How to Modernize Your Healthcare Payment Solutions

Key Takeaways

• Modernizing healthcare payment solutions accelerates patient collections, improves cash flow for providers, and enhances the overall payment experience for both patients and staff.
• Digital payment platforms with automated workflows, omnichannel support and electronic health records (EHR) integration address rising patient responsibility and administrative burdens while reducing errors and operational costs.
• Offering seamless, secure and convenient online and in-person payment options meets patient expectations, reduces confusion and can increase patient retention in today’s competitive healthcare landscape.

Healthcare providers face mounting pressure from rising patient responsibility, manual billing processes and growing administrative costs. Outdated payment systems slow cash flow and frustrate both patients and staff. Modernizing your healthcare payment solution offers perks like automated collections, electronic health records (EHR) integration capabilities, and delivery of a seamless, secure experience for everyone involved.

Today’s cash-strapped patients are struggling to make ends meet, and providers are feeling the effects. More than two thirds (71%) of providers say it takes over 30 days to receive payment after a visit. Yet healthcare lags behind other industries in digital payment tool adoption, even as patients expect the same speed, convenience and flexibility they experience when making retail payments.

To address rising patient responsibility and administrative strain, providers need a healthcare payment platform that automates workflows, supports omnichannel payments and delivers a seamless experience for both patients and staff.

In this blog, we’ll explore the challenges providers and patients face with outdated billing processes, examine the benefits of modernizing healthcare payments and highlight key features to look for in a digital payment solution. You’ll learn how adopting the right tools can streamline operations, enhance the payment experience and ultimately support better outcomes for your organization and those you serve.

 

Why modern healthcare payment solutions matter

Imagine this: Eight months after seeing your healthcare provider, you receive a paper bill indicating you owe $45 insurance didn’t cover (without any explanation). There is a return envelope to send payment—but no instructions about how to pay the bill online. You go to the clinic’s website, but it doesn’t include a link to pay online. Finally, you call the office and provide your credit card number over the phone, worrying as the receptionist reads the number back to you that someone may be jotting it down.

Sounds antiquated, right? In most industries it is. Customers expect smooth, seamless, secure payment options. Patients are no different. They expect paying their medical bill to be as easy and convenient as shopping at their favorite online outlet.

More than half (62%) of consumers prefer to pay their medical bills online, while only 6% want to mail a paper check. Almost half (40%) of patients would like their healthcare providers to support contactless payments and online portal payments. But instead of convenience, outdated patient payment solutions deliver headaches—starting with the bill itself.

Two thirds (67%) of consumers are confused by their medical bills. And more than half (54%) of U.S. consumers experienced at least one problem while paying a medical bill, and 21% had difficulty navigating the process.

Manual payment processes create additional headaches and friction for customers. Bill confusion, limited payment options and payment snafus frustrate payers, lead to costly contact center calls. What’s worse, this dissatisfaction may result in patient churn. Half (50%) of consumers—and 72% of those under age 35—have switched providers, or are willing to do so, for a better healthcare payment experience.

And those clunky payment processes don’t just frustrate patients. They also stymie healthcare providers and their hard-working staff. Managing multiple payment methods and providers across offices and facilities is complex, and maintaining multiple workflows is a drag on employees. It’s inefficient and manual inputs are error prone.

The result: higher costs, staff workload and cash-flow problems. In fact, 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 their organization’s success.

As Saurabh Joshi, CSG Forte’s president, asserted in PYMNTS magazine: “Modernizing the payment system is critically important” for operators within the healthcare industry. “Non-digitized payments introduce several operational challenges, such as manual processing errors, delayed reconciliations, record-keeping issues, increased administrative burden and security/fraud risks,” he pointed out. “These challenges lead to increased costs, losses and cash flow issues for healthcare providers, which can hurt business operations and outcomes for these essential businesses.”

Does your practice still rely on manual payment methods like checks? If so, it’s time to modernize your patient payment solutions.

 

Digital payments: the vital prescription for healthcare providers

To accelerate patient collections and meet rising patient expectations, healthcare providers must invest in reliable, modern payment solutions. Digital payments boost efficiency and patient satisfaction, which, in turn, can have a positive effect on receipt of timely payments.

Healthcare providers who digitize payments report better cash flow management, lower transaction costs and reduced financial risk.

 

6 key features of a patient-centric payment platform

A solution that can grow with you will also come integrated with EHR/PM systems, be HIPAA/PCI compliant and offer flexible payment options and automated communications. Look for a system that:

1. Is healthcare specific: Healthcare payment processing is complex, with unique pain points. Providers should choose a payment provider with industry expertise to help them reduce risk, support revenue and improve patient and employee experience.
2. Integrates payments with electronic health records (EHR) and practice management (PM) systems: This unifies patient data, simplifies administrative workflows and reduces errors, improving patient and employee experience.
3. Meets privacy, security and compliance standards: Patient payment solutions that provide tokenization, encryption and risk controls help reduce PCI scope. They should also support Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) data flows, and can be configured to allow customers to retain shared responsibilities. PCI DSS mandates the protection of cardholder data through encryption and tokenization.
4. Presents a clear bill, online and on paper: The medical bill should avoid five common billing statement sins, such as not providing a clear due date. Reduce bill confusion and calls by explaining charges, co-payments and deductibles, specifying what the patient’s health insurance does—and doesn’t—cover.
5. Offers flexible patient payment options: Increase on-time payments by allowing patients to pay via their preferred method and channel. Offer flexible payment plans and autopay. Managing multiple payment methods and channels on a single payments platform prevents your back-office staff from being overworked.
6. Automates communications: Use email and text to send payment reminders, confirmations, and links to patient responsibility information, helping increase on-time payments and reduce ‘did you get my payment?’ calls.

Related reading: The Embedded Payments Advantage—Why Healthcare Platforms Can’t Afford to Wait

 

How CSG Forte streamline healthcare revenue cycles

Now is the time to future-proof your payment operations. Not sure where to start? Partnering with CSG Forte makes payment modernization painless.

CSG Forte’s healthcare payment platform supports omnichannel acceptance—online, in-person, phone, ACH, cards and digital wallets—while integrating directly with your EHR and practice management systems. Automated reminders, flexible payment plans and unified reporting help you accelerate collections, reduce manual work and improve patient satisfaction—all with HIPAA and PCI DSS compliance built in

Our solutions combine secure technology, flexible payment options, seamless integration with existing systems and healthcare-specific expertise to create a platform that helps you get paid faster, reduce administrative strain and improve patient satisfaction.

Ready to modernize your healthcare payments? Schedule a demo with CSG Forte to see how our platform can accelerate collections, reduce manual work, and improve patient satisfaction.

 

Frequently asked questions

Q1. How does CSG Forte integrate with my EHR or practice management system?
CSG Forte is designed to plug into existing healthcare workflows by integrating with leading EHR and practice management systems, so payments post correctly without extra keying or spreadsheet reconciliation. It uses strong APIs and mapping to your billing structures so revenue cycle teams see accurate, timely data instead of re-entering transactions by hand.

Q2. What payment methods can patients use with CSG Forte?
Patients can pay using cards and ACH, as well as modern digital wallets, across channels like online patient portals, in-office, mobile, text-to-pay and IVR. This omnichannel approach lets patients choose the option that fits their lives while providers get a consistent, unified payment experience on the back end.

Q3. How does CSG Forte help with HIPAA and PCI DSS compliance?
CSG Forte is built with HIPAA-aware data flows and PCI DSS-aligned security controls, including tokenization and encryption in transit and at rest, to reduce your exposure to cardholder and patient data. The platform centralizes much of the risk monitoring and compliance workload, while clearly defining shared responsibilities so providers and ISVs remain in control of access and configuration.

Q4. Can CSG Forte support flexible payment plans and recurring billing?
Yes. CSG Forte enables payment plans and recurring billing so patients can spread balances over time while providers improve collections predictability. These options work alongside automated reminders and digital channels, helping reduce bad debt and manual follow-up for billing teams.

Q5. What makes CSG Forte different from other healthcare payment solutions?
CSG Forte combines embedded payments and PFaaS with healthcare-specific capabilities: omnichannel acceptance, EHR integration, advanced risk and compliance controls and white-label options for a fully branded experience. Instead of a bolt-on gateway, acts as strategic infrastructure that connects patient billing, payments, and related communications into one closed‑loop, revenue‑focused journey.