Mastercard, the financial services card-issuing giant, has announced the launch of Mastercard Healthcare Solutions, a unit that will provide analytics to help improve billing strategies and revenue cycle management, among other products that will be offered.
The company announced the launch of the unit at a conference in Las Vegas yesterday.
Along with using machine learning and artificial intelligence to help providers and billers, the unit will also offer data security products to reduce the number of data breaches in the healthcare industry.
Prior to launching a more robust menu of products and services, Mastercard had previously offered flexible spending accounts, health savings accounts, and health reimbursement cards for employer-sponsored health plans.
“It’s a way to bring tried and true assets to the healthcare ecosystem,” Marie Aloisi, senior vice president of commercial payments, B2B acceptance and healthcare at Mastercard, said in a published report. “There’s a healthcare data breach every day. This is a serious problem.”
More than 32 million patient records have been compromised thus far in 2019, according to published statistics, most of those resulting from a data breach at a collection agency.
Aloisi pointed to a fairly standard patient experience of going to a doctor, being handed a clipboard, filling out some forms, and handing those forms back to someone who types the information into a computer.
“Think about how archaic that is,” Aloisi said. “They are 15 years behind every other industry.”
Mastercard said more than 200 companies are already using its predictive analytics to make business decisions.
“We are not new to healthcare — this is us bringing new technology products to this space, going beyond just card,” she said.
