In 2020, national healthcare spending surpassed $4.3 trillion. By 2030, spending will top $6.8 trillion—almost $20,000 per person.
With insured patients now paying around 30% of the costs, they’re required to spend thousands on healthcare every year. With higher costs on the horizon (and the cost of healthcare rising faster than inflation), providers need to give their patients peace of mind when it comes to their payments.
While many are offering options like installments to help patients cover their services, there’s another way to give patients peace of mind on healthcare spending: improving payment security.
“To keep patients’ payment data secure, healthcare providers must improve and accelerate their investments in more accurate digital payments,” says Jeff Kump, Head of Payments at CSG Forte.
While consumers like the convenience of digital payments, they’re still concerned about their security. Over 45 million Americans had personal health information compromised by cyberattacks—an all-time high.
For example, last fall, a Florida health system experienced a breach, with hackers accessing health and financial data for over 1.3 million patients. And in March of this year, hackers accessed healthcare data for over two million patients in New England.
Unfortunately, these bad actors show no signs of slowing down, as the combination of financial and personal data remains an enticing target. But providers are taking steps to ensure they don’t suffer their first (or a future) breach. For example, the Florida health system implemented multi-factor authentication after the hack.
“By ensuring security, providers are able to actually focus on their job of providing care for their patients,” says Kump.
Despite this focus, many healthcare providers are still left with questions. How can you meet your patient’s needs, ensure revenues and continue to provide needed care? It starts with bringing in the right technology.
Protecting Patient Payments
With the high level of regulation in the healthcare industry, providers must ensure that whatever payments systems their patients’ use comply with federal, state and local regulations. By working with modern payments providers, healthcare providers can go above and beyond to bolster their payment security with technology.
While tokenization and end-to-end encryption have been around for a while, the newest versions of each remain critical in keeping payment data disguised. This means that even if it is intercepted and stolen, the information is impossible for hackers to interpret. These features can help ensure that if a breach does happen, patient information remains secure.
Beyond encryption, additional payment methods offer another way to both satisfy patients and keep their data safe.
Where most healthcare providers can readily accept credit and debit card payments, ACH processing allows providers another way to get paid. Because ACH payments don’t require connecting with credit card processing companies, each transaction also saves money that would be spent on credit card processing fees.
With Nacha reporting a 9% increase in healthcare ACH spending, it’s clear that this payment technology is in high demand, for both recurring and one-time healthcare payments.
This is a good thing for healthcare. Especially with same-day processing, using ACH payments can also improve a provider’s cashflow. That’s because same-day ACH gets confirmed funds transferred faster, while saving money on credit card processing fees.
Safe Payments are Essential
Digital payments are now the norm. With society trending towards a near-cashless future, being able to accept payments that are protected against fraud will be key to maintaining patient trust.
By deploying the right tools, healthcare companies can provide the payment experience right every time, stay secure in the face of growing cyber security threats and protect their cashflow. Learn more about the three steps you can take to improve payment security for patients.