Top Healthcare Payment Processors [2021]

What is a payment processor?
Types of Healthcare Technology
Benefits of Healthcare-Centric Payment Processors
Payment Processing Challenges
Top Payment Processors 2021

What is a Payment Processor?

A payment processor is some sort of transactor for financial calculations, technically an invertible currency exchange appointed by a merchant to handle transactions from various channels such as credit cards and debit cards for merchant acquiring banks.

What is a merchant account?

Merchant accounts are essential to businesses, especially those that accept credit cards online. Without a merchant account, you cannot accept money from a customer’s credit or debit card because you have nowhere to put the money. So a merchant account is a bank account that accepts debit and credit card payments. Without it, a business could not accept these payment forms.

What is a payment gateway?

The payment gateway connects the payment processor and merchant account to the credit or debit card companies such as Visa or American Express. In essence, it’s connecting your customer’s financial account to your merchant account. Without a payment gateway, you would be missing a major part of completing a financial transaction. You would have all the parts needed to move your money or receive money, but without a payment gateway, you cannot receive your customer’s payment.

Payment processors and merchant accounts can be combined with a payment gateway. It just depends on if they use a third party source or have a department in-house to do the work. If a third party is used, the third party communicates with the credit card company to complete the transaction.

Who is involved in payment processing?

A payment processor helps your business conduct transactions between your customer and your business. Many players are involved, but there are about five to six key players in any transaction.

The customer
The business/merchant
The payment processor
The payment gateway (if not combined with the payment processor)
The customer’s bank/credit card company
The business’s bank

Different Types of Healthcare Technology

The average person often doesn’t think about healthcare software. They often don’t think about how it affects the medical industry as a whole either. Many might think, “My clinic is doing just fine, what do I care?” but the impact of health information technology has revolutionized patient care on a global scale.

Every year, more and more healthcare providers are taking steps to change the way their business manages their internal processes. The implementation of medical software and other specialized healthcare information systems in hospitals and other healthcare organizations has had monumental effects.

But choosing the right one for your business can be confusing. There are several categories of health information technology (HIT), and with many of these software systems sharing similar capabilities, it’s not always easy to distinguish one from the next. That’s why we’ve made a primer to help you break down the types of health information technology.

Medical Practice Management Software

As the name implies, practice management software helps you manage different administrative and clinical aspects of your practice. MPM software centralizes various systems so you can run things more efficiently. It automates almost every task that fits under the “health information management” umbrella, from organizing appointments to verifying insurance.

Although there may be some features that involve patient information, MPM is geared much more toward a healthcare facility’s clerical work, such as managing patient flows and other general documentation for the office. With medical practice management software, there’s no need for a patient’s medical data to be included. For example, practice management software might keep record of patient demographics but will generally not include a patient’s medical history.

EHR / EMR

Switching to the patient side of things, electronic health records (EHR) focus on the documentation and storage of a patient’s medical information. In the past, clinicians had to document everything on paper, by hand — now, they can simply fill out that information on their computer or mobile device.

Electronic medical records (EMR) started as a way to eliminate the time and errors that came with the manual charting of patient data. The problem, historically, with EMRs was that patient information was only able to be viewed within one office — so, if a patient were transferred to a different clinic, their medical information would not follow suit. As a result of these limitations, electronic health records were created to allow the sharing of patient data throughout different healthcare facilities. With EMR software and EHR software, a patient who is moved to, say the emergency room, can be properly treated because different physicians are able to access their information.

While differentiating an EHR from an EMR can be difficult, don’t stress about knowing the distinction — in recent years, industry insiders have started to use the two terms interchangeably.

Healthcare Payment Processors

Increase your hospital, medical practice or clinic’s profitability with convenient and faster payment processing. Best Card safely helps the healthcare industry safely collect payments while reducing overhead costs. We provide hospitals and practices with leading self-service payment solutions to collect copayments or bills anytime. Patients no longer have to wait on hold to pay their bills or stand in line to make payments. Best Card offers many options in self-service healthcare payment systems. By offering self-service payment options, your healthcare practice or hospital can reduce wait times and increase social distancing. Patients can easily make payments when your office is closed, before treatment or after services. Most importantly, they can make payments when it’s convenient for them. Your organization gets faster payment collection and can view payments made in real-time.

Benefits of Healthcare-Centric Payment Processors

Save Time

Is your staff up to their ears in paperwork? Taking way too much time out of their day to send bill and payment follow-ups to patients, or worse, making manual phone calls 20 times per day? Best Card’s clinics have saved up to 4 hours of work per week by utilizing our payment processing system.

Save Money

Credit card processing companies can jack their prices up and end up drowning their clinics in fees. However, a value-based and community-focused company would never do that. As a family-owned business, Best Card is dedicated to helping you succeed.

With a software dedicated to helping medical practices, we know what your finances look like, because we’ve dealt with many other organizations just like yours.

Did you know? Best Card clients can save up to $3,000 per year just by switching to our healthcare-centric payment processor. Learn more about how Best Card can save you money today!

Reduce Headaches

Let’s face it, adding new options to your tech stack can be cumbersome for staff. On top of that, many patients are worried about the safety, the confusion, and the lack of patient willingness to accept a new practice. In the long run, we can save teams over 4 hours of work per week just by utilizing our payment processing system.

Worried about the implementation process? Best Card’s training program takes about 45 minutes total to complete. And we don’t just leave you in the dark after that. We have 24/7 support to help you through whatever it may be to get your payment processing system running smoothly again.

Payment Processing Challenges for Healthcare Providers

Payment gateways are the first step in the online payment process, and they have been crucial in helping e-commerce companies more easily accept online transactions.

Payment processors can make you and your staff’s lives much, much easier. But with any new software system comes challenges. So, what’s a clinic to look for when considering bringing a new payment processor into their technology suite?

Data Security

Obviously, the number one thing that healthcare providers tend to look out for is top-notch security. This, seemingly simple, requirement immediately takes most major processors out of the game. You need a payment processor that is HIPAA compliant to ensure that their security meets the highest level of standards for healthcare and patient data.

You’ve probably seen this time and again, especially with smaller operations, but data breaches do happen. Malicious Malware is always out to get data they can extort for quick and easy money. As a healthcare provider, it’s your responsibility to meet these requirements and prevent breaches from happening. Ideally, that’s the case but nothing is ideal. Many facilities can’t afford to divert attention from giving quality care to data security. That’s why choosing a payment processor that’s HIPAA compliant is the most popular choice.

The Business of Money

Many clinics are hesitant to move towards telehealth and accepting online payments due to the financials of the situation. To be frank, it’s not free or cheap to start accepting online payments. However, payment processors like Best Card Payments make it easy, affordable, and beneficial to your clinic to add this service to your costs.

Experts say fee for service isn’t going to vanish in 2021, but more contracts will be focused on value-based care, and the lifeblood of any value-based care contract is data. Payers want data to evaluate which physicians are the most effective, and the top performers get the best bonuses.

Luckily, adding a payment processor can open your clinic up to a whole new target market. According to Instamed, 66% of patients will consider switching healthcare providers for a better patient payment experience.

Onboarding

Adding a new product to your tech stack is never an easy feat. However, the time savings that come with the onboarding is usually worth it in the end. Many of our clients save over 4 hours or manual work per week when they switch to Best Card.

Best Card Medical Payments offers training that takes only 45 minutes. The best part? You’ll have a dedicated staff member there to assist with anything you may need before and after implementing your new payment processor. Our 24/7 helpline is always available.

Staying organized and keeping your workflow moving is essential in healthcare, especially with an influx of patients; more are sure to come in 2021, and you need to be prepared. Learn how Best Card can take your healthcare payment processing up a notch.

The Top Payment Processors of 2021

Finding the right credit card processing for your independent practice healthcare office can be hard, to be quite honest. With so many options on the market offering slick, well thought out marketing materials with fancy verbiage and smooth-talking salesman, its hard to decipher the good guys from the bad guys. Many healthcare professionals (Doctors, Chief Financial Officers, Operations Managers, Administrators, etc) don’t even know where to start. If you currently accept credit card payments, what’s the benefit in switching over? If you don’t accept credit card payments currently, where does one even begin?

If you aren’t sure where to start, what you should be looking for, what a healthcare payment processing company should offer, etc, we can help. The right merchant account platform can provide not just credit card processing, but solid payment security, industrious software integrations, and brand-friendly customer-facing communications.

Know that you do not have to piecemeal solutions together. Finding a cohesive healthcare payment solution can take a huge load off your administration team, save you ample amount of time, and most importantly, a lot of money. Not to mention your patients will appreciate it too!

Here are the top 5 best healthcare payment processors in 2021:

1. Best Card Medical Payments

Utilizing a healthcare-centric, all-in-one payment processing system can help alleviate the headaches brought on by revenue cycle management. Best Card’s mission is to help medical clinics and hospitals become more efficient, profitable, and lower their AR time frames. With one simple, healthcare-centric payment gateway, hospitals & clinics can now give their patients flexibility to manage their financial obligation anytime, anywhere. Interested in learning more? Find out how we can increase your cash flow by reaching out to info@bestcardpayments.com today for a free cost analysis.

2. Payline

Payline is a trusted friend in your payment experience. We solve the problems your healthcare practice has faced before — inflexibility, inaccessibility, and complexity — by offering a personalized analysis of your current pricing.

3. BillingTree Solutions

BillingTree offers healthcare payment processing solutions on a single, integrated platform. Our platform connects payers, providers, and patients to deliver a seamless platform. Our payment management software was designed by healthcare payment experts, giving you all the necessary compliance many of our competitors lack. With BillingTree by your side, you can rest easy.

4. Fattmerchant

Medical and wellness professionals need to be able to reliably and securely collect payments from their patients, members, and customers. That’s why our payment processing technology seamlessly integrates invoicing, recurring billing, in-person charges and over-the-phone payments.

5. Dharma Merchant Services

At Dharma Merchant Services, we believe business can be a force for good, and we stand behind our ideals of social responsibility. Fair Pricing. Honest Practices. Doing the Right Thing. Business isn’t just about the bottom line — happy merchants make for a happy workplace. By cultivating a culture of commerce with compassion, we benefit our community of customers and partners as well as our employees.

With so many options out there, why choose Best Card? Well, it’s simple. From the moment you meet us, our fully dedicated team will work hard to ensure that our solutions and services meet the unique needs of your organization. Our friendly, knowledgeable staff speaks the language of healthcare and our primary goal is to help you achieve your financial objectives.

At the end of the day, finding a healthcare payment processing solution is a difficult task and each healthcare clinic has unique needs. Be sure to weigh all of your options and receive rates from numerous companies to ensure you’re getting the best deal and receiving the best service possible!