Ardent Health Streamlines 75,000+ Annual Refunds with TailFin

For Ardent Health’s AP teams, refund season once meant weeks of printing, stuffing, and chasing — until TailFin changed everything.

Top Line Results:

• 75,000+ refunds digitized
• $230,000 in savings
• 30 hours/week of manual work eliminated
• 145,000 one-time vendors deactivated
• Increased team satisfaction and invoice throughput
• Seamless integration with existing EHR and ERP systems

“From beginning to end, it was a wholly collaborative project with exemplary teamwork—resulting in a huge win for our patients, major efficiencies, and real workload relief for our AP team.”
— Stacey Martinez, VP of Accounting Operations, Ardent Health

The Challenge

Before partnering with TailFin, Ardent Health operated a highly manual and fragmented refund process across five AP teams and a central billing office.

Each year, the organization issued more than 75,000 check-based refunds — every one requiring manual document matching, printing, stuffing, and mailing. This consumed approximately 150 hours per week of staff time and introduced serious regulatory exposure.

Without centralized oversight, unclaimed property compliance across multiple states was tracked manually, creating escalating escheatment risk.

Meanwhile, 145,000 one-time vendors were cluttering ERP and EHR systems, and skilled AP staff were spending hours daily chasing reissues instead of processing invoices.

“Our system couldn’t house the necessary information. We were literally loading 75,000 one-time vendors a year just to issue these payments,” said Martinez.

The Solution

Ardent Health implemented TailFin’s end-to-end refund disbursement platform, replacing manual check workflows with a fully digital, patient-centered process.

Patients gained access to a self-service portal with flexible payment options including ACH, gift card, and charitable donation. Outreach, fulfillment, and reissues became fully automated.

TailFin integrated directly with EPIC and Lawson, no custom development, no workflow disruption, and took over escheatment processing with full audit-readiness documentation across all state filings.

“Now it’s efficient and removing work,” Martinez noted. “The portal is user-friendly, and reissuing payments is much easier compared to before.”

The Results

The impact of TailFin’s solution was immediate and measurable:

   Operational Efficiency

• 150 hours per week eliminated from manual mailing, batching, and reissue work.
• 75,000+ annual refund transactions fully digitized.
• AP teams now focused on core invoice processing instead of envelope stuffing.

  Compliance & Data Hygiene

• 145,000+ one-time vendors deactivated, eliminating ERP and EHR clutter.
• Escheatment processing fully outsourced with audit-ready documentation.
• Reduced unclaimed property risk across multi-state filings.

  Financial Impact

• $230,000 in annual savings driven by labor cost reduction and elimination of check stock, postage, and vendor maintenance overhead.

  Patient & Team Experience

• No increase in patient call volume after launch, indicating a smooth and intuitive transition.
• Flexible payment options drove faster resolution and higher patient satisfaction.
• Improved employee morale as teams were relieved of repetitive manual tasks.

“The team was thrilled not to spend hours printing, stuffing, and chasing down refunds,” said Martinez. “Now they focus on processing invoices.”

The Implementation Experience

At TailFin, collaborative rigor isn’t a buzzword — it’s how we work. From the first implementation call to ongoing support, we show up to listen, understand the real challenges, and stay with you until they’re solved.

Ardent Health experienced this firsthand. Despite the scale and complexity of the rollout, Martinez described the client described the implementation as “easier than expected,” highlighting the collaboration between the health system employees and TailFin teams.

“Your responsiveness was huge,” said Martinez. “Your client success team didn’t just punt issues—they stayed on it until we had resolution. That made a difference.”