Using security and regulatory compliance to create better patient-provider relationships.
Becoming and maintaining HIPAA and PCI compliance can feel like an expensive, challenging and time consuming task - but these complex regulatory and industry standards aren’t likely to be going away or become easier to maintain compliance with. So, maybe it’s time to rethink your position on why they could be considered an asset rather than a liability?
Maya Angelou, the great American memoirist’s famous quote “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude” may help to reframe your thinking about the effort and costs associated with delivering the privacy and payment security your patients, colleagues and organization needs.
By shifting your perspective from ‘it’s an unavoidable cost’ to ‘it creates quantifiable benefits’ you will be able to start communicating the value of effective security as an important element of your organization’s service to all your stakeholders.
Making the mind-shift
Simple statements can help you to illustrate how delivering strong privacy and security in a user-centric way can be enormously beneficial to everyone, particularly those whose information security you’re ultimately responsible for. Let’s take a look at the following statements and explore what they mean:
“Our data security and privacy protection is an investment in our patients’ and colleagues’ personal well-being.”
Maintaining effective HIPAA and PCI DSS compliance protects our patients, customers and staff from a whole range of cyberthreats which directly impact their lives and cause heartache, worry and disruption (such as identity fraud, payment card data theft and other health-related scams). Such threats can cost our organization and employees (like us), significant financial loss, can result in regulatory censure and potentially have a negative impact on our personal and organizational reputations.
“We create transactional experiences that are safe, transparent and secure so our patients and people can easily and safely interact with each other.”
When people share their health and personal data and make payments to us, they need to trust that we can and will protect them and their most sensitive information. Making our sensitive data processes and healthcare payment system easy to use and visibly secure helps all of us to work better together and ensures we can deliver the best outcomes for everybody.
“We help to build trust and loyalty between the patient and our organization.”
By showing that we take good care of people’s personal health and financial information we are able to deepen our relationship with our patients, which brings lasting benefits to all.
“We reduce the costs and improve the efficiency of our organisation.”
We can improve how we retain our existing customers by making our processes easier, minimizing risks for both our patients and our organization by evolving our security technologies to enable us to interact safely in any channel our customers and colleagues choose to use. By using the right technology and processes we can reduce friction and improve service levels to deliver better, seamless experiences, at a lower cost for everybody.
“We help to ensure every patient interaction becomes part of a longer conversation.”
Each payment a patient makes to our organization is an important milestone in their journey with us. And every time their records are accessed or processed, they should be treated with care and protected accordingly. This on-going care in the protection of every interaction builds lasting loyalty, referrals and life-long relationships.
“We have a strong and visible culture of protecting our patients’ information.”
Many of our security processes and technologies are hidden from view but our culture of care and protection isn’t. We use the most effective ways of securing and protecting our patients’ and internal data as well as every payment and transaction. Our culture and the tools we use dynamically evolve to counter the risks and threats we all face every day.
Using security as a valuable and competitive differentiator
InfoSec + CX = Easy win number 1
The frequently quoted (and often ignored) self-evident truth that ‘trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair’ is a solid guide as to why information security and customer experience teams should work shoulder-to-shoulder. By re-thinking security as a ‘front of house’ activity the investment case becomes more rounded and enables the delivery of immediate and direct value to patients and the wider organization.
Removing transactional friction whilst maintaining the highest levels of security should be top of the ‘jobs-to-do’ list of all CISOs and their Chief Experience Officer counterparts.
2-4-6-8 Let’s all automate…
It’s all very well saying that information security (infosec) and customer experience (CX) teams should work together – but how?
Payment automation in your healthcare payment processing software represents a fast-developing opportunity that adds real value to both the customer and the organization.
When implemented effectively, it will remove ‘operator error’ and deliver a smooth and consistent payment experience across any payment channel your customer chooses to use (keeping the CX team happy). And, most importantly, eliminate the opportunity for employees (or anyone else) to have access to any sensitive payment card data.
Meeting all these requirements can be easily achieved by using healthcare payment management software solutions such as Epic EHR integrated with Sycurio’s contact center DTMF masking and digital payment link technologies. These PCI DSS compliance solutions enable agent-assisted payments across the revenue cycle, including pre-service, at the point-of-sale, and for back-office call centers. They are perfect for healthcare providers, clinics and pharmacies where payments are taken over the phone or via digital applications such as agent messaging, AI chatbot payments, IVR payments, email and SMS, and all web and mobile applications.
HIPAA and PCI Compliance in Healthcare = Security and CX Benefits
Removing HIPAA and PCI DSS security risks in your healthcare organization through automation protects your patients, agents and organization and can provide a way of reducing your ever-increasing burden of regulatory compliance.
By working together with your CX colleagues you can demonstrate a strong security and compliance posture to patients and all your stake holders. This will create a more positive patient-provider relationship, enhance patient satisfaction, and solidify your position in an increasingly competitive healthcare market.
