DURHAM – PatientPay, a Durham-based fintech company that offers an online patient engagement and payment solutions, is cashing in on growing demand for digital solutions in these times of the coronavirus and social distancing.

The emerging company, which launched in 2008, is announcing today it has closed on an oversubscribed round of financing totalling more than $6 million.

“We focus our efforts on a mobile solution that has a robust payment plan architecture allowing patients the ability us set customized plans using all payments methods including HSA [health savings accounts] cards,” says CEO Tom Furr.

“During the current economic challenges this is more important than ever.”

The firm calls its offering the “industry-leading end-to-end patient engagement and payment solution,”making the patient billing experience an integrated part of patient care.”

The PatientPay CEO talked with WRAL TechWire about his firm’s growth, demand for digital solutions, and how he plans to invest the proceeds of the funding

  • How has coronavirus impacted your firm in the sense of creating more demand for digital payments solutions?

Numerous studies have shown the potential for the virus to spread via credit card devices and cash.  Healthcare revenue cycle management (RCM) operations which send digital bills and receive payment electronically eliminate the potential to spread the virus.

  • Do you see an opportunity to expand your mission as demand for digital compensation, banking, processing grows due to the virus and limits such as social distancing?

Yes.  In fact we took a new RCM client live yesterday and have two more RCM clients in the process of going live right now.

Healthcare groups and patients will be challenged both clinically and financially due to the coronavirus for a number of months until we can get our arms around the disease.  PatientPay plans to help out both medical groups and patients during these challenging times.  Another benefit is our impact on the environment.

A healthcare group that sends out 10,000 patient statements a month using PatientPay can save the equivalent of 32 acres, or 24 football fields covered with trees.

  • Did the outbreak help accelerate your funding process – i.e. investors were ready to move?

This funding has been in the works for a couple of months.  However we made sure to wrap up as quickly as possible once we started to see the current crisis in the financial markets.

  • How does your solution differ from other epay opportunities?

PatientPay partners with healthcare RCM operations to provide a patient payment platform that allows omni-channel strategies to target electronic patient billing and payments via text and email as the initial touch points for collections.

We focus our efforts on a mobile solution that has a robust payment plan architecture allowing patients the ability us set customized plans using all payments methods including HSA cards.

During the current economic challenges this is more important than ever.

  • How will the new funding be used?

We are a healthcare fintech company so the funding will be divided between the continued build out of our technology and sales teams at our Durham office.

  • Are you hiring? If so in what areas?

Yes in both technology and sales.