How a Physicians Group Lowered Days to Pay by 81%

Battle Mountain General Hospital Physicians is the primary care physician group affiliated with Battle Mountain General Hospital, a community-oriented critical access hospital serving Lander County residents in Battle Mountain, Nevada. With a team of 16 physicians, the group provides comprehensive primary care, family medicine, and ambulatory services to a largely rural patient population that depends on local providers for accessible, high-quality care. 

Battle Mountain General Hospital has served the region for over 50 years, offering emergency services, general radiology, physical therapy, long-term care, and clinic-based primary care through its on-site clinic. The physician group operates with a strong commitment to patient safety and quality care, guided by its core values of care, compassion, and competence. 

As a critical access provider in a rural community, the physician group faces the financial realities that affect primary care practices everywhere: a rising share of patient financial responsibility, high-deductible health plan enrollment, and the challenge of following up on outstanding balances without adding burden to a lean administrative team. 

The Challenge 

Primary care and family medicine practices carry a broad and varied balance profile. A single day of patient encounters may generate dozens of bills ranging from a five-dollar copay remainder to a several-hundred-dollar balance after insurance adjudication. Managing patient financial responsibility at that volume — and doing so consistently — is difficult without automation. 

In a rural critical access setting, billing staff are frequently asked to do more with fewer resources. Manual follow-up on patient balances — phone calls, paper statements, and portal messages — consumes significant staff time while yielding inconsistent results. Smaller balances under ten or twenty-five dollars are typically written off as uncollectable because no staff member can justify the cost of pursuing them individually. Balances that age past 90 days without resolution are often surrendered to collections agencies, which charge 35–45% of whatever is recovered — if they accept the accounts at all. 

Battle Mountain General Hospital Physicians needed a way to reach patients by text and email — the channels patients actually respond to — without adding work for billing staff or requiring patients to navigate a portal or create an account. 

The Rivia Health Solution 

Rivia Health works alongside the practice’s existing EHR to automate patient payment follow-up from the moment a balance enters billed status. Patients receive personalized, HIPAA-compliant notifications by text and email — alternating channels, adjusting cadence based on balance age and time zone, and consolidating multiple outstanding bills into a single communication. 

There is no portal to log into, no app to download, and no account to create. A patient taps a secure link, verifies their identity, and sees all their outstanding balances in one place. They can pay in full, make a partial payment, or set up a self-service payment plan — in under two minutes, from any device. 

For the physician group, implementation required no IT involvement, no workflow changes, and no staff training. The billing team retained full visibility and control through Rivia Connect, where they can manage outreach settings, send quick pay links, and track patient payment activity in real time. Battle Mountain General Hospital Physicians was up and running in a matter of days. 

This shift does not mean fewer staff. It means staff support more valuable work.

THE RESULTS

Billing Staff Time Recovered 

Every patient balance that is resolved through Rivia Health’s automated outreach is a balance that did not require a phone call, a paper statement, or manual follow-up from a billing team member. For a physician group operating in a lean administrative environment, this is not a minor efficiency gain — it is a meaningful shift in how staff time is spent. 

With 208 payments captured through Rivia Health, and an estimated 5 to 10 minutes saved per payment, the billing team recovered approximately 17 to 35 hours of staff time — hours that were redirected to insurance claim follow-up, denial management, and other activities with higher per-hour revenue impact.

“Rivia Health just works quietly in the background. Balances that used to slip through the cracks get resolved without anyone on the team making a call. It’s given us back time to focus on the work that delivers the most value to our patients, and our patients appreciate having an easy way to pay their bills.”

Jodi Price, Director Battle Mountain General Hospital

CAPTURING ALL BALANCES, NO MATTER HOW OLD

For most practices, patient balances that have aged past 90 days present an uncomfortable choice: send them to a collections agency at a steep fee, or write them off. Most patient payment systems stop outreach at that point, accepting those balances as effectively lost. 

Rivia Health does not stop at 90 days. Automated outreach continues — with adjusted frequency and tone — because those balances represent real revenue that patients may still resolve if given a simple, frictionless way to do so. 

For Battle Mountain General Hospital Physicians, 44% of all revenue captured through Rivia Health came from balances aged past 90 days. These are accounts that, under most workflows, would have been surrendered to collections or written off entirely. 

The revenue captured on aged balances alone represented more than 1.4 times the total annual cost of the Rivia Health platform. 

At a flat monthly subscription, the math is straightforward: what Rivia Health recovered from balances past 90 days alone more than covered the full year’s cost of the platform. Everything else — current-balance payments, small-balance recovery, and staff time savings — was incremental value on top. 

NO BALANCE IS TOO SMALL TO CAPTURE

Small patient balances — copay remainders, minor insurance shortfalls, modest deductible amounts — are a constant, low-value stream that’s too costly to pursue individually, so most practices write them off. Across a 16-physician practice those balances add up to real revenue that otherwise disappears from the books.

Because Rivia Health’s automated outreach costs the same whether a balance is $5 or $500, every balance gets follow-up. It captured 19 payments under $10 — averaging 248 days of AR age — and 43 more under $25, all at zero marginal staff cost, so every recovered dollar goes straight to the bottom line.

REDUCED PATIENT AR DAYS: 11.2 VS. 60-DAY INDUSTRY AVERAGE

The speed at which patients pay has a direct impact on a practice’s cash flow, financial planning, and ability to meet operating obligations without carrying excess receivables. The industry average for patient accounts receivable is approximately 60 days — meaning it typically takes two months from the time a balance is billed until payment is received. 

With Rivia Health, patients at Battle Mountain General Hospital Physicians paid in an average of 11.2 days — a roughly ~81% reduction compared to the industry average, and 49 days faster. By reaching patients immediately when a balance enters billed status, and by making it simple to pay by text or email — no portal, no app, no account creation required — Rivia Health compresses the time between billing and payment. 

For a community practice that depends on predictable cash flow to manage payroll and operating expenses, revenue that arrives weeks earlier rather than months later has tangible, practical value. Fewer balances sitting on the receivables ledger means a cleaner financial picture and less reliance on credit to bridge gaps. 

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Flexible Payment Options Drives Resolution

Not every patient can pay in full when a balance is due. In a rural primary care setting, patients may be on fixed incomes, managing multiple family members’ health expenses, or simply unaware that a flexible option exists. Offering payment plans is often the difference between a balance that resolves and one that ages into collections. 

33% of patients who paid through Rivia Health used a flexible payment option. With 42 patients actively enrolled in payment plans, those balances are being resolved on a schedule that works for the patient — rather than aging into collections or being written off. 

Rivia Health makes it easy for patients to set up a payment plan directly from a text or email link, without calling the office. This self-service approach captures revenue from patients who are willing to pay but need a manageable schedule — and does so without requiring any staff coordination. 

THE BOTTOM LINE

Since partnering with Rivia Health, Battle Mountain General Hospital Physicians has seen consistent, data-backed improvement across patient payment capture, staff efficiency, and cash flow. Based on the February 2026 performance data:

208 patient payments	captured from 127 patients — all without manual staff outreach
17 to 35 hours	of billing staff time recovered and redirected to higher-value insurance work
44% of revenue	captured came from balances past 90 days
19 payments recovered	on balances under $10 (revenue that is written off without automation)
43 payments captured	on balances under twenty-five dollars at zero marginal staff cost
Patient AR days reduced	to 11.2 days — a roughly ~81% improvement over the 60-day industry average
33% of patients	used flexible payment options, with 42 patients on active plans

Rivia Health delivers AI-powered RCM solutions for specialty healthcare providers that increase balance capture, lower staff burden, and improve the patient billing experience by keeping care at the center.