Waystar Acquires HealthPay24 to Help Simplify Healthcare Payments

Technology platform Waystar has acquired HealthPay24, an EngageSmart solution and an enterprise patient payment platform.

With this acquisition, Waystar adds a complementary patient financial engagement solution to its payments platform and furthers its mission to simplify healthcare payments for providers and patients, the company said in a Thursday (Aug. 3) press release.

“The patient financial experience should be frictionless, so patients can seek the care they need and providers can get paid for their services,” Waystar CEO Matt Hawkins said in the release. “Research shows that 63% of patients will switch providers if their financial experience does not align with their expectations.”

PYMNTS research found that 54% of consumers have dealt with at least one pain point during the healthcare payment process in the last 12 months.

Common pain points include receiving an unexpected medical bill, receiving a confusing bill, and having to navigate multiple platforms to receive and pay for healthcare services, according to “The Healthcare Industry Needs a Dose of Money Mobility,” the June edition of the “Money Mobility Tracker Series,” a PYMNTS and Ingo Money collaboration.

The report also found that healthcare providers can improve the healthcare experience by adopting modern payment systems.

Waystar’s latest acquisition will expand the company’s reach by adding HealthPay24’s 2,000 healthcare provider locations and their 26 million patients to Waystar’s existing reach of more than 1 million providers across care settings, according to the press release.

Waystar has a track record of successful integrations, with HealthPay24 being the company’s eighth acquisition since 2018, the release said. Its previous additions include Recondo, eSolutions and Patientco.

The firm also teamed up with integrated payments company Bluefin in July to add more encryption and gateway service to allow ways to pay with more security. This partnership adds better data security for every point of the patient financial experience, including patient access and key revenue areas like central business offices, the companies said when announcing their collaboration.

“EngageSmart is proud to have developed HealthPay24 to become a premier enterprise patient payment platform that both patients and providers can trust,” EngageSmart CEO Bob Bennett said in the Thursday press release. “We’re confident that Waystar is the right owner to unlock HealthPay24’s full potential moving forward.”