Case Study: Sanford Health System achieves $40M+ in increased patient collections and 28.5% bad-debt reduction with Experian Collections Optimization Manager

Targeted collections efforts yield outstanding results

Sanford Health, a large non-profit rural healthcare system, faced rising bad debt and an inefficient, manual collections process: outbound calls were only made on balances of $1,500+, there was no propensity-to-pay scoring, and financial-assistance eligibility was handled by paper review. Rapid growth and acquisitions made timely collections and accurate patient segmentation increasingly unsustainable.

Sanford deployed Experian Health’s Collections Optimization Manager and PatientDial to score and segment accounts, route prioritized calls to 70 reps, identify presumptive financial assistance, redesign patient statements, and align staff incentives. The hybrid approach produced a $40M+ lift in in-house patient collections since October 2014 (about $2.3M/month), reduced bad-debt placements to collection agencies by 28.5%, increased agency recoveries by 7.5%, and improved patient engagement.

Sanford Health System

Michael Beyer

Director of Patient Accounts