America’s healthcare system is in need of serious disruption.
More than half of Americans now carry medical debt and collection agencies held more than $140 billion in unpaid medical bills last year. Thirty percent of Americans skipped care this past summer due to cost and one in five patients cited that their health, or the health of a loved one, deteriorated over the past year as a result.
To date, PayZen has tackled this growing problem one healthcare partner at a time. Our AI-backed technology allows hospitals, health systems, and large physician groups to offer patients affordable, tailor-made payment options while accurately determining a patient’s unique ability to pay.
If we’re going to make a dent in this growing national crisis, we need to provide our solution to a much larger network of providers and patients. Our solution needs to be scalable.
Our recently announced integration with the Epic App Orchard, the largest medical record software vendor in the US, represents an evolution in our approach. This partnership means integrating as many healthcare providers and solutions as possible, and removing friction by offering an API solution that’s easy to use, keeps sensitive information secure, and takes care of complicated compliance requirements.
Our Epic integration is the first of many that will transform PayZen into a frictionless, scalable solution. We are now the Affordability Financing Platform.
Empowering Patients and Providers Alike
Most Americans can’t afford an unexpected expense of $1,000. Faced with a surprise out-of-network bill in the thousands and a rigid payment plan, many patients have no realistic options for settling the charge. This not only throws millions of Americans headlong into medical debt, it puts immense strain on the providers tasked with providing quality care.
And this assumes the patient goes through with the care in the first place. Faced with the prospect of being saddled with debt, many Americans forego care entirely, putting their health at greater risk.
The PayZen solution addresses these problems.
Our AI-driven technology creates flexible, personalized payment plans available to 100 percent of patients with no interest or fees. Providers, meanwhile, see a significant increase in collection rates; up to 80 percent in some cases.
By building these first-of-their-kind services into a frictionless, easy-to-integrate platform, PayZen is expanding the accessibility of our solution to thousands of providers and millions of patients.
Drawing Inspiration from Buy Now, Pay Later
In 2021, FinTech company Affirm announced a deal with eCommerce giant Shopify to power its Shop Pay Installments. Hundreds of thousands of merchants using the Shopify platform were suddenly able to offer their customers a flexible Buy Now, Pay Later financing plan with no interest or additional fees.
The solution integrated seamlessly with the existing Shopify platform and was enabled by default for any merchant who switched on Shopify Pay. Customers were able to set up an installment plan without leaving the checkout page.
Meanwhile, the healthcare affordability crisis worsened: between 2018 and 2021, the already astronomical cost of drug prices and medical care increased by 3 percent and 4.5 percent, respectively. But there was no rush by payment processors or providers to embrace a flexible, personalized payment system.
It has become easier in America to afford luxury consumer goods — be it an exercise bike, a high-end jacket, or a deluxe mattress — than one’s own health.
PayZen is changing that. By offering an easy-to-use API, we’re empowering healthcare partners with the same frictionless affordability solution that transformed the consumer retail space. Shopify pioneered Buy Now, Pay Later. PayZen is pioneering Affordability Financing.
Providing an Integrated Billing and Affordability Solution
A few years ago, I could have described the financial services industry in much the same way I now describe the healthcare industry: bureaucratic, regulated, and difficult to disrupt.
Then came Stripe and a host of other FinTech companies with smart, easy-to-integrate payment solutions. Now banks offer easy-to-access APIs, every small SaaS company can easily create their own credit cards, treasury-as-a-service is common and accessible, and it’s easier than ever to transfer money anywhere in the world.
We believe the creation of an Affordability Financing platform will have a similar effect on the recalcitrant healthcare system, removing startup friction and managing compliance in the same way Stripe manages PCI compliance.
An integration with a healthcare provider or payment processor might take eight to ten months to get off the ground… and that’s if everything goes right. A ten-month integration period is not scalable.
By listing in app libraries like Epic App Orchard and providing a simple, approachable API that integrates with existing technology stacks, we’re able to deliver the means for providers and payment partners to easily and quickly adopt the PayZen solution.
The result is a payment system that can be up and running within weeks, not months. By evolving into a scalable platform, we allow more and more players to offer healthcare affordability solutions.
Over time, we are confident this will have a snowball effect that increases revenue for providers and makes healthcare affordable for more — and eventually all — Americans.
