Case Study: Methodist Hospitals achieves a 3% call abandonment rate and $1.4M+ monthly online collections with Optum

Methodist Hospitals - Customer Case Study

Methodist Hospitals, a five‑hospital system in Houston, struggled with high call volumes for credit‑card payments that left other patients waiting and drove a call‑center abandonment rate above 20%. The 15‑person patient accounting team also spent significant staff time manually processing phone payments. To address this, Methodist engaged Optum and implemented online and phone payment solutions (RelayAccount™ Online and WebPay).

Optum’s deployment automated credit‑card processing, gave patients a self‑service portal, and provided detailed payment and enrollment data. As a result, abandonment dropped to 3% (below the 5% goal), 22,497 patients had enrolled (as of Oct 2012), the monthly average reached 5,911 online payments, and monthly online collections exceeded $1.4 million — eliminating manual touchpoints, call‑rollover fees, and freeing staff for higher‑value work.

Methodist Hospitals

Lisa Schillaci

Patient Accounting