Providing great patient care is just the first step for US healthcare providers; getting paid for that care takes much longer, requiring their staff to jump through hoops with health insurers. What if artificial intelligence (AI) technology could relieve some of the strain of revenue cycle management?
San Francisco-based start-up SuperDial is promising exactly that. SuperDial, which will today announce the acquisition of its peer MajorBoost, has built AI agents that can automate much of the work involved in dealing with insurers on healthcare organisations’ behalf.
Currently, when a healthcare organisation needs to get in touch with an insurer, a member of staff has to pick up the phone, navigate the insurer’s interactive “phone trees” and then wait on hold until an agent is ready to deal with their enquiry. It’s a tedious process that armies of administrative assistants at many organisations are repeating almost endlessly every single day.
SuperDial thinks it has a better alternative. “We can automate these calls,” explains Sam Schwager, co-founder and CEO of the company. “Our voice AI agents are capable of placing the call to the insurer, navigating its phone tree, waiting on hold and then working with the insurer’s staff to collect or provide the information required.”
If the AI agent runs into problems during one of these calls, one of SuperDial’s assistants is notified and can take over. However, Schwager says that for many calls, its AI agents can resolve the issue without a human ever needing to step in.
The opportunity is to secure a huge productivity gain, Schwager says. “Traditionally, phone calls for processes such as benefits verification, prior authorisation and claim follow-up all rely on manual efforts by call centres or office administrators; as healthcare executives know all too well, depending on the day and complexity, a single call can take well over an hour,” he says. “By automating these phone calls, we eliminate one of the most time-consuming administrative burdens for healthcare organisations.”
Launched in 2023, SuperDial has already picked up more than 20 customers – both healthcare organisations that handle this task in-house and third-party billing agents that take on such work on an outsourced basis. The company’s revenues have recently broken through the $1 million annual run-rate mark – and Schwager expects to be at $10 million by the end of the year.
The acquisition of MajorBoost is part of that growth story. The Seattle-based company, launched in 2021, has developed similar tools to SuperDial, which will now incorporate key aspects of its peer’s technology to improve its own AI agents’ performance. “We were highly impressed by MajorBoost’s ability to encode the nuances required to consistently navigate phone trees and hold times,” Schwager explains. “Combining our solutions will lead to a better overall experience for our customers.”
For its part, MajorBoost is convinced that healthcare organisations will step up their embrace of new technology. “With AI to handle the hassles of payer calls, our clients have experienced improvements in claims collections and team member satisfaction,” says Lekshmi Venu, CEO and founder of the company. “Their tasks completed per day increased by 45%, an extra two days per week per person.”
Certainly, early adopters of the technology are enthusiastic about its potential. “SuperDial frees up revenue cycle personnel to focus on the highest possible problem-solving needs while AI handles critical but highly repetitive work like data gathering,” says Paul Bernard, chief product officer at Vyne Dental, which works with insurers on behalf of healthcare organisations.
Ultimately, argues SuperDial, its technology may even help to drive down healthcare bills. “Improving efficiency will reduce costs, generating savings that can be passed on to patients and their insurers,” Schwager points out.
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