Standardizing healthcare payments through thoughtful integration

Standardizing payments can improve the patient experience, simplify billing processes and streamline operations. If you’re considering platform integration to standardize payments, here are some strategies to ensure a smooth rollout.

As healthcare systems evolve to enhance the patient experience, healthcare systems are finding that effectively integrating payments with EHR, patient accounting systems, and other business systems plays a critical role in the payment acceptance strategy. The platform integration process comes with its own challenges, but building sufficient time for stakeholder engagement and due diligence can streamline the process for everyone.

Choosing a single payment solutions provider to implement a consistent payment experience for healthcare consumers and staff is key to success. Here are some tips to ensure a smooth process:

Get your tech team onboard from day one.

They’re the experts in the latest available technology and can advise you about what capabilities and features are priorities for your system. They can also save your time and money by eliminating providers who can’t meet your technology requirements. Giving IT a shared voice in the final decision helps ensure they have buy-in with every part of the process, are confident in selecting a provider that meets your needs, and are invested in the platform integration’s success.

Lay the groundwork with thorough research, evaluation, and selection.

Get feedback from IT before distributing RFP/RFI documentation to potential partners. Your team can guide how to define systems-specific requirements for prospective vendors clearly. The more precise your requirements, the more likely you’ll find the vendor who offers what you need.

It’s a good idea to request capabilities demonstrations from potential payment solution providers and educate both decision-makers and stakeholders about your system’s current competencies to understand business requirements.

Achieve better outcomes through due diligence.

Use a detailed vendor selection checklist and a defined evaluation process, so you capture any necessary functional and technical requirements during the RFP/RFI process. A checklist also helps your team identify potential compliance and security risks, determine system changes or resources needed to support payment integration, and clarify pricing considerations.

Have your technology team participate in meetings with potential payment providers as part of the due diligence process to cover topics like: 

• Transaction security
• Device deployment
• Integration methods
• System interfaces 
• Testing, reporting, and release cycles 

Remember that staff members are stakeholders, too.

Enlist leadership support but ensure that end users are involved in the selection process. They clearly understand what a new solution needs to accomplish and are vital in identifying gaps and opportunities in business requirements. Making sure that staff members are onboard from the outset—and that they understand how integration will streamline their workflow—can make the rollout process much smoother.

Stay engaged every step of the way.

Business and technology leaders’ active participation during the selection process is critical—you need their support for any internal action items and project tasks required to complete an integration with the chosen partner.

After you choose a payment and revenue cycle solution partner, have a kick-off meeting or call to decide on an implementation strategy for integrating payments with your applicable EHR and business systems. Finally, confirm that your various partners are prepared and willing to work directly with each other as needed to ensure a smooth and successful implementation.

While leadership may push for speedy action, setting aside time for stakeholder engagement and robust due diligence can help make the implementation more efficient and less stressful as you see the benefits of consolidating and standardizing all payment types across your organization.

Payment consolidation offers many benefits to patients and providers, and it plays an essential role in improving information access. U.S. Bank specializes in helping healthcare organizations consolidate payments with industry specific solutions and services. Learn more about our Healthcare Payment Solutions or contact us to speak with a healthcare payments consultant.