How Online Payments Processing Can Help Healthcare Providers Improve Efficiency and Patient Satisfaction

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The healthcare payment landscape is shifting. With high-deductible insurance plans on the rise, patients are now footing more—or even all—of the bill. This increased cost to patients often means collecting patient payments is more difficult. To maximize collections, healthcare providers must reduce payment barriers and friction by offering a variety of flexible, convenient online payment options.

Patients expect paying their medical bill to be as easy and convenient as shopping on Amazon, and many prefer to pay online. One survey found that most patients (62%) are now using online portals to pay their medical bills. Healthcare consumers in the United States ranked availability (i.e., the freedom to use all types of payment methods) as the most important factor in the medical bill payment process, according to Statista.

Many healthcare payment systems don’t create effortless experiences. Instead, medical bill payment processes are painful for patients. A survey found that 54% of U.S. consumers experienced at least one problem during the payment process when paying for healthcare-related services, and 21% had difficulty navigating the payment process. Limited payment options and burdensome payment processes frustrate patients and may lead to churn. More than half (63%) of patients consider switching healthcare providers if they are not satisfied with how they pay.

Many healthcare organizations also struggle with cumbersome payment processes. Managing multiple payment methods and providers across offices and facilities is challenging. Healthcare payment processing is often manual, inefficient and prone to errors, increasing costs and creating cash flow problems. Payment failures that lead to unpaid balances can delay care, ultimately harming both the patient’s well-being and the healthcare organization’s financial health. A recent survey found that more than half of healthcare payment leaders describe payment and claims processing delays as a threat to operations, and 80% are convinced that improving the efficiency of these processes is vital to the success of their organizations. Yet only 53% of leaders report adequately automating payment workflows. Implementing automated payment processing eliminates repetitive manual tasks, reducing human error and giving office staff more time to focus on higher-value activities.

Payment orchestration solutions bring all your healthcare payment processes together on one platform, streamlining operations and simplifying patient payments. Automated payment processing increases efficiency, patient satisfaction and revenue.

 

What Is Healthcare Payment Orchestration?

Payment orchestration streamlines healthcare payment operations, simplifying patient payment processing for medical practices, health systems and strategic health partners. Orchestration allows healthcare providers to easily manage different payment methods across facilities.

A payment orchestration platform is a technology solution that acts as a central hub for managing and automating payment operations. Payment orchestration integrates an organization’s payment gateways, processors, banks and acquirers into a single platform. This platform then intelligently routes and manages transactions across these various payment service providers (PSPs). A payment orchestration platform acts like the conductor of a payment symphony, harmonizing various payment methods, gateways and processors to facilitate smooth and efficient transactions.

 

How Payment Orchestration Works

  • Initiation: A patient selects a payment method from the available options, such as credit or debit cards, digital wallets, eChecks or Automated Clearing House (ACH), and initiates the payment.
  • Routing: The payment orchestration system routes transactions to the best-performing payment processor based on factors like transaction type and cost, currency, customer location, response times and success rates.
  • Processing: The payment services provider (PSP) or acquirer processes the payment, which may be approved or denied due to errors, outages or declines of authorization. If the payment fails, the payment orchestration platform automatically re-routes the payment to an alternative gateway or acquirer. Once the payment is approved, the transaction is confirmed and completed.
  • Clearing and reconciliation: The funds are transferred between PSPs/acquirers and the payment orchestration platform, which automatically reconciles the transaction.
  • Reporting/data analysis: The platform collects and analyzes transaction data to uncover insights in payment trends, customer behavior and operational performance—enabling smarter decisions and more effective payment strategies.

 

Benefits of Payment Orchestration for Healthcare Providers

Payment orchestration optimizes collections and enhances the patient experience by offering flexible payment options and quicker transactions, ultimately increasing provider revenue. Payment orchestration supports:

  • Operational efficiency: Payment orchestration streamlines payment processing by automating tasks like routing, reconciliation and reporting. Automated payment processing saves time, minimizes errors, speeds up transactions, reduces administrative costs and allows back-office teams to focus on higher-value activities.
  • Better customer experience: Payment orchestration enables faster, more dependable transactions while supporting a variety of payment methods to accommodate patient preferences. Payment orchestration platforms remove friction and complexity from the healthcare payment process, delivering a more convenient, flexible, transparent and secure payment experience.
  • Increased revenue: Healthcare providers can improve collections by offering a variety of payment methods, making it easier and more convenient to pay. A study found that 23% of Millennials will pay bills with the least payment friction first, prioritizing easier-to-pay bills. Furthermore, by maximizing payment acceptance rates and minimizing declines, payment orchestration helps businesses boost revenue.
  • Higher transaction success rates: By working with multiple payment service providers, businesses can optimize routing so transactions are processed through the most dependable channels—boosting transaction success rates and reducing payment failures. Rerouting failed transactions to another PSP means that a single PSP outage (resulting in payment failure) doesn’t prevent patients from accessing care from telehealth or other subscription service.
  • Lower costs: Orchestration significantly reduces payment processing fees by intelligently routing transactions. Analyzing factors like transaction size and provider fees to determine the most cost-effective route results in substantial savings over time. Payment orchestration also saves money by reducing integration costs with processors.
  • Scalability: Payment orchestration allows healthcare organizations to quickly and easily add or switch payment options and PSPs, scaling faster.
  • Fraud prevention and security: Payment orchestration platforms often include advanced tools for detecting fraud and protecting data. By centralizing payment data, businesses can apply machine learning and analytics to identify and prevent fraudulent activity.

 

What to Look for in a Payment Orchestration Platform

Choose a payment orchestration platform/vendor that provides:

  • Security and compliance: Security shouldn’t add friction to the customer experience by requiring manual card entry or extra authentication steps. Choose a payment solutions provider that uses tokenization, reducing the risk of data breaches while eliminating the need to repeatedly enter sensitive card details.
  • The right vendor should also help minimize payment card industry (PCI) compliance scope. By reducing or removing payment data stored on your healthcare payment systems, you lower the risk of data breaches and ease the burden of PCI compliance. Look for features like tokenization and hosted payment pages that shift compliance liability to the vendor.
  • Personalized customer experiences: Choose a payment solution that can offer customized payment options. Does the platform enable patients to easily use their most recent payment methods?
  • Training and support: Comprehensive training and reliable support are essential when choosing a payment orchestration provider. Effective training equips your team to confidently navigate and maximize the platform, accelerating onboarding and minimizing errors. Be sure to review available resources—such as online tutorials, documentation and access to dedicated customer success representatives. Dependable support services are important for prompt resolution of technical issues to minimize system downtime. Clarify details around support hours, engineer expertise and service level agreements (SLAs) to set clear expectations.

 

Simplify Healthcare Payment Processing with CSG Forte

Payment orchestration streamlines healthcare payment processing, increasing operational efficiency and enhancing patient experience and revenue.

CSG Forte offers a suite of payment solutions that manage the entire payment lifecycle on a single platform, from payments and security to support and self-service. Forte processes online and mobile payments, including credit/debit, ACH and digital wallet. Forte’s payment solutions process $164B+ in payments annually, simplifying payments and boosting revenue for more than 150,000 merchants.

Why choose Forte for your healthcare payment processing?

Security and compliance. Protect sensitive data across the entire platform with built-in Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance and the highest security standards in the industry.

  • Tokenization
  • Point-to-point encryption (P2PE)
  • Hosted payment pages reduce PCI scope
  • Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant

Connects with your favorite tools. With a vast suite of application programming interfaces (APIs), our payment solutions integrate smoothly with your existing website, payment applications, processes and software architecture. Easily integrate Forte with your electronic health record or patient engagement systems.

Only pay for what you use. With our platform-as-a-service model, you can activate capabilities and deactivate them as needed. You won’t pay for what you don’t use.

Learn more about Forte’s payment solutions for healthcare providers—and how we can help optimize your healthcare payment processing.