BillingTree’s New Healthcare Study Finds Mobile Payments on the Rise

BillingTree is well known in the healthcare field as an important provider of payment technology, and its annual study, the Healthcare Operations and Technology Survey, offers plenty of insight into technology in the healthcare market. This time around, the second annual study found that mobile payments are factoring into healthcare a lot more than they ever used to.

One of the biggest chances was in the growing use of interactive voice response (IVR) payments, which was to 50 percent this year over just seven percent last year. Web-based payments for patient responsibility payments was up from 67 percent in last year’s study to 75 percent this time around.

Further adoptions of new technology are set to be a major part of the healthcare market going forward; for those not already offering a patient payment portal, 63 percent plan to have one in place in the next year. That’s up better than 40 percent against just last year.

That’s useful news; a patient’s inability to pay for care was one of the biggest challenges the healthcare industry faced in 2017. It came in at the front of the list along such issues as actually collecting payments after leaving a facility, issues of compliance and insurance billing, and a general lack of payment channels.

Vice-president of marketing at BillingTree Dave Yohe noted “SMS and mobile payment offerings, like statements using QR codes for fast mobile access to payment forms, are two emerging technologies also trending in the healthcare industry.”

Mobile payments are an emerging technology in pretty much every market, when you come right down to it. The concept of mobile payments didn’t even really start to take off until Apple Pay launched back in late 2014. It’s just a shade over three years old now, and we’re starting to see a lot of ground gained. That healthcare is realizing the value in offering mobile payments is a welcome development.

It’s a safe bet, really, that more industries will catch on and start offering mobile payments as an option. Whether it speeds up a checkout line in retail or gives healthcare providers one more option to get paid for their work, mobile payments can be a great way to give customers more options, and that improves the picture for everybody.