The Top 3 Essentials of Payment Security in Healthcare

Guest Blogger: Jeff Lin, Senior Vice President of Product Management, InstaMed

The Washington Post has deemed 2015 “the year of the healthcare hack” with multiple large-scale breaches already compromising the data of more than 100 million U.S. consumers. An issue compounding healthcare’s vulnerability is the rapid increase of consumer payment responsibility since the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Healthcare organizations are seeking ways to connect electronically with consumers to streamline the payments process, improve cash flow and ensure data security, which can significantly

Tagged Affordable Care Act, EMV, healthcare payment security, healthcare payments, P2PE, patient responsibility, PCI-DSS

Why Healthcare Needs Apple Pay

Guest Blogger: Chris Seib, CTO and Co-Founder of InstaMed

Apple Pay® has grown to 700,000 locations in the six months since its initial release in September 2014. Of these merchants accepting Apple Pay, consumer adoption of this payment type has increased rapidly as well, with major retailers reporting up to a 400 percent increase in Apple Pay transactions.

It would seem the rapid success of Apple Pay is attributed to simply offering consumers the ability to make payments from their mobile device.

Tagged Apple Pay, Consumerism, healthcare payments, patient payments, patient responsibility

The Latest Innovation in Payment Security for Healthcare

Consumer payment channels are expanding rapidly with new technology, allowing consumers to pay virtually anywhere, from any device and in any way they choose. With the expansion of payment channels comes greater risks to the consumers and to the merchants who accept the payments. Payment security also continues to innovate, giving merchants new tools to protect cardholder data, prevent fraud and also protect their businesses from the risk of a data breach. As healthcare organizations evolve to accept more payment

Tagged EMV, healthcare payment security, healthcare payments, payment card, Payment Card Encryption

Virtual Payments: Not Just a Phase in Healthcare

Virtual payments are an emerging payment method for payers to send payments to providers using the card networks. These payments are more commonly known as “virtual cards,” since the recipient can process them just like a credit card.

Thirty-seven percent of providers indicated that they received virtual payments from some payers.

This statistic accurately demonstrates what many providers are currently experiencing: Virtual payments are increasingly leveraged by payers as an alternative to mailing paper checks. While many believe that virtual payments are

Tagged healthcare payments, patient payments, payer-to-provider payments, payers

Enhance the Consumer Payment Experience: Opportunities for Payers

A decade ago, the consumer’s role in the healthcare decision-making process was drastically different. Payers and employers managed virtually all of the health benefit decisions for consumers. Consumers were presented with one or two choices for a benefits package, visited the providers in their network and paid a minimal copay, if anything at all. Payment associated with healthcare services generally was not a focal point for consumers.

In recent years, the payment responsibility has shifted (and continues to shift) to the

Tagged Administrative Costs, Best Practice, Consumerism, healthcare payments, increase collections

Risks and Opportunities of Healthcare Consumerism for Payers

A previous post covered how consumerism is impacting the healthcare payments industry and detailed how payers and providers can work together to take advantage of this trend.

However, the rise of consumerism in the healthcare industry presents unique challenges for payers to engage their members, which they must adequately prepare for – or risk consumer dissatisfaction and lost revenue.

Risks and Opportunities of Healthcare Consumerism for Payers
A decade ago, payers and employers managed almost all of the health benefit decisions for patients. As

Tagged Compliance, Consumerism, Explanation of Benefits, healthcare payments

Transforming Patient Statements: A Hospital’s Best Practices

While patient statements are an essential part of the patient payments process, statements can significantly add to the administrative time and costs to collect. When considering administrative improvements, Good Samaritan Hospital realized that many of its inefficiencies existed in the patient statements process. Below is an outline of how Good Samaritan identified issues in its patient statements process and improved these areas by applying statement best practices. As a result, Good Samaritan significantly reduced its costs to collect patient payments

Tagged Administrative Costs, Best Practice, healthcare payments, increase collections, patient payments, patient statements, providers

3 Essentials to Collecting More Payments

The increase in self-pay patients and rising operational costs are driving healthcare providers to seek out tools and strategies to operate more efficiently and collect more from patients. Depending on your current processes to collect, there are various changes you can make that can have a significant impact on the amount collected and the time and costs spent to collect. Below are three common process issues that billing service Medical Management Corporation of America (MMCOA) faced with its providers, and

Tagged Administrative Costs, Best Practice, Consumerism, healthcare payments, increase collections, integrated healthcare payments, patient bad debt, patient payments, patient responsibility, payment assurance, payment card, payment strategies, providers

Going Electronic? How to Get Your Providers on Board

In 2020, 26% of surveyed healthcare payers said that more than half of their provider networks still don’t accept ERA/EFT (Trends in Healthcare Payments Annual Report). Despite the HHS operating rule on EFT standards which went into effect in 2014 and mandated that payers had to adopt ERA/EFT, 84% of surveyed healthcare providers indicated they continue to receive paper checks from one or more payers.

The sooner providers accept electronic payments, the more money payers and providers can save. So how can you

Tagged Administrative Costs, Best Practice, Compliance, ERA/EFT, healthcare payments, healthcare reform, payer-to-provider payments, payers, reconciliation, remittance

Enhance the Provider Experience: Deliver Payment Assurance

In an earlier post, we discussed one of the major threats to the payer-provider relationship: the provider’s lack of payment assurance. This threat poses an opportunity to payers to give their provider networks the tools needed to achieve payment assurance. In our previous post, we gave tips for payers to deliver payment assurance to their providers. Below, we’ve included a graphic of the Payment Assurance Framework to demonstrate how payers can deliver payment assurance to providers in each step of the healthcare

Tagged Administrative Costs, Best Practice, Claims, Clearinghouse, Eligibility, ERA/EFT, healthcare payments, patient estimation, patient payments, patient responsibility, payer-to-provider payments, payers, remittance

Blog Post Topic: healthcare payments