Digitization in the healthcare industry has increased rapidly in the past few years. According to statistics, the global healthcare IT market was valued at $135.6 billion in 2021 and will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29.3% by 2030. More and more healthcare startups are using technologies to diagnose and treat patients, provide digital care options, drug development, pharmacy management, and digital healthcare payments.
Market players are integrating technologies like big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to enhance medical and health processes. Adopting these technologies presents an opportunity for healthcare technology companies, aka healthtech companies, SaaS companies, and software vendors, to provide hospitals with products for data management, analytics, equipment management, and payment processing.
The right partnerships help these startups serve the healthcare sector. A B2B channel partnership with the ideal technology provider makes it easy to provide cutting-edge product offerings to medical companies and hospitals.
This blog post examines the types of channel partner programs that healthcare technology companies use to succeed, the benefits of these partner programs, and how to select the right technology partner.
Benefits of Partner Programs for Healthcare Technology Companies
Channel partnership programs act as an intermediary between technology providers and healthcare companies. They are implemented to decrease the churn rate and increase revenue. Therefore, they can come in as private sellers, affiliate partners, and distributors. Software vendors targeting hospitals get into these partner programs for several benefits.
Let’s take a closer look at some of these benefits.
Expanded Market Promotion To New Audiences
Your software organization can reach more potential customers and new audiences with the help of these partner programs. B2B healthcare partners use advanced marketing strategies and social media platforms to increase their reach. This marketing tactic makes it easier to expand to new markets and provide software to more clients.
Increased Revenue Stream
Partnering with a reliable and trustworthy company shows your customers that your products are trustworthy. This increases the demand for your software services, increasing revenue as the client base grows. Offering additional technologies with your software helps you charge a premium for your services. If you provide hospital management or analytics software, the customers can take up another product like payment processing.
Strengthened Brand and Credibility
Working with a trusted technology partner boosts your brand’s credibility. Healthcare startups are more likely to trust your product offerings if your B2B partnership is with a reliable company.
Increased Efficiency
The healthcare sector requires systems that are fast, secure, and efficient. You can boost your efficiency by partnering with payment processor companies that have built-in plugins to integrate payment portals, making it easier for your customers to operate.
How To Choose the Right Technology Partners for a B2B SaaS Program?
According to Partnerize, 54% of companies say that partnerships contribute more than 20% of their total revenue. Optimizing these collaborations benefits both companies. Therefore, if you want to choose a technology partner for a B2B SaaS program, here’s how to go about it.
Determine the Goals
Every channel partner program needs to have measurable and attainable goals. For instance, if you are looking to help your customers integrate their systems and boost the overall management of patient data, you’ll need to choose a technology partner that provides complementary services.
ISVs also introduce new technologies to hospitals, such as medical bill payments via ACH. This helps patients pay their medical invoices quickly and conveniently. The right technology partner should offer such capabilities to boost new customer acquisition.
Identify the Joint Value Proposition
Before choosing a channel partner program, you must first identify its core benefits. Examples of benefits that you could look for include:
- Better customer experiences
- Access to expertise
- Increased customer reach and sales
Before engaging in the partnership, consider factors such as communication and marketing styles to ensure a correct fit that allows you to get the best services and product offerings for your hospital clients.
Establish a Clear Partnership Structure
Your B2B SaaS program will be successful if you have a clear partnership structure. ISVs must have a clear plan to access and use the payment technologies from these partnerships by identifying key milestones and providing clarity for both companies as the partnership grows.
What Helps Healthcare Tech Companies Succeed?
Thanks to digitization in the healthcare industry, software vendors have to constantly provide product offerings that align with the medical facilities. Here are some of the key things that help ISVs succeed.
Constant Adoption of New Technologies
Most healthcare services, like appointment scheduling and patient and payment data management, are offered using mobile apps and cloud-based technologies. According to data by Statista, between 2020 and 2021, the number of health apps available to Android users had increased to 65,300.
These new technologies make it easy to track the patients’ progress, send reminders and notifications, and process payments much faster. Healthcare technology companies succeed when they keep up with the latest trends.
Focus On Customer Needs
Medical hospitals collected payments using written checks in the past. However, digital and card payment methods have become more popular today because they are convenient, faster, and easier to reconcile. For instance, ISVs allow healthcare facilities to collect medical bills if the customer’s card is not present by integrating with a reliable payment processor.
Integration With Existing Software
ISVs provide hospital data management, analytics, and hospital equipment management software. When they need to add another software like payment processors, it’s more efficient to use technologies that easily integrate with the present systems. Patient billing can be processed much faster without introducing new software.
Strategic Partnerships with Reliable Technology Partners
A channel partnership with a reliable technology provider makes all the difference. ISVs can focus on their core business and outsource the payment processing to companies like iCG. A good partnership helps with customer retention and new client acquisition.
What to Consider While Choosing a Payment Technology Partner for Medical Billing
The top healthcare technology companies across the globe use a range of sophisticated products and services. ISVs can partner with payment technology providers that offer the following benefits to win more customers.
Partners Offering a One-Stop Solution
A one-stop payment solution like iCG easily integrates with your existing medical software to reduce the time and money spent on back-end software development. A unified platform helps the healthcare provider automatically generate bills and payments on a seamless interface, eliminating the need for a separate SaaS app to deal with customer payments.
Multiple Payment Methods
The type of technology partner you choose should have a solution that accepts multiple payment methods. Most healthcare providers accept online payments today; therefore, they need a solution that will natively integrate with their website and payment pages. Choose a partner that makes it easy for your hospital clients to accept ACH and credit card payments without leaving the website.
Partners with Complementary Payment Solutions
Apart from integration, it would be best to consider technology partners that offer complementary payment technologies like email invoicing, IVR payments, SMS payments, and hosted payment portals. These easy-to-use payment methods help with simple, secure, and reliable medical billing.
Our Most Popular Payment Processing Solutions for Healthcare ISVs
ISVs in the healthcare industry can integrate their product with our API instead of creating in-house payment solutions. We offer a wide range of payment processing solutions your hospital clients can use in their day-to-day operations.
ACH Payments
Online ACH payments allow patients to submit eChecks for payment processing. They eliminate the need for processing paper checks and help set up recurring bill payments. Recurring ACH payments cost less, are fast, and highly secure.
Credit Card Processing
Patients can also pay for medical services and reduce the burden of PCI compliance and fraudulent transactions for the hospital while using credit cards online with iCG solutions.
Recurring Payments
Recurring billing technology allows healthcare organizations to collect payments from patients on a fixed schedule. This system is handy for appointments with periodic checkups, regular physiotherapy, psychotherapy, and consultation sessions. Hospitals use this technology for quarterly and annual payment options.
SMS Invoicing
SMS payments help patients pay their medical bills on the go. Hospitals can generate a payment link and share it with the patients over an SMS text. This payment system also notifies patients of pending bill payments, which can be paid with just a few clicks.
Hosted Payment Portals
iCG’s PCI-compliant hosted payment portals are used by healthtechs to help hospitals and clinics accept payments for medical bills online securely via ACH or credit cards. These portals mimic the look of the hospitals’ websites to increase trust and provide a seamless payment experience.
iFrame
iFrame payment processing allows patients to pay safely without leaving the hospital’s website. This method reduces PCI-scope by ensuring that no customer bank account information and cardholder data stays on the hospital’s system after the completion of the transaction.
Multiple Customizable Plugins
Hospitals can integrate iCG using multiple plugins like QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online for accounting purposes. These plugins use tokenization to support stored payment methods for one-click payments.
Email Invoicing
Patients can now receive a payment link via email, making it easy to pay via ACH or a credit card. Email invoicing is ideal for invoice management, especially when a medical facility needs to send multiple invoices to suppliers and patients.
Why Should You Consider Partnering With iCG?
Most hospitals have multiple systems for different business functions. Accepting and managing payments via a different provider adds to the work and becomes tedious. ISVs can avoid these issues by choosing a technology partner that offers a one-stop payment solution that integrates easily with their medical software.
iCG is a Nacha Preferred Partner, making them an ideal partner for ISVs. Become an iCG partner today and start providing cutting-edge payment solutions to your clients.