Cedar, a patient financial platform for healthcare providers, announced Monday that its artificial intelligence voice agent has handled nearly 400,000 patient calls at providers across the country since its launch last year.
The platform debuted its AI voice agent—dubbed Kora—in April 2025. The tool is available 24/7 to autonomously resolve common billing inquiries on the first interaction and is trained on Cedar's proprietary healthcare billing data.
The voice AI agent handles tasks including patient authentication, bill in collections, balance inquiries, bill explanation and outbound collections campaigns.
Since its launch, more than a dozen providers have implemented the solution—including Hartford HealthCare, Keck Medicine of USC, ApolloMD, Emerus and Gastro Health.
At ApolloMD, the platform contributed to a 42% increase in patient payments and "measurable reductions" in live agent workload, the company says.
Gastro Health, which is one of the largest gastroenterology practices in the U.S., incorporated Kora in September. The AI voice agent has handled more than 60,000 calls, with the system reporting a 24% decrease in live agent handle time and a 22% decrease in call center staffing.
Moreover, more than 80% of patients with the practice who have used the solution indicated in a post-call survey reported they were “highly satisfied” with Kora.
Gastro Health CFO Lawrence Freni told Fierce Healthcare in an emailed statement that teams “were stretched thin” trying to balance responsiveness with high call volumes.
“The numbers speak for themselves as handle time is down 24%, staffing needs are down 22%, and patient satisfaction is above what live agent teams were hitting,” Freni said. “The part that doesn't show up in a metric is the pressure it's taken off our people. They're spending less time on repetitive calls and more time on the interactions that actually need a human. That balance matters for staff retention, for patient relationships and for building something that can scale.”
Upon its launch, the goal was to automate 30% of inbound billing calls. Now, the company says expansion is the goal—targeting areas like outbound patient engagement and agentic workflow automation.
Cedar CEO and Co-Founder Florian Otto told Fierce Healthcare, “patient trust vanishes” in the face of healthcare billing, with bills arriving late, not matching expectations and a lack of help in getting questions answered.
"That's the problem Kora was built for—not to deflect calls, but to handle the ones that genuinely require explanation and resolution,” Otto said. “After 400,000 calls, the data tells us it's working. What it represents, however, matters more than the volume. Across those interactions, we're seeing patients resolve complex billing questions, including EOB discrepancies and collections inquiries without ever reaching a live agent, and doing so with satisfaction scores that outperform benchmarks from live agents.”