Member Spotlight: Medipass, a Healthtech Fintech

For this week’s Member Spotlight we spoke to Jonathan (Jon) Davey CEO of Medipass. Jon has joined Medipass from NAB where he was Executive General Manager of Digital, Innovation and Customer Experience. Medipass is an e-payments company uniquely positioned at the intersection of Fintech and Healthtech. We spoke to Jon about Medipass’ journey, the impact of COVID-19 and his future plans for the business.The BeginningMedipass was formed in mid 2017 following a hackathon hosted by NAB, VISA and Intel. Pete Williams who had previously led NAB’s payments technology function led a small team who developed a mobile app that leveraged NAB subsidiary HICAPS Private Health Claiming API’s allowing patients to book healthcare appointments, determine the cost of a service and discover how much of the cost their private health insurance would cover. Following their appointment, patients could complete an in-app gap payment. Pete and his team won the hackathon and over the next 9 months built out their business plan and formed Medipass.Four years later the business has evolved significantly. Rather than focusing on Private Health payments, Medipass’ ambition is to support all fee for service health claims and payments; and instead of being an app solution for patients, Medipass is a payments platform delivering simple, safe and fast payments for health service providers, insurers and patients.Medipass is now Australia’s leading digital health payments platform. For healthcare providers and partners, Medipass offers more digital claiming options than any other platform. For patients, Medipass provides a leading payment experience with flexible payment options. What remains consistent is an unwavering focus on building health industry specific features and services and a desire to make health payments easy.The PresentWhile digital transformation is driving change in many industries, Mr Davey said that healthcare has been slow to respond. “Paying for and being paid for health remains incredibly inefficient. Current processes are complex, resulting in significant administrative effort for providers and insurers. They lack cost transparency and offer few payment options for patients. There is a significant opportunity, through the use of modern digital solutions to remove that inefficiency and to deliver a world leading experience."COVID-19 has further exposed these issues. Non-contact payment solutions are being demanded by patients and providers, and the growing use of remote telehealth solutions is driving demand for e-payment approaches. Growing financial hardship too means that patients want flexible, installment based payment options. Medipass supports these use cases through a solution that allows providers to process healthcare claims and payments in their practice, over the telephone, through video links, and in the home; and by offering patients flexible payment options. The solution integrates with the core systems a provider uses to manage their day-to-day activities thereby embedding directly into their workflow. This includes integration into telehealth platforms.To date the business has focused on the Allied, GP and Dental healthcare sectors. This has been enabled through Insurer integrations with HICAPS, Medicare, the Department of Veterans Affairs, icare NSW and through the acceptance of credit and debit card transactions. Integrations into the leading Practice Management System platforms used by providers and an integrated suite of claim and pay products that facilitates single settlement and provides claim status updates has clearly resonated with providers and growth has been strong. Post COVID-19 customers are growing at 20% month on month and transaction volumes are increasing 25%. Medipass now has more than 15,000 providers. 

Pete Williams (Medipass co-Founder and CTO), Jonathan Davey (Medipass CEO), Adrian Perillo (Medipass COO)

 The FutureThe coming months are particularly exciting with a launch in the UK planned for September and enhancements to the installment payments offering scheduled in the following months. Late 2020 will also see the business leverage their platform to focus on the Medical Specialist and Hospital modalities. This is a particularly complex part of the market. Multiple providers, hospital and pharmaceutical services are required to manage elective and non-elective healthcare across inpatient and outpatient scenarios. The administrative overheads, lack of cost transparency for patients, and limited patient payment options cause significant pain.Mr Davey noted that “COVID-19 has forced a fundamental rethink of business models. For many businesses, a pivot to online sales has been essential. Healthcare is an industry undergoing such a transformation. Providers need payment solutions that deliver flexibility to the way that healthcare is delivered, and patients want transparency of cost and flexible payment solutions. Medipass has these capabilities and is ideally positioned to support the health industry manage the changes taking place”.