Tenet Healthcare offers patients ability to pay bills online

Wed, 28 May 2008 06:59:56 -0400

For-profit hospital chain Tenet Healthcare has begun offering patients at its hospitals the ability to pay their bills online. To access the online payment system, patients treated at any of its 53 facilities will need to complete an enrollment process from their hospital's website. Once enrolled, they'll be able to make payments, update their profiles, set up recurring payment plans, access a glossary of billing terms and view answers to frequently asked billing questions. The application supporting the billing functions is NCR Corp.'s Online Bill Pay, which Tenet pilot-tested earlier this year.

To learn more about this application
- read this Healthcare Finance News article

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Case study: FL hospitals offer online payments

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 06:59:54 -0400

A group of Jacksonville, FL-area hospital systems have begun letting patients pay their bills online in an effort to save time and money. The hospitals involved include St. Vincent's Medical Center, Orange Park Medical Center and Memorial Hospital of Jacksonville. In doing this, the hospitals are on the cutting edge, as only 16 percent of U.S. hospitals provide this option, according to the American Hospital Association. Still, hospitals stand to benefit substantially. Transitioning from paper processes to electronic ones could save the industry $35 billion and about 2.5 billion pieces of paper each year, according to the Healthcare Financial Management Association.

One early adopter of this approach is St. Vincent's, which uses ExpressBill Online by Emdeon Business Services to handle the payments. It began offering web payments with Emdeon in 2003, after having been a longer-term user of the vendor's statement processing software. To pay using the web, St. Vincent's patients simply enroll online, then choose a payment source (checking account or credit card).

To learn more about online bill payment:
- read this Jacksonville Business Journal article

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