Cedar and Twilio Collaborate to Improve Patient Billing Experiences with AI-Powered Solutions

Twilio (NYSE: TWLO), the customer engagement platform that drives real-time, personalized experiences for leading brands, and Cedar, the leading patient financial experience platform for healthcare providers, today announced Twilio is powering Cedar's patient communications across SMS and Voice, including via Twilio's AI-powered ConversationRelay service, with the goals of improving the patient financial experience, driving operational efficiency and delivering cost reduction. Navigating healthcare bills can be overwhelming, particularly for patients managing multiple providers or facing the burden of being uninsured. Simultaneously, healthcare providers are inundated with thousands of daily inquiries from patients seeking clarity on their financial obligations, driving up administrative costs. Cedar is addressing this systemic challenge by leveraging Twilio’s scalable communications technology, seamlessly integrating it into its platform to enhance accessibility, streamline patient interactions, and create a more intuitive financial experience—while also reducing operational expenses for providers. Cedar is leveraging Twilio’s flexible and innovative solutions to build an AI-powered patient financial experience, including:

• Streamlined Communication: Cedar utilizes Twilio’s SMS capabilities to enhance bill notifications and appointment reminders, ensuring patients receive timely and effective updates.
• Seamless Payment Experience: By integrating Twilio’s Voice API and Stripe Pay Connector, Cedar enables patients to make secure payments over the phone with interactive voice response (IVR), including support for Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) and Health Savings Accounts (HSA). With roughly half of FSA account holders forfeiting funds due to lack of awareness, this will help patients maximize available resources.
• Smart and Personalized Patient Support: Built on Twilio’s ConversationRelay service, Cedar later this year will be able to automate inbound patient billing calls with AI-powered voice agents that provide quick answers, reduce wait times, and improve satisfaction.

Twilio’s ConversationRelay service, which enables developers to create robust natural voice AI agents by seamlessly integrating real-time streaming, speech recognition, and interruption handling, will support HIPAA-eligible use cases in the coming weeks for healthcare providers. "At Cedar, the patient experience is at the core of all the work we do. Our work with Twilio enables us to combine AI-powered technology and empathetic service design, transforming how providers engage with patients about their bills,” said Dugan Winkie, Head of Commercial Strategy at Cedar. "As patient out-of-pocket spending continues to rise, we’re entering a new era of healthcare billing—and we have a huge opportunity to utilize new technology, such as agentic AI, to improve experiences for patients and reduce cost for providers. By capturing context and streamlining interactions, AI will ensure human agents step in at the right moment—equipped with the full picture to deliver more meaningful, personalized care.” "Cedar is doing the work to unlock a better financial experience, so patients and providers are less focused on billing and more on patient outcomes,” said Andy O'Dower, Vice President of Product Voice and Video at Twilio. "We’re just beginning to see the potential of how conversational AI agents can streamline billing for patients while maintaining their trust. Beyond simple IVRs, AI backed by relevant, secure data can provide the patient with context and resources to create a seamless and empathetic experience. We look forward to continuing our work with Cedar to deliver more efficiencies and value to their customers."