Epic River Intros Credit Union Lending Platform for Healthcare Providers

Epic River has unveiled a specialized digital lending platform designed to bridge the gap between financial institutions and healthcare services.

This solution aims to transform the way patient payments are managed, offering a new way to tackle the issue of unpaid medical bills within the healthcare sector, Epic River said in a Monday (March 4) press release.

Epic River’s platform is a strategic approach to introduce credit unions to the Lending-as-a-Service (LaaS) market, according to the release.

This entryway is particularly significant given the pressure many healthcare providers face with rising operational costs against a backdrop of increasing non-payment from patients, the release said.

By connecting credit unions to local healthcare providers, Epic River sees an avenue to mutually benefit both sectors, per the release. Healthcare providers gain a reliable stream of cash flow through patient loans, while credit unions can tap into a new source of high-quality loans.

Epic River’s solution equips credit unions with the capability to offer loans to healthcare providers and thus, indirectly to patients, according to the press release. This strategy unlocks a larger volume of loans and additional interest income opportunities for credit unions, while patients receive a more manageable payment option to settle their medical bills.

The driving force behind Epic River’s platform is its design to simplify and streamline the entire lending process, the release said. The platform handles everything from online identity verification to the loan application and closing, negating the need for members to juggle multiple systems or accounts.

This comprehensive digital suite not only boosts efficiency for credit unions and healthcare providers but is also a boon for patients, allowing them to bypass steep interest rates typically associated with other forms of emergency credit, per the release.

PYMNTS Intelligence has found that innovations like unified healthcare platforms are helping cure some of the problems consumers said they frequently encounter, from understanding insurance coverages to paying deductibles.

Currently, 21% of consumers said they found the actual process of paying difficult, according to “The Digital Platform Promise: How Patients Want to Streamline Healthcare Payments,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and Lynx collaboration.

In another recent development in this space, Tennessee-based Tower Community Bank said in January that it partnered with FintechOS to launch a point-of-sale lending platform designed for Tennessee’s medical community.