virtuMD-SISGAIN Telemedicine App offers Online Payment Options to Patients

Telemedicine has become famous since the pandemic. Patients are giving preference to telemedicine apps for some specific reasons. The shift from physical visits to online consultations has changed the lives of the patients as a whole. The tools and features such as video conferencing, booking online appointments, requesting e-prescriptions and remote patient monitoring devices. All these features make telemedicine apps more reliable than hospitals and clinics. It has proved to be more convenient for patients as well as doctors.

Telemedicine apps have many features and one such feature is online payment options. Now, you all must have visited hospitals and clinics. Once you receive the diagnosis or treatment for your disease, the medical staff may have asked you to pay for your expense. For that, you need to fill out a form and then, make the payment in cash or through a card. Sometimes, it may seem to be a very hectic process as it takes a huge amount of clerical work and documentation of all the medical facilities provided. Also, it is very often for the medical staff to charge you a bill for some other customer. This is very likely to happen as they are human too.

SISGAIN in its telemedicine app, virtuMD has integrated technology and banking in such a way that it would be easy for the customers to pay their bills. The customers can take benefit of the telemedicine app by enjoying the remote patient monitoring services it provides. Once they are satisfied with the consultation and diagnosis, they can choose to pay the doctor without filling out any form and visiting hospitals.

Online payment options have become an integrated component of the telemedicine app. Through online payment options, the patients can pay in any currency to the doctors. All they have to do is fill in the card details that are needed in an online payment method. Also, their bank must have this facility of making online banking or Internet Banking. This makes the process smooth. These days all banks are providing this facility due to the increased use of Net banking services all over the world.

Remote payments can be carried out in various ways. A few remote payment methods are explained below.

• Paying over the Phone: It is one of the oldest and worst payment methods over phones. Especially for the healthcare system, as the failure rate is quite high. The reason is the miscommunication while paying for services.

• Paper Invoicing: As happens traditionally, it requires both parties to go through a lot of paperwork. It is one of the most inefficient ways of collecting payments. The patients receive an invoice from the healthcare system and they, in turn, send them the payment. This process is slow and costs a lot of time. Also, there is a danger of the checks getting stolen amid the transit.

• Online payment: Online payment options provide the ease of managing the payment with a credit or debit card. These payments are secure and time-efficient. In only a few seconds or minutes, people can get done with their payments. Online payment option is becoming popular nowadays as it is the safest remote payment process. In this all you have to do is add the service or medicine to your card, fill in the card details which are not saved in the system. Once the payment is processed you will be asked for an OTP. This OTP (One Time Password) makes sure that the payment is done by you only. Once you type the OTP the transaction is processed and payment is done.

Software engineers make sure that the process is legal and safe by developing end to end encryption into web browsers and vendor’s databases.

Why does Telemedicine use Online Payments Options?

We have already discussed the reasons for the high demand and utilization of online payment options. Another biggest reason or say concern behind using online payment options in telemedicine is HIPAA compliance. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act was enacted in 1996. It aims at protecting the patient’s health record and restraining its access to the unknown. Since online payment is made a feature of the telemedicine apps. HIPAA keeps the whole process secure from logging in to making payments. Another most secure way of making an online payment is using Payment Gateways to process transactions. Online payment options provide a lot of flexibility to the patients and HIPAA makes sure that the patient health, as well as transaction information, is not leaked.

Other than this various telemedicine apps like virtuMD have their platforms through which the patients can fulfil the transaction. Developers at SISGAIN ensures the safety of making a transaction by providing strong encryption.

The online payment options also improve the working efficiency of the staff and patients. As there is no need for documentation and the online payment is a one-way process. This saves a lot of time for the medical staff. Also, there is no space for errors. Patients will only have to pay their bills.

VirtuMD app has an easy feature of online payment options developed by the engineers at SISGAIN. The app provides all the basic instructions for completing a payment. The patients also receive the payment receipt on the payment is done. They can either print this receipt or can take a screenshot of the same. The payment status on the dashboard also changes as soon as the payment is done.