NCR survey: Majority of consumers want mobile, online options for payment, scheduling, test results

More than half of U.S. consumers queried in a recent poll by NCR Corp. would like to be able to manage healthcare accounts and pay bills online and on mobile devices. However, many wouldn't pre-authorize credit card charges for co-pays and balances unless they received a valuable incentive such as a discount on their bill, a hospital room upgrade or a discount at a pharmacy or hospital gift shop.

Some 64 percent of survey respondents in the U.S. would be willing to pre-register for appointments online or through a mobile channel, while 60 percent said it would be convenient to receive lab results in the same manner. Just 48 percent said it would be convenient to exchange secure messages with healthcare providers and 47 percent would be interested in receiving medication reminders on mobile devices, though.

"As patients bear greater financial responsibility for their care, providers must find new, innovative and convenient ways to improve revenue collection and reduce patient bad debt," NCR Healthcare VP Nelson Gomez says in a press release. "Merging multi-channel self-service can provide a seamless means to capture more revenue through multiple touch points while supporting the industry initiative to improve the cost, quality and efficiency of healthcare delivery."

NCR, which sells self-service kiosks for healthcare environments, found that 79 percent of the 1,000 U.S. and Canadian consumers interviewed for the survey would prefer a healthcare provider that offers self-management services over the Internet, on mobile devices or through kiosks. That's 7 points higher than a year ago.

For more data:
- see this NCR press release
- read the survey report (.pdf)

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