Consolidating payments for healthcare systems

Consolidating payments can improve the patient experience and the health of your company. If you’re thinking about updating your payment systems, here are some strategies that can help.

In the current healthcare climate, people have become more than just patients—they’re healthcare consumers who want holistic health and wellness solutions that offer user-friendly experiences and transparency into costs and services. Healthcare providers interested in improving patient experience at every stage of the healthcare journey are looking for ways to simplify, streamline, and secure interactions.

One way that healthcare providers are improving patient experience is through payment consolidation across clinical and non-clinical spaces. Implementing the right payment solution demands a nuanced understanding of payment touchpoints as well as the needs of all the people involved, including healthcare staff, patients, and patient families. This approach benefits patients by improving their overall experience, but it also plays a significant role in enhancing the financial health of healthcare organizations.

If you’re considering consolidating payments, here are five strategies that can help.

1. Create consistency

Minimizing payment complexity and confusion for both patients and staff is key to implementing a successful payment system. Creating a user-friendly standardized platform is an ideal way to enhance patient experience and minimize processing, reporting, and reconciling time for staff. A consistent look and feel across all patient touchpoints succeeds by being easy to use, increasing familiarity, streamlining tasks, and building customer satisfaction and trust.

2. Define your goal

Do you want to improve the overall patient experience or integrate with a current EMR system? Perhaps you’ve been tasked with boosting accounts payable staff efficiency or gaining transparency into revenue flow. A clear vision of your goal can help you implement a payment solution that fits your needs, meets all stakeholder expectations, and provides a simple, effective solution for patients and staff.

3. Reduce redundant processes

Once you understand what works and where gaps exist across your current acceptance channels and processes, you’ll discover where, when, and how you can consolidate and optimize payment processes. By eliminating overlap and labor-intensive manual processes, a consolidated payment solution helps administrators understand relevant metrics and cash flow.

4. Minimize risk

Financial and reputational damage due to data breaches can be devastating. Consolidating payments streamlines vendors and processes, reducing security risks. Make your IT team a part of strategy development from day one and keep them involved in all aspects of designing and maintaining interfaces, capabilities, integration, testing, QA, and data security.

5. Train staff

From receptionists and pharmacists to accounting and coffee shop staff, ensuring that everyone in your organization has access to standardized training can help make launching a payment solution a success. Help your staff get comfortable with the new platform, show them how it can simplify their workflow, and increase patient satisfaction.

Our dedicated healthcare industry team understands your unique challenges. Partner with us to find ways we can improve patient experience, consolidate payments, and sustain organizational revenue. Learn more about our Healthcare Payment Solutions or contact us to speak with a healthcare payments consultant.