How do you deliver what your patients want: a simple, secure and convenient healthcare payment experience?
For today’s healthcare organizations, success isn’t just about being the best provider of clinical or medical services. Increasingly, it’s about delivering an experience that exceeds their expectations and builds trust.
That’s especially true when it comes to simplifying life for patients and making it easy for them to pay their healthcare bills in the channel they choose – via email, over chat, SMS, on an app or over the phone.
As the choice of payment options increases, so do consumers’ expectations. When making payments in digital channels, patients want a straightforward retail-like experience that is seamlessly embedded into their customer journey.
It’s a similar story when it comes to transacting on the telephone. Today, consumers don’t tolerate being asked to ‘hold the line’ or make a ‘call back’ when they are ready to make a payment.
Convenience is only one of their requirements. Privacy and security are a major concern for patients - they want certainty that their personal information and payment methods are completely secure, and that they won’t have to share their sensitive data with third parties.
Serving patients better
For healthcare providers and payers, finding new ways that allow patients to transact with confidence in any channel and on any device is now a high priority.
It is clear that long term customer loyalty depends on it, because 63% of patients say they would switch healthcare provider if they were not satisfied that their data security needs were being met through the payment methods available to them.
To maintain differentiation and deliver on demanding customer experience performance targets, healthcare organizations must now deliver a standout payment experience on top of all their other services. This means addressing the friction points that typically are the cause of frustration for all customers in the payment process.
These include being re-routed when attempting to make a phone payment via the contact center, not being offered convenient self-service digital payment options, and having to navigate overly long or complex payment processes. And most importantly, removing the fear that their payment and personal data is being accessed by people they don’t know or entirely trust.
The cost of protecting patient data
It is well known that healthcare organizations have become a primary target for cybercriminals intent on accessing payment information and other sensitive personal and health data. Customer health, payment and personal data have a high value to criminals.
Achieving and maintaining compliance with the data security, healthcare and privacy regulations is a key component of defending patients, consumers and organizations from malicious intent and unintentional internal data breaches. Failure to secure an organization effectively has serious reputational, legal and financial repercussions that are expensive, time-consuming and difficult to recover from.
The evidence of this growing problem in the healthcare environment is clear - IBM and Ponemon Institute’s ‘Cost of a Data Breach 2023’i study shows that healthcare organizations have been at the top of the list for data breaches for over the last twelve years. US healthcare data breach and containment costs now average USD 10.10 million per incident – these costs have increased by 41.6% since IBM’s 2020 report and are expected to grow.
With both hacking and cybercrime becoming a part of the everyday life for both businesses and individuals – having strong visible signals that you take security seriously brings immediate benefits. Notably in a patient’s perception of your trustworthiness, and in your employees understanding of the importance of protecting all data - not just sensitive payment and health information.
Making security a positive part of your culture means that the mandatory regulatory requirements to protect patient data (HIPPA) and sensitive payment and financial information (PCI DSS) shouldn’t be seen as an information security burden, but as an opportunity to protect and serve patients, staff and the organization’s interests well. Focusing on people’s security and well-being by protecting their personal data and payment transactions should not be considered a costly investment in compliance but a way of bringing your values of care, respect and integrity into your everyday interactions.
Build security into CX with Sycurio
Healthcare organizations have a significant opportunity when it comes to delivering elevated and convenient payment experiences without compromising on security.
With Sycurio's PCI DSS compliance solutions, healthcare providers can transform and simplify how they manage payment security, regulatory compliance and create customer experiences that build trust and lasting loyalty.
Our payment security solutions make it easy to deliver a frictionless, secure and intuitive payment experience that safeguards every payment interaction inside electronic healthcare record systems and patient management systems, such as Epic EHRii.
The patient payment experience is simple - customers simply input their payment data via their phone keypad using our patented payment methods that uses Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF) masking technologies. The customer service agent can talk with the payer throughout the entire process and never sees or hears any sensitive information. The customer can also be sent instant secure payment links which can be embedded into any channel they choose, such as chat, social media messages, email, SMS or even printed communications. The agent can monitor these payment links in real-time and provide live help if the customer needs it.
Sycurio automate the capture, transmission and complete separation of sensitive data such as card and bank payments from the healthcare organization’s contact center, hospitals, clinics and administrators. Our technologies entirely remove customer service agents, networks, telephony and infrastructure from the scope of PCI DSS – instantly securing the payment and saving time, money and effort.
Sycurio’s PCI Level 1 Service Provider infrastructure ensures that all sensitive payment card data is routed directly to the healthcare organization’s existing payment service provider. So, there is no need to transmit, process or store sensitive payment card data anywhere in the organization’s network or IT systems. Any changes to the PCI DSS regulations are managed by us, so the annual complex and time consuming PCI QSA audit becomes a thing of the past.
Sycurio makes it possible to elevate the patient experience through the delivery of more consistent, more streamlined and more secure transactions across all your healthcare voice and digital payment interactions.
Blog Reference Notes:
iIBM and Ponemon Institute’s ‘Cost of a Data Breach 2023’ study is an annual research project conducted collaboratively by IBM Security and the Ponemon Institute, the well-known independent research organization focusing on privacy, data protection, and information security. It aims to analyze and quantify the financial implications of data breaches on organizations worldwide.
Their research methodology typically involves collecting data from a wide range of companies and industries that have experienced data breaches. It examines the cost factors associated with data breaches, including direct financial losses, operational costs, legal expenses, customer churn, and reputational damage.
The main aspects of the study include – the average cost of a data breach, the financial impact based on both direct and indirect costs. The factors influencing breach costs such as the size of the breach, the industry involved, and the response time in detecting and mitigating the breach. The cost per compromised record for each piece of data or record that has been exposed or stolen. And, the best practices and strategies for data breach mitigation that organizations to minimize the consequences.
iiEpic EHR (Electronic Health Record) is a widely used and comprehensive electronic health records system designed by Epic Systems Corporation. It is one of the leading EHR software solutions used by various healthcare organizations, including hospitals, clinics, and medical practices.
More information on Epic can be found at https://www.epic.com/
