What does a seamless payment experience look like for healthcare providers?

When it comes to taking payments, many staff are still required to manually input patient card details over the phone or in person, with little in the way of data protection measures to ensure transactions are completed securely. Not only is this inefficient and in breach of the latest PCI DSS guidelines, it also creates a poor user experience that can deter patients from completing payments.

Standalone chip-and-pin or cash payments are also common; but even secure transactions are usually completed in silos across different departments with no simple way to funnel all transactions back to a centralised system. This often leads to disjointed, error-prone processes that do little to improve patient satisfaction or maximise operational efficiency.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at what a seamless payment experience looks like for healthcare providers – and how they can deliver it.

It unites all payment channels under one roof.

The healthcare sector serves a wide-ranging demographic of patients, so payment systems need to be able to cater to different preferences from people of all ages.

Offering card, cash, cheque and contactless options ensures that patients can choose the payment method that’s right for them. That can quickly cause headaches for finance and accounts staff in charge of reconciling invoices and tracking payments from various sources. This is where an intuitive income management software makes a world of difference by consolidating all channels, whether online or over the counter, into a single repository. The right system not only improves efficiency by breaking down departmental silos, it reduces the chance of payment errors, lost transactions and data transfer problems.

The end goal should be to create a consistent, straightforward payment collection, experience and reporting across all payment methods and all departments.

It enables payments from anywhere.

Whether for the canteen, parking, out of hours A&E prescription charges or medical care for patients not eligible for free treatment, healthcare providers that invest in face to face payment solutions such as PaySuite’s Smart Mobile, are able to collect charges at any time, anywhere on their premises.

Mobile technology can prove a big help for busy NHS trusts by allowing patients to handle payments remotely through fully automated systems, rather than relying solely on staff to take payments on the phone or in person. This enhances the patient experience by providing more flexibility and reducing admin burdens.

Ideally, mobile transactions should integrate seamlessly with your core system, so there’s no need to switch between separate platforms or providers when tracking real-time data.

It makes reporting simple.

Having all payment channels flow into a single software makes it much easier to report on financial performance, revenue cycle and other key trends. In the past, the process of collating and comparing transactional data would have taken hours, if not days to complete.

Full end-to-end visibility of payment processes also makes it easy to see areas which are working well, and which require extra attention. These data insights can then be shared with senior management and other departments to inform key strategic decisions, which gives payment teams a much stronger voice within their organisation.

It combines back-end capability with front-end simplicity.

Superb functionality is nothing without a user-friendly interface that makes systems easy to use. This is especially important for healthcare organisations dealing with patients of all ages and levels of digital literacy. When paying online, patients should be able to navigate through payment options, see clear breakdowns of what they owe and choose the most convenient payment method for their situation. When paying in person, on-site systems should enable staff to quickly

and securely process transactions as efficiently as possible, whether it’s cash, card, cheque or otherwise.

Integration plays a big part too. By integrating payment processing software with ERP systems, such as NEP Cloud software, enabling automation and reconciliation processes to be carried without manual data input and more time spent on admin.

Where healthcare providers can effortlessly connect patient billing and payment data with medical records, this enhances accuracy, minimises errors and offers a comprehensive overview of patient financial information at any given time.