Healthcare financing is a vital tool for medical service providers, as it helps consumers manage care costs. Simply put, healthcare financing refers to programs that allow a medical bill to be broken up into payments, either internally (through the healthcare provider) or externally (through a third-party lender). In many cases, healthcare financing doesn’t accrue interest, though there are some exceptions.

Medical practices should consider offering healthcare financing because it makes patients less hesitant to go in for care and makes it easier to get payments from those patients. This means increased revenues and healthier patients that are more willing to go in for routine and preventative care, avoiding worse outcomes in the future.

The top types of healthcare financing are:

• In-house payment plans
• Healthcare loans
• Buy now, pay later (BNPL) plans

Let’s discuss each, and what situations are best suited for them.

In-House Payment Plans

Internal financing plans are provided by the medical practice, and they allow patients to make scheduled payments to the care provider over time instead of one lump sum. These can make things very simple by cutting out middlemen, but they present a significant financial risk for the practice involved.

These plans are great for patients though, as medical debt with a healthcare provider accrues no interest. Although, the risk that it presents for the practice makes it less desirable for them as the size of the bill gets larger.

Best Uses:

• Routine care
• Preventative care
• Small-ticket procedures (under $3,000)

Healthcare Loans

Loans for medical care are a useful way to bring in a third party to help both the consumer and the healthcare provider. Healthcare loans offer favorable interest rates compared to personal loans, and they ensure that the medical practice is paid out right away, and the lender takes care of the payment agreement with the consumer.

This keeps medical practices in the black and patients out of collections. The only limitations to these are that they do charge interest, and they impact credit the way any other loan would. This means they work great for larger bills, but patients will obviously be hesitant to invite so much hassle for a smaller bill.

Best Uses:

• Emergency care
• Expensive procedures
• Large unpaid medical debts that are about to be moved into collections

BNPL Plans

BNPL is a more accessible form of third-party payment plan that is more common in the retail space. These plans are similar to loans, but they don’t report to credit bureaus (unless payments are missed), which will avoid any credit impact, and they carry lower interest rates. This gives them all the benefits of a loan for larger medical bills but not as many drawbacks that would keep patients from going in for preventative care that they can’t pay for.

Payment plans through a BNPL program can range from short-term (4-12 payments) to long-term (36 payments+) with zero interest applied to shorter plans. Longer plans will usually accrue some interest, but typically less than one would get from a traditional loan.

Best Uses:

BNPL is flexible enough to be used for almost any healthcare service.

Offer Varied Types of Healthcare Financing With Skeps

Skeps offers cutting-edge POS financing and BNPL services for healthcare providers. We offer every type of financing that a patient may need, allowing for the greatest degree of flexibility for those that work with us.

Our platform can integrate with any point-of-sale or billing system, and it is easy-to-use, allowing medical practices to focus on helping patients while our network of quality lenders handles everything else.