New Mountain Capital just hit us with one of the biggest blockbuster mergers of the year, combining portfolio companies SmarterDx, Thoughtful.ai, and Access Healthcare into a new RCM powerhouse dubbed Smarter Technologies.
Payors and providers are at war over every dollar, and Smarter is leveling the battlefield by arming health systems with a comprehensive revenue cycle management platform built on the unique strengths of its founding companies. That includes:
- SmarterDx’s clinical AI for revenue integrity and care quality
- Thoughtful.ai’s agentic AI for healthcare operations and revenue cycle automation
- Access Healthcare’s established RCM and outsourcing expertise
As a combined force, Smarter’s “Automation and Insights Platform for Healthcare Efficiency” includes three core pillars, complete with a sleek intro video for the visual learners.
- Nebula trains and deploys virtual AI agents that can automate the resolution of up to 70% of revenue cycle tasks while adjusting on the fly to unexpected payor responses.
- Overwatch is the “lowest cost-to-serve global workforce platform,” enabling healthcare orgs to slash labor costs and lost collections with quality guarantees of 99%.
- Spotlight delivers AI-driven clinical insights to surface pre-bill revenue and augment claims adjudication, but can be used at any stage of the rev cycle to optimize collections.
“Rip-and-replace” isn’t an approach that many health systems are eager to risk with their entire RCM systems, which is why Smarter CEO Jeremy Delinsky emphasized the platform’s modularity during his excellent Slice of Healthcare interview.
- Smarter’s menu of EHR-agnostic solutions target specific areas like patient eligibility verification, prior auths, or AR followups – allowing its partners to adopt new AI capabilities without overhauling their existing tech stacks.
- That leaves plenty of room to layer on more solutions down the road, and Smarter is already serving over 200 clients while managing 400M+ transactions annually.
The Takeaway
It’s easy enough to announce a massive merger, but integrating three separate companies is a whole different story. Smarter Technologies has all the makings of a platform that can be more than the sum of its parts, but if it wants to ensure that more health systems have the margin to fulfill their mission, the real work is just getting started.
