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There are few things you can plan for in this lifetime — and healthcare expenses certainly aren’t one of them. On top of being largely unplanned, they also don’t come cheap. Amid soaring inflation rates and other economic pressures, more and more fully insured Americans are having to choose between financial and physical health.
Financial barriers to care are why we created Paytient’s Health Payment Account, and our recent research shows that this unique benefit is increasing the access to and affordability of care. Check out Paytient's Health Payment Report to gain a high-level view of our 2022 data on Paytient utilization patterns.
Hundreds of thousands of swipes later, this report walks through what we’ve learned about how Paytient unlocks access to care — and what it means for the thoughtful employers and health plans that proudly sponsor the card.
The impact at a glance:
- Cardholders access a wide array of care across a range of categories.
- Most swipes are for Medical care—doctors, lab work, imaging, and urgent care.
- Dental is the category with the largest average first swipe amount.
- Pharmacy spend is 16% of first swipes but 31% of ongoing swipes, suggesting improved medication adherence and Paytient as the preferred way to pay for care.
- The majority of cardholders have wisely and appropriately used their card.
Paytient utilization patterns help us dig into questions like
- What kinds of care do members seek when they have the power to pay?
- Americans are leaning on credit cards to cope with inflationary pressures — does the same dynamic show up in HPA spending?
We mined our data over the last 12 months to understand how people used their HPAs in 2022. This exploration revealed areas of latent demand for care as well as unused credit capacity despite today’s economic pressures. We also analyzed the types of providers Paytients visit, how much they spend per first transaction, and how much they spend per transaction on an ongoing basis.
Here’s what we learned.
