In each edition of Cycle Up, we sit down with one of the leading voices on the Meduit team. In this issue, we’re talking with Stephanie Higdon, Chief Customer Success Officer, about the unprecedented RCM challenges facing hospitals and healthcare systems today and how Meduit is helping customers navigate the changing industry landscape.
Q. What attracted you to this role at Meduit?
A. I knew I wanted a role at a company with a positive culture and a strong focus on the customer experience. When I met the Meduit leadership team, we talked about what the company is doing well for customers today and identifying ways to make it even better and more process-driven. I’m very much a fixer, so I felt like what they were looking for was what I had spent most of my career doing in building relationships with hospitals, healthcare systems, and physicians.
Q. Even though it’s only been a few months, what’s been the biggest surprise since you joined the Meduit team?
A. I’d say the level of collaboration. I was invited to a meeting, and I got really excited because they said, “We just want you here so you can weigh in on how this is going to affect the customers,” and I kind of had this “Wait, this is the greatest day ever” moment because that’s the holy grail of collaboration. So, even at this early stage, I’m impacting areas of the company that haven’t always thought about the customer experience before, which is cool.
Q. It seems like being Meduit’s Chief Customer Success Officer would require wearing multiple hats. What’s a standard day like, if there is such a thing?
A. Every day seems like a new adventure into learning more, but also balancing that with putting in new processes and infrastructure. In my first month, I met with everyone I could to understand our products and services, our ideal customers, our customer sentiment, and what our processes look like. From there, I’ve created strategic initiatives to measure our progress against moving forward. I tend to dive into things, so if you ask me a year from now, I’m guessing my day-to-day will look much different than it does today.
Q. What are some common industry obstacles that Meduit’s clients face, and how does Meduit help address them?
A. There are so many more roadblocks and reimbursement challenges that payers put in front of health systems today. Our customers are struggling to find staff to do those hourly tasks, and they need to accelerate cash. They are looking for ways to reduce costs, automate processes, and then drive cash more quickly and efficiently, because they’re trying to balance their P&L.
Meduit has an amazing front-line staff that works really hard to collect revenue for our customers in a way that patients feel good about. Medical debt is a hard conversation, and we consistently get feedback from our customers that their patients like the way our front-line employees interact with them. We overlay this really good staff with integrated technology and AI tools to help automate processes. So, I’d say we bring a combination of staffing, expertise and technology to help drive our customers’ revenue cycles.
Q. Meduit already relies heavily on data and analytics; how do you see that manifesting in the future?
A. I’m big on data and reporting, so I think having the infrastructure in place to track customer data – not just on their side with claims and collections but also on our side in terms of how often we’re meeting with them and what their escalations look like, among other things – is critical. When you add a concerted effort to gather insights from our spectrum of customers, you have the qualitative and quantitative data needed to decide what more we can do as a company to drive change.
Q. How would you describe Meduit’s approach to building and maintaining successful client relationships?
A. I think it starts with sitting down and really working with a customer to figure out “Why are we here?” “What need are we trying to address?” and then making sure that what we’re doing for them is delivering on that need. But it doesn’t stop with solution delivery; it’s also about looking outside and giving them industry knowledge and insight, so we turn into a subject-matter expert for them as well.
Q. Meduit received a Net Promoter score of 62. Net Promoter is the gold standard customer experience metric, and Meduit’s score is higher than Apple’s, Google’s, and Chick-fil-A’s. What do you attribute it to?
A. I attribute it to two things. First, from a relationship management level, we have really strong, long-tenured relationships. Our managers understand their customers’ needs and pain points, and our customers know that we are here to support them. They are very loyal to us because of the relationship manager. Second, we have this patient-facing team that, from all the data I’ve seen, go above and beyond for patient satisfaction. At the end of the day, if our customers are entrusting us to act as ambassadors for their patients’ experience, we have a responsibility to deliver.
Q. How do you anticipate Meduit’s customer success practices evolving?
A. I think it’s continuing to push past being just good relationship managers so that even as we meet customer needs, we’re giving them added-value insight to go with it. If a customer has a 64% denial rate from Blue Cross, why? What are the categories? What are the things they can do to improve? What are the things that we can do to impact those denials? So, it goes beyond just having a task and completing it. The next step is looking at customer data, trying to drive insights, and then bringing external information to that customer as they think about their 18–24-month plan. At the end of the day, we’re here to help health care systems and hospitals drive revenue, and there are different ways that we can do that.
Stephanie Higdon is a data-driven leader with nearly two decades of healthcare experience and extensive expertise in cultivating and managing relationships with hospitals, physicians, and healthcare systems. In her spare time, you can usually find her at a local ballpark or gym, watching the younger of her two daughters play softball or volleyball. Otherwise, she’s likely out on the lake, reading fiction or tending to Tate, her Miniature Schnauzer.