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02 / RCM and prior authorization

Days of waitingon hold with payers.Now measuredin dollars per call.

Voice colleagues that navigate payer IVRs in parallel for prior auth, eligibility, claim status, and denial capture. Built to fail loudly to humans when the line stops being deterministic. Cheaper per call. Faster per resolution. Fully audited end-to-end.

Cycle time

Days to hours.

Prior auth follow-up · eligibility · claim status

A payer call sits in your queue for days because someone has to place it, sit on hold, and take notes. Nora places hundreds in parallel and hands back structured records the same shift.

$0.65 per call·92% first-call resolution·8% human escalation

Watch a call resolve

How Nora verifies benefits.
IVR navigation, rep conversation, refusal on ambiguity, structured payload out.

· NORA · INFUSION INSURANCE VERIFICATION
00:00CONNECTED

NORANora dials Blue Cross · listening for menu

00:04IVR
conf 0.98

NORAMenu navigated · pressed 2 for benefits

00:14IVR
conf 0.97

NORASub-menu · selected Rx and infusion coverage

00:26QUEUED

NORAHold music · avg wait 3:20

02:42REP LIVE
conf 0.96

REPBlue Cross benefits, how can I help?

NORAStates callback reference · member context (scrubbed)

03:02VERIFY
conf 0.94

REPYes, I see that member. J1745 is covered under Q4 policy.

NORACoverage confirmed · capturing effective dates

03:24ESCALATE
⚠ FLAGGED

REPIt should be covered but MD approval may be needed for this dose.

NORASignal ambiguous · flagging for nurse review · not recording as approved

03:41CONFIRM
conf 0.99

REPReference number is AUTH-2K7B4N8.

NORAAuth reference captured · patient responsibility calculated

03:52HANG UP

NORANora ends call · emits structured record to Waystar

━━ STRUCTURED OUTPUT EMITTED TO WAYSTAR ━━

payer_referenceAUTH-2K7B4N8
cpt_codes[J1745, 96413, 96415]
auth_statusapproved
effective_dates2026-08-19 → 2026-11-19
patient_resp$47.20 copay + 20% coinsurance
nurse_reviewqueued · md_approval_ambiguity
audit_chain0x9e2c8f4a...

Nora navigates payer IVRs, holds on the line, speaks with reps, and captures fields with confidence scores. When a signal is ambiguous — a benefit exception, a coverage caveat — she flags for human review rather than recording a false yes. This is what “fails loudly” looks like in production.

The benchmark

Send us 100 of your real calls. We'll run them through our agents at no charge and publish the unit economics back to you in a week.

The full catalog

Six agents.
Each scoped to a single payer-facing job.

01

prior_auth_status

Prior auth status check

Does

Calls payer IVRs, navigates menus, captures status, reference numbers, and required next actions. Hands you a structured event.

Does not

Doesn't initiate new auths. Doesn't argue with the rep. Hands off to a human when the line gets non-deterministic.

Outcome

PA turnaround: days → hours

02

eligibility_check

Eligibility and benefits verification

Does

Confirms active coverage, captures plan details, copay, deductible status, in-network provider check.

Does not

Doesn't make medical-necessity calls. Doesn't fabricate plan details that the IVR didn't surface.

Outcome

~92% first-call resolution

03

claim_status

Claim status follow-up

Does

Calls payers for claim disposition, captures paid amount, denial codes, pending reasons, expected next action dates.

Does not

Doesn't dispute, appeal, or rebill. Captures the truth and routes it.

Outcome

10x throughput vs human agent

04

denial_capture

Denial reason capture

Does

Pulls denial reasons in structured form. Categorizes against your taxonomy. Routes to the right work-queue or appeals path.

Does not

Doesn't write appeals. Doesn't make legal or coding judgments.

Outcome

100% denial-reason coverage

05

patient_balance

Patient balance outbound

Does

Calls patients about outstanding balances. Offers payment plans within your policy. Captures intent and routes to collections only when needed.

Does not

Doesn't pressure or threaten. Compliant with TCPA and state-level rules. Always offers human handoff.

Outcome

~30% of balances resolved on first call

06

appeals_status

Appeals status tracking

Does

Periodic outreach to payers for appeals progression. Captures decision dates, escalation paths, supplemental info requested.

Does not

Doesn't prepare or submit appeals. Doesn't argue clinical necessity.

Outcome

Appeals follow-up at zero marginal labor cost

The hard part

IVRs are
where most agents die.

Anyone can build a chatbot. Building an agent that reliably navigates a UnitedHealthcare or Aetna IVR — with mid-call menu changes, dynamic prompts, hold-music with periodic interruptions, and human reps who pick up at unpredictable points — is hard engineering.

Our agents are built to detect when the line stops being deterministic and hand off to a human with full context instead of guessing. We measure ourselves on three numbers: first-call resolution rate, average handle time, and handoff-quality (does the human get the context they need to finish without asking).

Concurrency

200+

FCR

~92%

Handoff context

100%

Payers navigated

UnitedHealthcareAetnaCignaHumanaAnthem BCBSBCBS TexasBCBS FloridaKaiserCentene / WellCareMedicare AdvantageMedicaid MCOsTricare

RCM platforms

WaystarAvailityChange / OptumAdvancedMDKareoathenaCollectorEpic ResoluteeClinicalWorks RCM

Run the unit economics

Type your
payer-call volume.

Conservative defaults. We benchmark against a 100-call sample of your real traffic before committing to a contracted unit cost.

Type your numbers · the model recalculates live

Annualized savings

$1,476,000

Cost / call

$7.00 → $0.85

AHT

14 → 4.5 min

Turnaround

68%

Monthly run-rate savings

$123,000

Hours reclaimed / month

3,167

Agent unit cost of $0.85/call assumes a typical payer-IVR navigation mix at our 4.5-minute average handle time. Pricing varies with concurrency, retries, and the complexity of your payer set. We benchmark against a 100-call sample of your actual calls before committing to a number.

Built for audit

Full recordings

Every call captured at the platform layer with full bidirectional audio, retained per your retention policy and payer requirements.

Structured outputs

Every call resolves into a typed event your platform can ingest. Auth status, reference numbers, denial reasons, next actions, and confidence scores.

Queryable logs

Every prompt, tool call, and decision logged. Customer-queryable via API for compliance, payer audits, or internal QA.

Pilot in progress

Pilot 02 · American Infusion Care · Florida

Mid-size RCM running prior auth across orthopedics and cardiology. Three agents live: PA status, eligibility, and claim follow-up.

Calls / month

22,000

FCR

91%

Cost / call

$0.85

PA turnaround

−84%

The benchmark, on us

100 of your calls.
One week. The numbers, published back.

Common questions from RCM directors

For revenue cycle leaders

What RCM workflows does iBridge automate today?

Prior authorization status checks, eligibility and benefits verification, claim status follow-up, denial reason capture, patient balance outbound, and appeals status tracking. All handled by voice colleagues that navigate payer IVRs, speak with reps, and emit structured records to your Waystar, Availity, or Change Healthcare workflow queue.

What does an iBridge voice call cost?

iBridge publishes per-call rates by monthly volume: $0.85 per call under 2,000 calls/month, $0.65 per call for 2,000 to 10,000, and $0.45 per call over 10,000. No platform fee, no compliance fee, no audit fee. Same published rates for every customer at the same volume tier.

How does Nora handle ambiguous payer information?

When a payer representative provides ambiguous benefit information — for example, ’this should be covered but medical director approval may be needed’ — Nora flags the call for human review rather than recording a false ’approved’ status. Every ambiguous signal is queued with the full reasoning chain attached. This is what ’fails loudly’ means in production.

What is the average first-call resolution rate?

92% first-call resolution across production voice deployments. 8% of calls escalate to human review, typically due to payer IVR changes, ambiguous benefit exceptions, or payer-side call routing to specialty departments requiring different scripts.

Does iBridge require a full-time person on the customer side to operate?

No. During the 30-day shadow phase, your team reviews every call — expect a few hours daily. Post-autonomous, oversight is a training authority role — typically 2-4 hours per week for a designated RCM lead who reviews escalations and teaches new payer edge cases as they arise.