Randal Clark, Co-founder, CEO and President, is the chief strategist and architect for AxiaMed. Randal has built successful payment companies, founded and oversaw a private, college-preparatory Christian school, supports orphanages in South Africa and serves on the board of Hardwired Global. He invests in ideas, charitable causes, technology, and most of all great people and corporate cultures.  Randal earned his BS in Marketing and Management from DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois.

What is the origin story behind AxiaMed?

AxiaMed started as an idea born out of nearly 20 years of payment industry experience. As healthcare costs continued to soar, more of the financial responsibility for payment began to shift from payors to the patient. Providers were slow to adapt. Other than asking for co-pays at the time of service, they had no processes or systems in place to manage collections direct from patients. Worse, healthcare providers had little experience with the complexities of payment card processing and were unsure of how to best mitigate security and compliance risks.

During this time I hired Kevin Kidd, who had been my strategic adviser during this process and had significant expertise in healthcare payments.  Kevin and I quickly saw this as an amazing opportunity to develop top tier solutions to solve payment compliance and workflow burdens that were unique to the healthcare market. It was at that time that we co-founded AxiaMed to solve this problem.

How does Payment Fusion optimize payment processes for the healthcare market?

AxiaMed’s Payment Fusion technology platform enables payment card functionality to be fully-integrated into electronic health record (EHR) systems, practice management systems (PMS), revenue cycle management (RCM)  solutions and patient engagement applications.

Payment Fusion can be built into existing healthcare workflows to accelerate patient payments and streamline administrative workflows by enabling accurate, timely updates to accounting systems and ledgers.

By implementing secure and convenient credit card processing that integrates into existing business management software, providers benefit from eliminating double entries and automating transaction reconciliation.

As a validated point-to-point encryption solution (vP2PE), Payment Fusion ensures the highest standard of payment security and often reduces a provider’s Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance burden.

For large organizations, Payment Fusion Control Center provides enterprise-level payment device estate management. Support staff can track, monitor, and troubleshoot all payment devices from a single dashboard. Payment Fusion powers an organization’s productivity, efficiency, security, and overall financial success.

In what ways does 2018 represent a pivotal moment in the healthcare payments and security space?

In 2018, new healthcare delivery models have emerged that help to address the patient payment challenge. The unmistakable trend is that healthcare providers are now bringing care delivery closer to the patient, rather than requiring the patient to travel to them. For this convenience, patients don’t seem to mind paying a fee for service either at check-in or check-out.

For example, telehealth companies with guaranteed “5-minute wait times” appeal to millennials and others in the on-demand economy for non-urgent doctor visits. For many, a $50-dollar upfront charge (which may or may not be covered under insurance) is well worth the convenience of a no-wait time virtual doctor’s visit in the home or office. New urgent care centers are also popping up everywhere to address the growing demand for “same-day” service.

We’ve also seen over the last few years that the healthcare industry has been a top target for cyberattacks and data breaches. Ensuring that patient healthcare and payment data is secure is becoming a top concern for organizations. At point-of-care, payment cards should be swiped/dipped/tapped into payment terminals that immediately encrypt the card information. Other health-related information should be maintained and secured separately in the EHR, practice management system, or billing application. Online and mobile payments (“card-not-present”) present a different challenge. One-time payments, payment plans, and recurring billing models mostly rely on “card-on-file” technology. Again, given the sensitive nature of both protected healthcare information (PHI) and cardholder data, adequate security controls (encryption, tokenization) must be put in place.

What occupies your time outside of the office?

I serve on the board of Hardwired Global and was a founder of a college preparatory private Christian school. My family (who I consider my greatest gifts) and I also spend time supporting orphanages in South Africa.