME provider growth with stellar collections

Exceeds goal by 6% at $4M collected for outbound services; $11M collected over one year, a 175% increase from first year’s performance

Overview

At a time of shifting priorities, a large home healthcare and equipment provider was seeking expertise to meet critical growth objectives. This organization needed a partner with revenue cycle know-how to accelerate collections for cash flow and support growth. The client chose Sagility for our two decades of expertise, global footprint, and ability to scale. Within a few years, Sagility demonstrated the innovation and scalability to double the size and scope of the engagement.

1,600 FTEs across four locations

Services

Suspended billing
Payer change
Insurance accounts receivable
Self-pay (inbound and outbound)

Delivery locations

India
Philippines

Client background

This large U.S.-based company is a leading provider of home healthcare services and equipment.

Business challenge

The client’s existing collections strategy was struggling to yield the desired results. Although the agents handling the calls were skilled customer service representatives, they lacked revenue cycle management (RCM) knowledge and the advanced training required for successful negotiations and collections resolution.

The solution

Research and collaborate

From the outset of the partnership, Sagility worked closely with the client to transform collections. This started with Sagility’s initial study, created to assess collection strategies, and, in particular, specific practices. Sagility researched self-pay collections strategies and created one tailored to the client, built on scripting and optimal call times. We worked with the client’s recommendations to sharpen the outreach.

Hire skilled staff

Next, Sagility established a stringent, highly structured process to hire and retain seasoned, talented staff, with domain expertise gleaned from many years focused on RCM. Sagility understood the need for a front-line focused on developing best practices and incentivizing to drive excellence. To this point, Sagility transformed hiring to create a healthcare collections culture geared toward top performance. This meant starting to hire for a friendly, empathetic personality type that is also balanced with an assertive, outcomes-based drive with good analytical and negotiations skills. Our new focus resulted in a substantial scale of hiring, with 35 FTEs focused on outbound only and a ramp including inbound for a total of 150 team members focused on collections and patient-friendly collections and customer service.

Train to retain

Sagility has retained these strong performers at 3% monthly attrition. We have achieved this with extensive training, which is consistent and customized to the agent’s needs. Agents learn from different call scenarios. Every quarter, Sagility monitors and follows up to ensure training needs are met. This includes one full day of negotiating training, manual calling and patient-friendly collection tactics, to ensure agents are empowered to collect. Due to the complex nature of the process, training is imperative to ensure Sagility has highly seasoned agents for critical thinking, empathy, accuracy, and customer care expertise.

Optimize call times

Sagility agents are also driven by strong career pathing and an incentives program focused on negotiating skills such as partial payment follow-ups. This includes making calls at optimal times of the day, with Workforce Management and Business Excellence in direct support of this labor and dedicated service focus.

Incentivize and recognize

Sagility also provides gamification to incentivize agents. With this program, every day Sagility team members spin a wheel for a prize like monetary awards, paid time off, or meal coupons. These engagement strategies include both monthly and quarterly recognition of top performers.

Results

Initially, Sagility exceeded goal by 6% at $4 million collected for outbound services. Over the course of this partnership, we’ve raised the bar even higher to today’s $11 million collected over one year. This has been a 175% increase from our year one performance.

$11 million collected in 2019

175% collections increase in five years

15% over goal

Global locations

USA • India • Philippines • Jamaica • Colombia

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