Providing care for international patients? 4 steps to patient-centric cross-border payments

1. Offer options in payment method and currency.

When an international patient or their family need to make a bill payment, often their only option is initiating a wire transfer in the currency the hospital wants to receive payment in. This comes with added FX and intermediary bank fees. They often have to physically get to the bank, make the transfer, and then simply wait until the money gets to the hospital. The transfer can take anywhere from 3 to 10 business days to reach its destination, all while the sender has very little insight into who holds the money at any given time, and what fees are taken out along the way. The stakes are all that much higher given that payments often need to be made in full before treatment can be scheduled.

Patient-centric cross-border payments make it easy for patients to pay online, in their payment method and currency of choice. Fees are automatically calculated at the time of payment, ensuring that payments are made in full, and providers receive and settle payment in their currency of choice.

2. Provide transparency on fund movement.

Lots of factors make it difficult for patients to understand the full cost of payment, and they change according to what payment method they pick. The FX rate a patient sees online (the mid-market rate) isn’t what they’ll actually be able to obtain currency at. The actual cost of obtaining a currency will almost always be higher than that rate because of the fees charged by the partners involved in the trade. Credit cards payments come with an FX markup and foreign transaction fees.

Patient-centric cross-border payments give patients control over the payment method they pick, and ensure they fully understand the fee structures at the time of payment, as well as provide the most competitive rate for exchanging currency. It’s easy to track payment status online, for both patients and providers.

3. Provide the highest levels of payment security by ensuring compliance.

Patient payments are often fraught with emotion. Guarantee of a secure payment process is really important. There are many parts of the cross-border payment process that unwillingly may inject risk into payment processes. For instance, accepting card payments over the phone carries risk because PCI compliance obligations are determined by all pathways to payment, and responsibility remains for protecting that information and maintaining compliance with the network security standards.

Patient-centric cross-border payments protect data privacy and minimize risk of noncompliance. For instance, PCI v.4 takes effect this year, and really places pressure on healthcare providers to secure card data. Reducing the scope of compliance by working with the right payment partner boosts security and minimizes risk. A hospital with a PCI-validated P2PE solution, which prevents card data from transmitting “in the clear” (i.e., in a plain text or unencrypted format), undergoes the simplest audit, whereas a hospital with a nonvalidated P2PE solution requires the most extensive—and costly—validation process.

4. Support patients across different languages and time zones.

Is your billing department capable of taking calls at 3:00 a.m. from across the globe? Can the call center agents help a patient in their native language? These are factors that can make it difficult for the patient to make timely and accurate payments.

Patient-centric payments localize billing and support. The right payment partner is capable of supporting patients around-the-clock and in local languages, and through their channel of choice - phone, text and email. Support processes put patients first.