Innovation Comes to HealthCare Payments

Healthcare billing is anything but simple.  Among complexities, the billing cycle varies in length, meaning it can be very difficult to know when money is going to be due from payers or available to payees.  Sorting that out presents a major problem for managers and can be overwhelming to even to the most seasoned veterans.

Enter SimpleePAY,  with the simple goal of changing the system and making healthcare payments a consumer friendly experience (who knew it was even possible)!

Tomer Shoval, CEO of Simplee sat down with PYMNTS.com’s Karen Webster, to explain the challenges in the industry and how the business has emerged to solve problems to answer the all of those challenges.

Shoval was inspired by a disastrous family vacation wherein everyone caught the flu.  Interestingly, having the flu on vacation wasn’t the worst part of the experience, the worst part came in the weeks and months that followed when they started receiving the bills.

Not knowing which bill was what, if they had already paid it of or what it meant, made them sick again from all the paperwork.

(Jump to 1:40) “And that was the moment when it really hit me that this is really broken and someone needs to go an solve that problem.  That was the beginning of Simplee.  I immediately called my partners and said ‘I think I really have a great cause or purpose for us to go after.  To really overcome the pains of healthcare, if you will, so patients can focus on improving their health.”

With a background in eCommerce, Shoval was stunned at how far behind healthcare was when it came to providing good billing and payment platforms for billers or patients.  And so he set out to create bill’s consumers could love, which lead to the development of the interactive “Beautiful Bill.”

(Jump to 3.50) For the most part you are getting a service or product you don’t’ really know what you are going to pay and when you get the bills afterwards from your insurance company or doctor it is very, very cumbersome, very confusing. So we’ve put in a lot of efforts to really change that and create an “Interactive Beautiful Bill.” Something that looks radically different than anything else in the market and gets patients to say ‘Finally I really understand that bill, I know what I need to pay and why.’”

Shoval went on to note that Simplee is also committed to bringing healthcare into the digital age. For an almost $400 billion dollar industry, only 2 percent-3 percent of medical bill payments are being done in a self service fashion on mobile devices or computers.

The other 98 percent?   Checks, phone calls and different types of collection agencies.

Simplee is ready to push the market forward, by pushing past cash and into the computer.

They are also hoping to bring down costs and make payments more flexible. The average hospital bill rings in at about $400, which the average American doesn’t always have. SimpleePAY offers alternative billing options, such as allowing consumers to opt into a payment plan. The automatic payment platform also gives patients more independence and makes the whole process less time-consuming.

SimpleePAY is more than just a theory about how to enable more efficient healthcare payments, as it is now serving several hospitals. Their first client was El Camino Hospital, where the service has changed the face of how patients are paying in less than a year.

(Jump to 14.40) “El Camino only had 2 percent of their patients paying in a self service fashion when we started the partnership.  When we replaced their old platform with the SimplyPAY platform.  Fast-forward six month later, not three years, six month, a very short period of time, over 30 percent of their patient payments are now self service payments, it became their largest collection channel… 12 months in, it is almost 40 percent”

The large acquisition rate is due in part because consumer demand for alternative payments and that audience is ready and open to adoption.

Later this week, SimpleePay will be announcing that they have been honored with the healthcare equivalent of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for healthcare. The American Hospital Association (AHA) is making an exclusive endorsement of Simplee®PAY as a preferred tool for hospitals. The AHA made the decision to endorse SimpleePAY after 8 weeks of rigorous testing and examination of the payments platform.

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