Lora Rosenblum is the Senior Director, Commercial Strategy at Cedar. Cedar is working to make the patient experience convenient and clear, which leads to significantly better outcomes for providers, payers, and patients. Cedar’s mission is to make healthcare more affordable and accessible through its consumer-friendly platform that’s powered by data science, smart product design, and personalization.

The Pulse: I’d love to hear more about your role and the evolution of Cedar during the four years you’ve been with the Company. How has your role evolved from business development to commercial strategy and how has your approach to growth changed over that time?

Lora Rosenblum: I joined Cedar in 2019 as part of the business development team. At that time, our growth strategy was focused on expanding partnerships and increasing Cedar’s presence with providers, which included developing provider-specific partnerships and adding channel partners. In 2021, we acquired a company called OODA Health, which had a similar business model to Cedar, but was selling into the payer segment. Given that OODA Health was focused on payers, Cedar doubled down on the idea of working with channel partners and organizations like payers that partnered with providers and health systems. It was less so a narrowing of focus and more renewed focus on where we thought there was the most opportunity, because the OODA Health team brought a lot of great payer relationships.

In terms of my transition to commercial strategy, the commercial strategy team broadly focuses on different opportunities to drive Cedar’s revenue. My area of focus is thinking about how we can diversify Cedar’s revenue, which means taking our core capabilities and products and selling into new segments. In addition, I am responsible for identifying and prioritizing what segments to focus on and forging those new relationships and figuring out any adaptations we need to make to our products.

The Pulse: Can you walk me through how Cedar impacts the patient experience and how the patient experience looks when working with Cedar?

LR: A key value proposition of Cedar for our clients is making sure their patients have a positive experience — and by extension foster a positive perception of their provider or hospital. When an individual receives care from a Cedar provider partner, Cedar is the one sending the patient bill, and we’re contacting the patient. We use omni-channel communication, which can include traditional paper statements, as well as text messages or emails that tell you that your bill is ready. We are a white-labeled solution and insert the name of the hospital or provider, so a patient receives communication as if it were from the provider. Our perspective is that you, as the patient, don’t need to understand who Cedar is, as this might be a confusing experience. There’s a small “powered by Cedar” icon at the bottom of the statement, but our goal is to be an extension of the overall provider experience, connecting back to the clinical experience. We want the provider to benefit from that positive patient interaction.

The Pulse: Discuss where Cedar excels and what gives it “the right to win”. Where can Cedar improve to strengthen its market position? Can you touch on the ways Cedar differentiates itself from other companies working to improve consumerism and transparency in healthcare?

LR: It’s all about the product and platform. Cedar is trying to reduce friction points in the bill pay experience by creating a delightful experience — which is unfortunately rare in healthcare. We spend a lot of time thinking about how we design our solution and how potential users interact with it – and it works. One of my former colleagues texted me that she was a patient at one of our client health systems and that she just got her bill from Cedar. She said she had such an easy time paying her bill and the process was unlike any other bill that she’d ever paid before. Instead of going into separate portals and looking at which bills had and hadn’t been paid, which is very complicated and confusing, Cedar has all the information on one platform, which streamlines the entire process.

We also do a patient satisfaction survey that’s part of our payment experience. We actually do it following when payment is completed and it’s amazing to see our customer satisfaction score hover around 90%, which is something we are very proud of and are constantly working to improve.

The Pulse: Given the slower than expected uptake of digital health solutions and existing challenges related to healthcare transparency, do you worry that Cedar is creating a product without a clear market?

LR: An important clarification is that Cedar is looking to transform the overall financial experience and we’re not focused exclusively on the price transparency challenge. That’s definitely a piece of what we do, but really what we’re looking at is the wider affordability crisis. For example, even if you knew what your bill was going to be and understood it, many Americans can’t afford it, so we are thinking more around improving the financial situation between patients and providers. Today’s billing process is not a formula for success. Our vision for improving the financial and administrative  experience is distinct from other digital health companies who may have a more clinical focus in mind.

I think there is a need for companies like Cedar, and I think there is a market both on the operating margin side for health systems and the patient experience side. In terms of health systems, labor is really expensive and health systems are struggling with razor thin margins. On the patient side, patients are responsible for more costs than ever. A large or unexpected bill can actually drive negative consequences for an individual’s health or wellbeing because of the associated stress or anxiety. We can make it easier for patients to understand their bill, and therefore more likely that they will pay it because there’s clarity and ease.

The Pulse: How do you think about increasing consolidation among hospitals and physician practices and does this dynamic change your approach to growth?

LR: It’s a bit of a double edge sword. On one hand, it means that when organizations with which we already have relationships come together there’s more Cedar evangelists within that single organization, so that can really assist in an enterprise deal cycle. On the other hand, the number of clients within that market is smaller, so there’s fewer client relationships and relationships become more binary. In reality, the impact is on a case by case basis.

The Pulse: How do you think about balancing growth and profitability? Walk me through the thought process and how / if the mindset has evolved since you joined Cedar? 

LR: This is probably not a circumstance that is specific to Cedar because of how the capital markets have evolved. When we started as a business 7, almost 8 years ago, capital was a lot easier to come by. It was cheaper, which meant that companies could raise money, spend money, go out and raise again. As the environment has changed, especially more recently, it’s just not the reality for a company that’s under a decade old to continue to operate that way. Like other organizations Cedar is constantly thinking about ways that we can continue to grow sustainably and be in a strong position where we can control our own destiny. While the mantra once might have been growth, growth, growth at all costs, there’s an even stronger focus on profitability going forward.

The Pulse: What are you most proud of at Cedar? What do you enjoy most about your role?

LR: For me, I’ve really enjoyed adding partners and growing Cedar’s relationships. I get to manage complex relationships that have revenue figures attached to them, and I also get to apply a strategic lens, which includes thinking about the broader vision of the company. I love the combination of strategy and execution. I tend to avoid strategy as an academic exercise. I love bringing in execution, and doing the things and making choices and tradeoffs and changing tack as a result of what you actually are experiencing and seeing. For me, what’s been really fun is shaping the strategy and then actually signing deals in some of these new verticals and thinking about the future direction that Cedar could go in, based on the responsiveness from the market. It’s also been great to see our product evolve and how conversations in the market have continued to shift. It allows you to keep going deeper with clients and prospects and develop more effective solutions.

The Pulse: What themes / opportunities do you see in healthcare consumerism? What are the most challenging headwinds standing between the current state and improved consumerism in healthcare?

LR: In terms of the ideal state, it goes back to Cedar offering a holistic, comprehensive view of a patient’s financial experience. The limitation is that there’s so many different systems — technology and otherwise —that either can’t speak to each other or don’t want to speak to each other, which creates a really poor patient experience. Addressing that is inherently complicated as you try to connect different data elements and pieces and information. It ultimately goes back to developing a network strategy – something Cedar is laser focused on – to knock down those walls. 

Interviewed by Dan Varrichio, January 2024.

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On Feb 15-16, 2024, Wharton is excited to feature more expert perspectives at our annual Wharton Health Care Business Conference. This year’s conference is themed ‘The Resilience Edge.’ Conference details and tickets are available here.