“Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It’s what the client or customer gets out of it.”
—Peter Drucker, PhD

The number of physicians who allow patients to pay their bills with a credit card has steadily increased over the years. According to a recent study by SK&A, a healthcare research company, almost 72% of the medical practices surveyed in the study accepted credit card payments.

If your practice is among the lagging group who don’t yet take credit cards, however, you may soon be getting a call from a credit card issuer to sign up. That’s because the SK&A report, which covered 200,000 medical practices and half a million doctors, is designed as a marketing tool for use by financial service firms to help them target medical practices that don’t currently allow payment by plastic.

According to SK&A, these medical practices are a “unique marketing opportunity” for banks, lenders, and financial services companies. To further refine their marketing efforts, SK&A clients can tailor the report to their individual needs, zeroing in on characteristics like geographic location, practice specialty, practice size, and patient volume. 

64%—Percentage of general internists who allow patients to pay by credit card.
(SK&A, 2008)

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