Commerce Bank is helping tackle the systemic problem of health care affordability through a partnership with a Columbia-based fintech called Paytient.
Founded in April 2018, Paytient is set up as an employee benefit offering. It’s basically an interest-free credit card that can be used to finance unexpected out-of-pocket medical, dental or pharmacy expenses. The main customers for Paytient are employers who pay a subscription fee based on the number of employees using the benefit, but the company also is starting to land more health insurers that want to reduce the cost of delayed health care.
The 2021 Healthcare in America report found that cost concerns prompted nearly one-third of Americans to delay treatment of a health problem in the past three months. The report also revealed that one in five adults said they, or a member of their household, saw a health problem worsen after postponing care out of fear for the cost. For employers and health insurance providers, that situation leads to higher costs.
“We were working locally and then expanded regionally, and we now have hundreds of thousands of folks on our platform,” Paytient CEO Brian Whorley said. “Lately, we’ve been getting a strong coast-to-coast response from large employers. It necessitated us partnering with a bank in order to accommodate those larger customers.”
Kansas City-based Commerce Bank stepped up to the plate to handle the financing side.
“We’ve already been working with health care providers and insurers, and this is a way for us to bring the consumer end of the equation together with our current health care offerings,” said Chad Doza, Commerce's senior vice president of consumer credit cards. “We’re powering the cards to really allow Paytient to impact health care for millions of lives instead of hundreds of thousands of lives.”
Commerce Bank spent years developing a wide variety of services to improve health care finance, including offerings through Commerce Healthcare Financial Solutions designed to help hospitals organize and digitize their accounts receivables. One solution is a patient financing option, so Commerce is no stranger to the offering.
Whorley said Paytient cards can help preserve money in health savings accounts, allowing employees to invest that money to grow and be used later in life.
“It used to be that your insurance plan paid for everything and out-of-pocket expenses were rare, but things are migrating away from that and toward more out-of-pocket expenses,” Whorley said. “So we’ve built a platform where those out-of-pocket dollars can be paid over the long term, removing every possible financial barrier to health care. We want to help employers provide the best possible experience for their people and equalize access to care. We’re taking the stress and anxiety out of it to let you just focus on what you need to do when you’re sick, which is getting better.”
