Articles

How to Measure Success in EBO Partnerships: Key Metrics That Matter

Mar 30, 2026

Extended Business Office (EBO) partnerships play a critical role in helping hospitals and health systems manage self-pay balances and bad debt recovery efficiently—while preserving patient trust and financial integrity. Yet many organizations struggle with a fundamental question: How do we know if our EBO partnership is truly successful? 

Measuring EBO performance requires more than tracking dollars collected. True success is reflected across financial outcomes, operational efficiency, patient experience, and partnership alignment. For healthcare finance and revenue cycle leaders, establishing the right measurement framework is essential to ensuring EBO programs deliver sustainable value. 

Why Measuring EBO Performance Requires a Holistic View 

Historically, EBO success was often evaluated through a narrow financial lens, typically focusing on total collections or recovery rates. While these metrics remain important, they tell only part of the story. 

Today’s healthcare revenue cycle is far more complex due to factors such as: 

  • Increased regulatory oversight 
  • Growing emphasis on the patient financial experience 

As a result, healthcare leaders must evaluate EBO partnerships not only by how much is collected, but also how collections are achieved and how patients experience the process. 

A modern EBO evaluation framework should measure success across four primary dimensions: 

  1. Financial performance 
  2. Operational efficiency 
  3. Patient experience 
  4. Partnership transparency and alignment 

This broader perspective helps ensure EBO programs support both financial stability and patient-centered care. Providing a holistic view allows key stakeholders to understand not only what is being collected, but how it is being achieved—and whether the approach aligns with organizational values and long-term strategy. 

Core Financial KPIs That Define EBO Success 

At the foundation of any EBO partnership are financial metrics that reflect recovery effectiveness and cash flow impact. 

Commonly tracked indicators include: 

  • Total dollars collected across self-pay, early-out, and bad debt programs 
  • Liquidation or recovery rates by inventory segment 
  • Average days to payment, measuring how quickly balances are resolved 
  • Average payment amounts and payment plan participation 
  • Inventory aging trends, including batch-level or “stairstep” performance 

These KPIs provide insight into how efficiently accounts are being worked and how quickly revenue returns to the organization. 

The Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) notes that tracking standardized revenue cycle performance indicators allows organizations to identify inefficiencies, monitor financial health, and improve overall revenue recovery strategies. 

When reviewed consistently, financial KPIs can also highlight opportunities to refine account segmentation strategies, outreach timing, and resolution pathways. 

Operational Metrics That Reveal Program Efficiency 

Financial outcomes are directly influenced by operational performance. High-performing EBO partnerships closely monitor operational metrics that reflect the effectiveness of daily activities. 

Important operational indicators include: 

  • Call answer speed and abandonment rates, reflecting patient access and responsiveness 
  • Call volumes and agent availability, ensuring capacity aligns with patient demand 
  • Statement volumes and digital engagement rates, including text, email, and portal usage 
  • Payment portal utilization, indicating patient adoption of digital payment tools 
  • Inventory volumes and status trends, including holds, settlements, charity approvals, and cancellations 

Operational visibility helps revenue cycle leaders determine whether performance issues stem from inventory mix, workflow challenges, or capacity constraints, rather than collection strategy alone. 

The Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) emphasizes that revenue cycle transparency and operational visibility are essential for identifying process bottlenecks and improving overall financial performance. 

Patient Experience: A Critical Dimension of EBO Success 

Ninety percent of patients surveyed said that provider loyalty depends on the patient financial experience. EBO performance cannot be evaluated without considering the patient’s experience. Even strong financial results can be undermined if patient interactions create dissatisfaction, complaints, or reputational risk. 

Key patient experience indicators include: 

  • Patient satisfaction survey results captured through post-call feedback 
  • Complaint and escalation trends, tracked and reviewed for root causes 
  • Call quality audit scores, measuring empathy, accuracy, and compliance 

Organizations that consistently achieve strong patient satisfaction scores often establish clear service standards around communication quality and responsiveness.  

Leading organizations also use automated voice analytics and quality assurance reviews to continuously assess communication quality. High-performing programs typically maintain satisfaction and quality scores in the upper range of industry benchmarks, reinforcing that financial outcomes and patient experience are not mutually exclusive. 

Research from the Beryl Institute, a leading authority on patient experience improvement, shows that financial interactions play an increasingly important role in shaping patients’ perceptions of healthcare organizations. 

This reinforces an important principle: financial outcomes and compassionate patient engagement must work together. 

Client Experience and Partnership Health 

Beyond patient-facing metrics, EBO success depends heavily on the strength of the provider-vendor partnership. 

Healthcare leaders should regularly evaluate: 

  • Client satisfaction feedback 
  • Responsiveness of account management teams 
  • Timeliness of issue resolution and follow-up 
  • Quality and usefulness of reporting insights 

Strong EBO partnerships also rely on a shared sense of accountability and ownership. The key to building a successful relationship with optimal results is to find an outsourcer whose leaders embrace and encourage an ownership mindset amongst their team.  

Successful partners operate as a true extension of the hospital’s internal staff. 

When partnerships are built on transparency and shared accountability, EBO providers become a strategic extension of the hospital’s revenue cycle team—not simply an outsourced vendor. 

The Importance of Reporting Cadence and Transparency 

Timely, accessible reporting is essential for effective oversight. High-performing EBO partnerships provide data at multiple intervals (daily, weekly, monthly, and on demand) allowing leaders to monitor trends and respond proactively. 

Dashboards, scorecards, and secure portals enable real-time visibility into inventory, call activity, payment behavior, and patient satisfaction. This transparency empowers healthcare finance leaders to move from reactive review to proactive management. 

Benchmarking: Measuring Performance in Context 

Internal metrics become far more meaningful when evaluated alongside industry benchmarks and peer comparisons. 

Benchmarking allows healthcare organizations to determine whether performance reflects operational excellence or broader market conditions. 

Common benchmarking categories include: 

  • Liquidation rates 
  • Days to payment 
  • Patient contact rates 
  • Digital engagement levels 
  • Statement effectiveness 
  • Patient satisfaction scores 

Organizations such as HFMA and MGMA frequently publish benchmarking studies that help healthcare finance leaders understand how their performance compares to industry peers. 

These comparative insights help organizations identify strengths, uncover performance gaps, and guide continuous improvement efforts. 

Measuring What Matters Most 

Success in an Extended Business Office partnership cannot be defined by a single metric. 

Instead, it is demonstrated through: 

  • Consistent financial performance 
  • Efficient operational execution 
  • Positive patient financial experiences 
  • Transparent, collaborative partnerships 

For healthcare finance and revenue cycle leaders, the goal is not simply to collect more—but to collect smarter, faster, and more compassionately. 

When implemented thoughtfully, EBO programs can support financial recovery while improving the patient financial experience. In fact, successful post-service collections programs prioritize respectful communication, transparency, and patient-centered engagement strategies that help patients resolve balances without unnecessary stress.  

By focusing on the right performance indicators and maintaining clear reporting visibility, healthcare organizations can ensure their EBO partnerships deliver measurable value today while supporting long-term financial stability and patient trust. 

Understanding how your EBO program is performing across financial, operational, and patient experience metrics is key to long-term success. If you’d like to see how Revenue Enterprises evaluates program performance through our KPI framework, connect with our team for a full analysis and overview of your current program. 

Karie Bostwick

VP of People and Compliance

As VP of People and Compliance at Revenue Enterprises, Karie Bostwick oversees People functions including recruiting, training, onboarding, engagement and satisfaction. Additionally, she is responsible for compliance training, oversight and monitoring.

Karie has a long history of working in the revenue cycle support industry. Her skills span leadership, operations start up, policies and procedures development, operations workflow, budgeting and client management.

She is passionate about the experience of our people, patients and the Healthcare clients we serve and believes that a team of diverse, talented and motivated individuals working together toward a common goal can make a difference.

Robert Sterett

VP of Information Technology

As a transformational leader Robert Sterett has leveraged his 20 years of experience to build effective service lines and exceptional teams. In his role as VP of Information Technology at Revenue Enterprises, Robert excels at taking a unique, balanced, and strategic approach to technology leadership with people first for the best possible outcome. Using his experience from engineering, project management and service line management he takes a multi-faceted approach to ensure the right people are in the correct position coupled with the best technology to meet or exceed all expectations from security to compliance and business continuity.

Robert’s leadership style lends itself to building long term relationships and has consistently been a relied upon strength in many organizations. Over Robert’s time as an IT operational and project leader, he has spent significant time in both hands-on technology facing roles and client centric management roles to bring the best solutions that strive to meet the business and client needs.

Focusing heavily on his personal development skills and opportunities, Robert continues to foster coaching and mentorship relationships everywhere in his life, and the lives around him.

Douglas Dunbar

VP of Sales & Marketing

As VP of Sales and Marketing for Revenue Enterprises, Douglas Dunbar leads with a passion for building strategic partnerships, nurturing relationships, and upholding customer service excellence. In his role, Doug focuses on marketing and brand strategy, sales team leadership, and working closely with members of the management team to best serve company goals.

Doug has over 28 years of National sales and marketing call/contact center leadership, with 10 years of service specifically at Revenue Enterprises. Currently, Doug serves as part of Wyoming HFMA Chapter leadership and has held various roles in Colorado HFMA Chapter leadership for over 9 years.

In his spare time, Doug is very family oriented. Additionally, he loves traveling, cycling, golfing, fishing, hunting, and boating.

Kris Brumley, MBA

President & COO

As President & COO of Revenue Enterprises, Kris Brumley is a collaborative partner within the executive team and a leader for operational functions across the organization. Kris productively shares vision, drives innovation, and supports those around her in a way that elevates them and fosters continuous improvement and results. She has helped create a supportive environment for clients resulting in 98% client retention and a 65% NPS score for all clients and 75% for top clients by revenue.

Kris possesses an MBA in data analytics and has twenty-five years of experience in the healthcare industry, with 19 specifically in revenue cycle. She brings a wealth of customer service experience to her role and has worn many hats at Revenue Enterprises including Director of Business Development, EBO Division Director, and VP of Client Experience Management.

In her personal life, Kris is as busy outside of work as inside. She values spending time with her family, and enjoys fishing, hiking, traveling and interior decorating and design.

Timothy (Tim) Brainerd

CEO

As CEO of Revenue Enterprises for almost 20 years, Tim Brainerd leads by example. He promotes a shared vision and stewards a culture of Integrity, Passion, and Respect. He has assembled and empowered high-performing talent and teams to support customers, facilitate strategic planning and manage the capital of the company. Under his leadership, Revenue Enterprises has doubled in size three times over the past fifteen years while maintaining a culture of caring and gratefulness.

Tim has close to four decades of revenue cycle experience, including nineteen years with RSI
Enterprises. He has been a past president of Colorado Chapter of the HFMA and a presenting speaker on the topic of Leadership. He is a fifteen-year member of Vistage International, the world’s largest CEO coaching and peer advisory organization for small and midsize business leaders.

Raised in the Midwest, Tim values humble principles like being respectful, caring, passionate, self-reliant, and most importantly grateful. His most important lesson and the lesson he hopes to pass on in all relationships is living the Golden Rule–do unto others as you would have them do unto you. He is intentional in his choices and believes in making decisions, taking action, being accountable, and loving your neighbors.

Whenever possible, Tim spends his time with his wife of nearly forty years, his adult children, and his grandchildren. His hobbies include fishing, golfing, traveling as well as game nights and sharing great food with his family.