Cedar AI voice agent cuts Gastro Health handle time 24%
The Cedar AI voice agent, Kora, has cut live agent handle time by 24% at Gastro Health, one of the largest gastroenterology practices in the U.S., Cedar and Fierce Healthcare reported on June 15, 2026. The practice has also reduced Cedar-supported call center staffing by 22% since it went live in September 2025. For any business with a busy billing phone line, the case shows that routine questions can move to software while staff keep the calls that need a person.
Why billing calls were slowing Gastro Health down
The phones were pulling Gastro Health staff away from patients as the practice grew. Gastro Health runs more than 120 locations across seven states, according to Cedar's case study, and has worked with Cedar since 2020 on its patient financial experience and call center. As the practice expanded, office teammates spent more and more time answering questions about explanations of benefits and balances instead of focusing on patients.
“The phones are the biggest detriment to growth and patient satisfaction.” — Lawrence Freni, Chief Financial Officer of Gastro Health
Freni told Fierce Healthcare that his teams "were stretched thin" trying to balance responsiveness with high call volumes. Leo Vela, Director of Patient Financial Services, described the demand behind it: patients want answers right away.
What Cedar's Kora does on a billing call
Kora is a voice agent that answers patient billing calls on its own and hands the harder ones to people. Cedar launched it in April 2025. Fierce Healthcare reports that it is available 24/7, is trained on Cedar's proprietary healthcare billing data, and handles patient authentication, bills in collections, balance inquiries, bill explanations and outbound collections campaigns. When a call needs a live agent, Kora passes the call details along, so the agent does not start from scratch. Freni first saw Kora demonstrated at a Cedar event, and Gastro Health went live with it in September 2025. The practice's source system is eClinicalWorks.
How the voice agent talks to patients day to day
Patients speak with Kora in plain conversation instead of pressing through a phone tree or waiting on hold. Vela says it is very much like speaking to a person: when a patient interrupts, Kora stops talking and listens. Because the practice is headquartered in South Florida, Kora's ability to handle inquiries in Spanish was essential. Cedar says the system keeps learning the specifics of Gastro Health's business, from common procedures to billing patterns and the insurance complexity of gastroenterology, so it can resolve more issues without transferring a patient.
What the numbers show since the September 2025 launch
Live agent handle time fell 24% because Kora collects authentication and key details before it hands a call over, Cedar says. Staffing for Cedar-supported call center services is down 22% since launch. The two sources count call volume differently: Cedar's case study says Kora has handled more than 55,000 billing calls at the practice, while Fierce Healthcare reported more than 60,000 calls. On satisfaction, Cedar puts post-call scores on Kora-handled calls at 4 out of 5, in line with healthcare industry benchmarks, and Fierce Healthcare reported that more than 80% of patients who answered a post-call survey said they were "highly satisfied".
Across all its customers, Kora has handled nearly 400,000 patient calls since April 2025. More than a dozen providers use it, including Hartford HealthCare, Keck Medicine of USC, ApolloMD and Emerus. At ApolloMD, the company says, the platform contributed to a 42% increase in patient payments.
What it changes for a medical billing call center
For a provider's billing office, the value lies in how the work is split. Routine questions about balances and charges go to the voice agent at any hour, and a live agent gets the calls that need judgment, with the patient already authenticated. Vela put the economics in one line: "You have to be able to scale without increasing your cost-to-collect." Freni says the change is making a real difference in both cash flow and patient satisfaction.
These figures are the companies' own. Cedar's site notes that its Kora metrics come from pilots and surveys from 2024 through 2026, not from an independent audit. At launch, Cedar's goal was to automate 30% of inbound billing calls. The company now says its next targets are outbound patient engagement and agentic workflow automation; those are plans, not results.
Questions and answers
What is Cedar's Kora voice agent?
Kora is Cedar's voice agent for patient billing, launched in April 2025. It authenticates patients, answers billing questions, explains charges and escalates to a live agent when needed, passing along the call details so the agent can resolve the issue faster.
How many calls has Kora handled at Gastro Health?
Cedar's case study says more than 55,000 billing calls since September 2025; Fierce Healthcare reported more than 60,000. Across all providers that use it, Kora has handled nearly 400,000 patient calls.
Can the voice agent answer patients in Spanish?
Yes. Cedar says Kora handles inquiries in Spanish, which Gastro Health, headquartered in South Florida, considered essential for its patients.
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How we would build it
A billing voice agent depends on two things: knowing who is calling and knowing what the bill actually says. We would start with the data. The agent would need read access to the patient ledger, the claim and payment records behind each balance, and the explanation of benefits the insurer sent. Without them it can only read numbers back, and patients call because those numbers already confuse them.
We would keep the agent narrow at first. It would verify identity, explain one balance, take a payment or set up a plan, and hand off anything else with a short written summary for the live agent. The handoff is where these systems usually break: a patient who has to repeat everything to a person is angrier than one who never reached the bot. Billing staff would review a sample of recorded calls every week, flag wrong explanations and turn them into test cases that any change to the agent would have to pass first.
The one metric we would watch is the share of calls resolved on first contact with no repeat call about the same bill. Handle time and staffing can fall while patients simply call again. Next, we would build the outbound side: calls before a bill arrives that explain what insurance paid and what the patient owes, so fewer confused calls come in at all.
Sources
Where the facts in this story come from.