Last month, we talked about the benefits of integrating payments with your existing healthcare applications, including increased collections, greater efficiency, better security and happier patients. To realize the full potential of these benefits, a healthcare organization needs to integrate payment two ways: into its technology and its processes.
Step 1: Embed Payment Functionality into Existing Systems
Integration connects your systems to share data automatically. Use an integrated payment solution to embed payment functionality within your existing provider-facing and patient-facing systems to create a seamless flow of information across these systems.
For provider-facing systems, embedded payment functionality allows payment information to automatically populate into the system, minimizing staff overhead and creating greater efficiency. There is no need for manual steps, no room for error and quicker access to the most recent payment information. Additionally, this simplifies the staff training process, as there is little to no impact on their existing workflow.
For patients, payment functionality embedded directly into your website or patient portal integrates payments into a place where your patients already interact with you. This way, you improve patient satisfaction by adding payments while maintaining a consistent patient experience.
Step 2: Incorporate Omnichannel Payments into Your Processes
A successfully integrated payment solution will touch every system and interaction point in your current workflow, opening up new channels to collect patient payments. This creates an omnichannel payment experience that makes payment and related information more accessible to patients, which increases the likelihood that they will pay. Consider this: the average US adult spent 3 hours and 13 minutes per day on a smartphone in 2020 (eMarketer). If you offer your patients a mobile experience and integrate payment functionality, it is more likely than not that they will use it. In fact, data from the InstaMed platform shows that payments from a mobile device expanded to 35% of all online payments in 2020, up 48% since 2017.
Maximize the impact of omnichannel payments by incorporating them into your existing processes. To do this, educate your staff about new payment channels to effectively communicate these options to patients. With an omnichannel approach, you should teach staff to have the flexibility to collect patient payments at any time. This delivers a better experience for patients by offering more convenient ways to pay and creates greater opportunities to collect more payments efficiently without significant overhead.