We recently received the following question regarding our online bill payment application from a concerned patient. After responding to the patient I felt that it was potentially a concern that many patients might experience and thought it should be addressed publicly.

The email read…

I’m a savvy online bill payer, but I must say this site has a few flaws that I would like to address. I was a little worried when I entered my account number and my information did not automatically fill. How do I know I’m hitting the right file for bill payment? Did I enter my account number wrong? According to my end, I did not..things just don’t..auto fill.

I would like to thank the patient that took the time to email us about his/her concerns. We are constantly trying to improve our website to better serve our clients and patients and all feedback that we receive is appreciated.

Our current application is intended to allow patients to securely make payments online without having to register for an account.

In order to pre-populate patient fields we would need to require the patient to register for an online account and login to a secure site. Otherwise any human or robot would be able to supply random patient account numbers and in return view confidential patient data which would be a violation of HIPAA policy.

The future of our online bill payment application is to develop a system which will require patient registration, but at this time it is not a service we offer.

We advocate never entering your credit card or personal data into a website without verifying that it is a secure source. We recommend doing exactly what this patient did, which is to contact us through our website form or by using the phone numbers listed on your statement if you have concerns about the security of the website.