Health insurers challenged by ecommerce billing and payment according to 2016 Health Check Survey.
Roughly a quarter of respondents to the fourth annual Array Health Check Survey, released July 26, said their organizations aren’t ready to support key parts of their ecommerce business: payment processing and consolidated billing. While more are prepared to process enrollments, almost 1 in 5 still feel unprepared. Survey responses indicate that while health insurers have made significant progress on providing a modern ecommerce experience to consumers on the front end, billing and payment processing on the back-end continues to pose a challenge.
As our recent post highlights, most health insurers lag behind other businesses in the use of technology, creating gaps in their back-end billing and payment processes that interfere with their ecommerce efforts. For example, many insurer billing systems are only designed to handle medical products. Managing a broader range of ancillary products like disability, life and critical illness requires more time and manual effort. In addition, most billing systems were designed for employer groups, while in today’s market, it’s critical to meet demand for both subsidized and non-subsidized individual health plans. The challenges run the gamut from invoicing accurately to collecting premiums correctly to processing payments securely.
In order to move forward with a successful ecommerce strategy for all lines of business, insurers need to create a seamless and intuitive consumer experience from enrollment through billing and payment. Key capabilities include processing payments to ancillary partners, processing multiple payment types from groups and individuals and generating consolidated bills that include multiple medical and ancillary products.
To learn more about health insurers’ views on private exchanges, read the full survey report, Health Check: The Evolution of Private Exchanges as eCommerce Platforms for Health Insurance.
