This CEO's Unlikely Mission To Revolutionize Customer Service In Healthcare Billing

by Micah Solomon (that’s me). Originally published in Forbes.com. The author is a consultant, influencer, keynote speaker, and trainer in customer service, customer experience, customer service culture, and hospitality. (Here are three ways to reach Micah:email, chat, web).

Customer service has an opportunity shine when it’s delivered at stressful moments, such as those that are often encountered in healthcare, where everything from lengthy bills to decisions related to life and limb can be involved.

Jayson Yardley, CEO of Avadyne Health, is on a mission to transform what he calls the patient financial experience: the customer service and customer experience involved in receiving, comprehending, and paying the bills associated with hospital care. No, the CEO of Avadyne Health is unable to personally pay or forgive your hospital bill, but he’ll take every step short of that to improve the bill-paying experience.

The need is great, as Yardley sees it. The current state of the patient financial experience is not a pretty picture, say Yardley, whose company, based in San Diego, is a player in what is called call “the hospital revenue cycle.” First off, the approach that the healthcare industry takes to billing hasn’t changed significantly for decades. Worse, the advent of higher-deductible health plans and the resulting shift of liabilities to patients, has made the overall burden on patients much greater. Finally, says Yardley, “patients have their own lives as customers outside of the healthcare industry, and there, the customer experience has evolved at a stunning pace, leaving a feeling, by comparison, that healthcare is falling even further behind.”

Yardley’s response at Avadyne, which contracts with hospitals to improve their billing and collections, is to approach the challenge on multiple fronts: estimating patient liabilities prior to service; designing easier-to-understand patient statements and bills; focusing on the personalization of patient communication–eBills, paper bills, augmented reality; borrowing call center technologies being used in non-healthcare industries and applying them to healthcare; and more.

Along these lines, Avadyne has recently pioneered an avatar named Eve, an augmented reality concierge designed to walk patients and their loved-ones through the often-confusing hospital bill. The idea for Eve was inspired–true to Yardley’s interest in borrowing from other contexts–by the Black Eyed Peas’ partnership with Marvel Comics, which produced the first augmented reality comic book, Masters of the Sun. Yardley, who is an obsessive fan of the superhero genre, had the idea of applying this same technology to the healthcare revenue cycle. “In much the same way the 3D characters in this AR comic book stood up on the page and acted out the story, I wondered if we could use this technology to better explain statements and bills to patients.” The result is that, as of this writing, Avadyne’s patient concierge app, featuring Eve, is currently being implemented at 30 hospitals across the western United States.

Yardley, who lives with his family not far from the company headquarters in California, is quick to stress that the goal of deploying Eve isn’t primarily the flash or cuteness factor that “she” undeniably possesses. The primary goal is to achieve anticipatory customer service. “Our organization has operated patient call centers for over 40 years. In that time, we’ve developed a pretty good feel for why patients call and what questions they most frequently ask. This knowledge allows us to anticipate their likely questions. Thus, via the Patient Concierge App and Eve, we can engage with patients in a way that actually anticipates their questions and answers them prior to them needing to call into the contact center.” This may eliminate the need for them to ultimately call in, or, if a call does happen, he says, “it will come from a more comfortable and informed patient or loved-one.”

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Most recently, Yardley has written a book to share his experience and philosophies about the patient financial experience. The result, RevUp!, will be published on May 1; it’s targeted at healthcare leaders and anyone interested in learning more about the patient financial experience. Of course, the book does feature a superhero theme–people who know Yardley would not expect anything different–keeping the tone light and engaging in a subject which could otherwise risk being notably dry.

[Originally published in Forbes.com. The author, Micah Solomon, is a customer service consultant, best selling author, influencer, keynote speaker, and trainer in customer service, customer experience, customer service culture, and hospitality. (Here are three ways to reach Micah:email, chat, web).]