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Abridge, Microsoft earn top spots for revenue cycle tech
KLAS released its list of top vendor solutions for health IT, including revenue cycle management technology and services.
Major names in AI and IT were among those recognized by KLAS Research as the best revenue cycle technology vendors this year.
The market research firm released its much-anticipated Best in KLAS 2026 report on Wednesday, ranking healthcare technology and services. The report included the usual suspects; Epic took top spot for overall health system suite for the sixteenth year in a row, while athenahealth was once again named best overall independent physician practice suite.
For revenue cycle management technology, specifically, KLAS awarded vendors including Abridge, Microsoft, Waystar and FinThrive across nine categories. The report also ranked revenue cycle management services in 14 categories, including end-to-end revenue cycle outsourcing and denials management services.
In each category, vendor solutions or services are ranked by customers using a 100.0-point scale. Customers score the solutions across several pillars, including culture, loyalty, operations, product or services, relationship and value.
Additionally, this year's report included some changes to revenue cycle management awards. KLAS added revenue cycle prior authorization as a category, although it did not award Best in KLAS this year. The report also retired revenue cycle charge capture and renamed revenue cycle optimization to EHR revenue cycle optimization.
Here are some of the top solutions and services in revenue cycle management this year.
Top revenue cycle management technologies in 2026
KLAS awarded nine vendors in this year's report for revenue cycle management technologies, including claims management and clearinghouse, patient access and a topic popular among providers this year, ambient speech.
Abridge took the top spot again in the Best in KLAS ambient speech technology category within revenue cycle management. The health AI company earned 94.7 points, with an overwhelming majority of customers telling KLAS the Abridge solution is part of their long-term plans. However, Abridge only slightly beat Ambience Healthcare's Ambience solution, which earned 94.4 points.
For claims management and clearinghouse, KLAS awarded Quadax after the company's Xpeditor solution earned 92.8 points, exceeding Availity's Essentials Pro solution at 91.7 points and Waystar's Claims Management solution at 91.6 points.
Waystar, however, won Best in KLAS for patient access technology. The vendor's Patient Access solution was the clear winner with 91.2 points (versus Experian Health's 88.8 points and FinThrive's 82.3 points).
Microsoft also made an appearance this year. The major IT company's Nuance CDI solution earned the highest points at 89.1 in the clinical documentation integrity category. Microsoft's Dragon Medical One solution also ranked highest for front-end EHR speech recognition.
Other vendors awarded Best in KLAS for revenue cycle management technology this year included CodaMetrix for autonomous coding, Dolbey for computer-assisted coding, FinThrive for insurance discovery, RevSpring for patient financial engagement, the Craneware Group for chargemaster management in revenue cycle and Experian Health for contract management in revenue cycle.
Top revenue cycle management services in 2026
In addition to technology solutions, KLAS also awards vendors for revenue cycle management services.
This year, Ensemble won Best in KLAS for end-to-end revenue cycle outsourcing, outpacing its only competitor in the report, R1 RCM. Ensemble beat R1 by 42.9 points, earning a total score of 96.9 points. These rankings were similar to last year's when Ensemble had 91.3 points versus R1's 54.8 points. R1 customers polled by KLAS Research over the last year continued to fail the revenue cycle outsourcing services in loyalty and value.
However, R1 scored better in extended business office services for small organizations with up to 200 beds, earning Best in KLAS in that category again. Meanwhile, larger organizations preferred FTI Consulting. R1 also earned Best in KLAS for government reimbursement services and underpayment recovery services.
In another major category, denials management services, Trend Health Partners took Best in KLAS this year with 92.6 points, beating last year's winner, Aspirion, as well as R1 and Revecore.
Notably, there was a tie for best virtual scribing services this year. Both IKS Health's Live Scribes and ScribeEMR's Virtual Scribes earned 91.9 points.
Other Best in KLAS awards for revenue cycle management services went to Revecore for complex claim services, RSi for debt collection services, Datavant for outsourced coding, PayZen for patient financing solutions, Xsolis for physician advisory services, MRO for release of information and Aledade for value-based care enablement services.
Jacqueline LaPointe is a graduate of Brandeis University and King's College London. She has been writing about healthcare finance and revenue cycle management since 2016.
