IVR Payments Healthcare

A single change slashed Markham Stouffville Hospital's call handling of their billing department by 96%. They didn't do anything new or reinvent the wheel. They made one adjustment to their payment process. Here is how they did it

Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Payment Solutions emerge as a transformational platform designed to refine payment experiences while upholding the highest standards of security and reliability.

In a recent study (focusing on the impact of payment reminders on payments by phone only – not other payment avenues such as web payments), of one large medical practice in particular, during a normal billing cycle, automated voice reminders were delivered to all patients who had incurred charges during the most recent billing period and received their bill in the mail.

HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Passed in the U.S. in 1996 it provides data privacy and security provisions for keeping medical information safe.

Health care providers have never been more vulnerable to data breaches and cyber attacks. Healthcare is the second largest industry in the U.S. and is even more vulnerable in the sense that not only is hacker meddling costly in terms of time and money, it can threaten lives as well.

In today’s competitive and interconnected world, companies and organizations really have no choice in terms of offering ever more enhanced forms of customer service if they wish to stay ahead of the game (or just not fall too far behind...) and medical practices are no exception.

Whether it is the anxiety that precedes a medical procedure, the uncertainty of an illness, or the physical trauma of a broken bone, dealing with a medical issue is seldom if ever anyone’s idea of relaxing.

The way healthcare providers take payment with credit cards is undergoing significant and continuous change as a result of the Payment Card Industry (PCI) security requirements, and the efforts of PCI Security Standard Council to secure credit card holder information.