How Payment Solutions Can Transform Healthcare Operations

Healthcare practices today must juggle the demands of patient care with the expectations and complexities of practice financial management. Practices that still rely on outdated or paper-based solutions may find it difficult to meet evolving patient expectations.

Here's how these challenges can impact day-to-day operations and patient care—and how healthcare payment solutions can help practices thrive.

The hidden costs of fragmented financial operations

A primary care provider may regularly work long hours—not seeing patients but instead reviewing invoices, patient records and incomplete financial reports. In the back office, staff must sort through multiple spreadsheets while also reconciling payments across different systems, printing invoices and managing paper checks. At the office's front desk, patients may not have a quick, easy way to pay for their visit, which can extend wait times and negatively impact their experience.

This experience could not only be frustrating for your practice's doctors and employees, but it may also become a drain on the practice. According to the Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare, or CAQH, the healthcare system spends $60 billion annually on administrative tasks—including claim payments, remittances and submissions. These tedious, time-consuming tasks may also negatively affect your patient care.

This could also translate to higher transaction costs for smaller individual practices. The Association for Financial Professionals Payments Cost Benchmarking Survey found that paper checks can cost between $1 and $4 per transaction—in addition to the associated risks surrounding check fraud. That's why businesses are encouraged to explore ACH transfers, which cost significantly less.

A lack of insight caused by financial data spread across systems can give a fragmented view of a practice's overall health, making it difficult to identify which investments may improve patient outcomes.

Patients can also feel the impact. Inefficient processes, complex billing processes and a lack of electronic payment options may cause long wait times, decreasing patient satisfaction and retention—impacting your bottom line.

Your practice could leverage a digital payment service for patients. Going digital may not only help relieve your business of the burdens of paper-heavy systems, but it could also help decrease ongoing costs for storage, supplies and staff to manage billing and records. Automating your internal operations may also help reduce errors, security risks and data silos.

Shift operations beyond basic transactions

The healthcare industry faces a significant burden of administrative expenses consuming time, resources and staff energy. Navigating multiple or outdated systems can often exacerbate these issues, leading to inefficient workflows and misallocated resources.

Research from a American Hospital Association (AHA) survey highlights some of the administrative costs and workload strain many healthcare providers feel. Almost 75% of nurses report increases in administrative tasks, while almost 90% feel these additional tasks impact patient clinical outcomes.

Patient expectations may also be a driving force for healthcare providers. According to PYMNTS The Payment Cure: How Improving Billing Experiences Impacts Patient Loyalty (PDF), 63% of consumers say they’ll switch healthcare providers if their payment experience is cumbersome. And another 36% would change practices due to a complex billing process.

Employ the right solutions

To succeed today, healthcare practices must adapt and embrace solutions that address these challenges head on. Integrated banking and payment solutions offer a path forward, with the potential to transform how practices operate while improving the patient experience.

Here are a few ways healthcare finance solutions are improving healthcare provider practices.

• Streamlining workflows: By automating time-consuming tasks like payment posting and reconciliation, payment solutions free up valuable staff time. This allows providers to focus on patient care and improve overall practice efficiency.
• Enhancing patient satisfaction: Modern payment options like text to pay, online portals and secure card-on-file storage cater to patient preferences for convenience and flexibility. This can lead to increased patient satisfaction and loyalty, as well as improved payment collection rates.
• Enabling data-driven decision-making: Healthcare finance payment solutions offer real-time financial insights, which empower practices to make informed decisions about resource allocation, identify areas for improvement and optimize financial performance.
• Strengthening security and compliance: With robust security features and adherence to industry standards like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards, or PCI DSS, integrated systems protect sensitive patient data and help practices maintain regulatory compliance.

The potential impact of using integrated payment solutions is significant. The CAQH report estimates that the healthcare industry can save almost $25 billion per year by transitioning to electronic and automated administrative transactions.

KLAS Research's Pulse Check: Patient Financial Engagement survey found that interest in healthcare finance payment solutions is high as providers try to improve their patients' financial experience. Approximately 92% of early adopters of technology solutions for patient financial management invested in a unified patient portal, with others implementing text-to-pay and text message reminders. In terms of results, 64% of respondents reported increased collections, 55% reduced costs and 18% said the patient experience increased post-implementation.

Embracing these tools can help practices alleviate administrative burdens and improve financial performance while remaining focused on ways to improve the patient experience. This can lead to better health outcomes and a more sustainable business.

Choose the right partner

Every healthcare practice has its own challenges, patient demographics and growth strategies. While streamlined banking and payment solutions can offer several benefits, it's also crucial to choose a banking partner that understands the nuances of the healthcare industry.

The right banking partner can offer more than just technology. They can also provide industry expertise based on an understanding of the market, customized solutions to practice-specific needs, ongoing support and strategic guidance through insights to help navigate the industry's complexities.