Medical practice payments — HIPAA-aware, patient-friendly.
Healthcare practices handle high-ticket payments, payment plans, and recurring billing under HIPAA-aware workflows that off-the-shelf processors don't think about. Tabletop sets up the gateway, the recurring engine, and the patient-pay flow so collections move and compliance stays clean.
Statement review, savings projection, and full tech stack recommendations.
What we hear on the ground.
What we hear from practice managers and administrators:
- Patient balances over $1,000 sitting in receivables because the practice doesn't have a good payment-plan tool.
- Recurring billing for ongoing care (orthodontics, physical therapy, fertility, mental health) running on spreadsheets and manual card-keys.
- Card-on-file storage in PCI-non-compliant ways — not because anyone meant to, but because no vendor explained the right way.
- Front-desk staff keying in cards from paper forms, with no audit trail and no HIPAA-aware workflow.
- Processing fees on high-ticket medical payments quietly eating into already-thin practice margins.
How Tabletop solves it.
Concrete service layer:
- HIPAA-aware payment workflows. Card-on-file storage that meets PCI standards and supports the controls HIPAA expects around access and audit.
- Payment plans built in. Patients with a $2,500 balance pay $200/month for 12 months. Authorization signed once; charges run automatically. Receivables move.
- Recurring billing for ongoing care. Orthodontics, PT, fertility, mental health — recurring engines that handle the cadence, the failure recovery, and the patient communication.
- Patient-pay portals and links. Patients pay statements online from their phone. Days-sales-outstanding drops measurably.
- Right-sized fees. High-ticket medical payments shouldn't run at retail-card-mix rates. We benchmark and recalibrate.
A note on HIPAA. Payment processing itself is not subject to HIPAA — the financial information processed by a payment gateway is not PHI. What HIPAA cares about is the workflow around the payment: where patient identifiers, treatment information, and account data live, and how they connect to payment data. We help configure the workflow so patient information stays in HIPAA-aware systems and payment data stays in PCI-aware systems, with the right controls between them. We are not your HIPAA compliance vendor — but we work with practices that have one.
The stack we deploy.
Common pieces in a medical practice build:
- Payarc CRM — the gateway plus recurring billing plus payment plans plus card-on-file engine — the core for most medical practices.
- Rise CRM — patient communication and statement automation.
- Traditional payment program — right structure for high-ticket medical payments.
- Practice financing — for equipment expansion or build-out.
- Calanderise — scheduling layer with patient-side reminders and intake.
What you actually save.
Real savings depend on your specialty, your average ticket, and your AR aging profile. Typical surfaces:
- Processing fees. Medical practices on retail-card-mix rates can be paying 50-75 basis points more than they should. On a $50K/month practice, that's $300-$375/month back.
- Receivables aging. Patient balances aging past 60 days are increasingly hard to collect. Built-in payment plans plus pay-by-link typically pull AR aging materially tighter.
- Compliance risk. A HIPAA breach involving payment data is a real and expensive event. Getting the workflow right is risk reduction with quantifiable downside.
Illustrative figure ranges only. Actual savings depend on your statement, your card mix, and the program you select.
Questions, answered.
Is your payment processing HIPAA-compliant?
Payment processing itself isn't covered by HIPAA — the financial information processed by a payment gateway isn't PHI. What HIPAA cares about is the workflow around the payment: how patient identifiers, treatment information, and account data are stored and accessed alongside payment data. We help configure the workflow so patient information stays in HIPAA-aware systems and payment data stays in PCI-aware systems, with the right controls between them. We are not your HIPAA compliance vendor — but we work with practices that have one.
How do payment plans work for high-balance patients?
Patient signs a one-time recurring authorization for the plan amount, term, and start date. The card on file (or ACH) runs automatically on the schedule. Failed-payment recovery and patient communication is built into the engine. Practice gets paid on schedule; patient experience is clean.
Can patients pay their statements online?
Yes. Patient gets a statement with a payment link; payment options include card and ACH. Days-sales-outstanding typically drops 15-20% within the first 90 days compared to mail-and-check workflows.
How does recurring billing work for orthodontics or ongoing care?
Recurring authorizations run on the cadence the practice sets — monthly is most common. The engine handles failed-payment retries, patient communication, and reporting. Plan adjustments (early payoff, schedule changes) are handled in the dashboard.
What about EMR or practice management software integration?
Most major practice management systems integrate with our gateway. We confirm yours during the cost analysis call and configure the workflow so payment data flows back into the PMS for reconciliation.
Get a real cost picture for your practice.
Send your most recent processor statement and your AR aging report. We will model what your fee structure should look like and where payment plans plus pay-by-link would change the receivables picture.
Complimentary Cost AnalysisStatement review, savings projection, and full tech stack recommendations.