Guardian Dentistry Partners, a dental partnership network with over 160 dental practices in 11 states and the District of Columbia, recently discussed the value of delivering secure payment capabilities and PCI scope reduction to dental and healthcare SaaS organizations worldwide.
Founded in 2018, Guardian has nearly doubled in size each year since inception. Inheriting many different payment processing vendors – all with different reporting capabilities and rates – Guardian felt this structure could be simplified by using one vendor. Their search began to find the best merchant provider to capture economies of scale and improve financial controls for all of their practices. The end result was a partnership with Bluefin.
Now they can deliver a secure and fast method to accept all healthcare payment types while providing PCI compliance reporting and simplified reconciliation.
Why Bluefin
Guardian’s Vice President of Operations, Robert Papenbrock, explains that their decision to choose Bluefin came down to proof of concept.
“Many of our legacy dental practices had been using Bluefin for several years. It was a tested platform that provided favorable pricing, functionality and reliability. Additionally, they offered security and compliance for patient and payment data, with best-in-class services and support.”
Benefits for Guardian’s dental partners include:
- Enhanced secure payment acceptance capabilities
- Seamless onboarding
- Real-time reporting
- Simplified payment reconciliation
- Single point of record for all assets that fall under PCI compliance
- PCI scope reduction
- Simplified audits
- Dedicated team that understands your business
Safeguarding Sensitive Data from Cyberattacks
The healthcare sector accounts for the highest number of security breaches, and not only involve payment data but also personal identifiable information (PII) that is used to commit fraud or sold on the dark web. About 95% of all identity theft incidents come from stolen healthcare records, which is 50 times more valuable than credit card information (HIPPA Journal).
Protecting your organization from cyberattacks comes down to two choices, as Morgan Jines, Bluefin’s VP of Integrated Payments, explains.
“You can either defend the data or devalue it. You can implement more firewalls, network perimeters, monitoring systems and increase security staff for your business or you can encrypt and tokenize the data, so if a hacker does get into your POS system, there is nothing of value for them to take from your business.”
PCI-validated point-to-point encryption (P2PE) protects cardholder data at the point-of-interaction (POI), minimizing the exposure of clear-text account data within the merchant environment, while tokenization replaces sensitive data with a unique token, ensuring that the data never travels through a system or network as clear-text. With P2PE and tokenization, sensitive data is protected in use, in transit and at rest.
Jines emphasized that certified PCI-validated P2PE is the gold standard of payment security, as it establishes uniform encryption requirements and tracks the entire lifecycle of a device through strict chain of custody requirements, whereas a non-validated device does not.
Additionally, P2PE is the only solution that can reduce a merchant’s SAQ scope, taking the SAQ from 329 to 33 questions, effectively reducing IT infrastructure and staff needed to monitor and maintain compliance. This can result in thousands of dollars in cost savings (time and money) when implemented.
Flexible Payment Options
Through their partnership, Guardian Dental partners utilize Bluefin’s PayConex™ gateway for their payment processing, allowing flexibility for practices to make payments anytime and in any way – improving customer satisfaction and increasing adoption rates while providing the highest level of data security.
Jines stressed the growth e-commerce has seen, with sales reaching the $1 trillion mark for the first time in 2022, and a predicted 24% of total retail sales worldwide in 2026.
To support this e-commerce growth, Bluefin offers e-commerce merchants a simple hosted payment page to set up an online payments option with critical data elements captured, as well as recurring payments. The setup is simple, the pay links are secure, and the adoption is significant.
Seamless Reporting and Reconciliation
For Guardian Dentistry Partners – and for any e-commerce merchant – adherence to reporting and reconciliation requirements into their practice management software is mission-critical to support auditing and posting.
“Reporting and reconciliation can at times, be an afterthought, but at the end of the day you want to make sure transactions gets posted back into your practice management software and aligns with what is funded within your bank account. Bluefin offers many different ways, both at the processor and gateway level, to ensure that the reporting reconciliation is seamless.” (Jines)
How to Get Started?
For Guardian, choosing a trusted vendor was important. As a result, Bluefin provided a seamless process that ultimately saved money while safeguarding sensitive data.
“We did a lot of research on different vendors, and it was key for us that Bluefin was an established provider within the healthcare sector. They really worked with us to lower our average merchant rate for processing volume, while offering an onboarding process what was seamless from start to finish. The Bluefin staff was always available to help us, providing proactive service, training, and modern payment options that cater to the needs of each of our dental partners.” Robert Papenbrock.
Learn more about Bluefin’s solutions and safeguard your sensitive data from attacks every time your business gets paid.
