What the pressure on hospital finance teams demands from a vendor payment partner, plus how to evaluate one.
Healthcare finance leaders are making high-stakes operational decisions in one of the most unforgiving environments in business. Total hospital expenses grew 7.5% in 2025. Drug costs rose 13.6%. Supply costs climbed 9.9%. Hospitals also spent $43 billion just trying to collect payments from insurers for care already delivered.
Unlike routine technology purchases, the decision to bring on a new vendor payment partner is not a simple one. In healthcare, operational changes carry real consequences. A payment process that works correctly reduces administrative burden, improves cash flow and frees up staff capacity. One that doesn’t creates disruption, delays and mounting pressure on teams that are already stretched.
When evaluating healthcare vendor payment automation, these are the three questions that matter most:
1. Can they strengthen payment security and reduce payment-related risk?
Accounts payable teams are a primary target for fraud. The 2026 AFP Payments Fraud and Control Survey found that 76% of organizations experienced attempted or actual payments fraud in 2025. Checks remained the most frequently impacted payment method, affecting 58% of those organizations.
That’s a meaningful exposure. Checks cost materially more than ACH and carry extra work in controls, reconciliation and handling. For a healthcare organization managing payments across multiple facilities, legal entities and vendor categories, a check-heavy AP environment is painfully old-fashioned and, of course, expensive and labor-intensive.
The Change Healthcare cyberattack in 2024 illustrated just how exposed healthcare organizations are when a critical third party fails. The American Hospital Association reported that the attacked platform handled more than 100 critical healthcare functions and 15 billion transactions annually. In a March 2024 AHA survey of nearly 1,000 hospitals, 94% said the attack affected them financially, and 60% needed between two weeks and three months to resume normal operations.
Security, fraud resistance and operational continuity are central buying criteria. A strong vendor payment partner should provide meaningful protection against ACH fraud, illegitimate vendor enrollment and cyberattacks affecting payment workflows, all while reducing the internal burden of managing those controls manually.
2. Can they simplify vendor payments without disrupting existing systems?
In healthcare, automation is all about fitting technology into real workflows and existing systems in a way that people can actually adopt.
The ASTP/ONC Health IT Workflow Automation Background Report identified poor integration between existing systems and fragmented, unclear workflows as two of the most common barriers to automation success. The same research found that automation efforts are most effective when they extend current workflows rather than replace them.
This is especially true for healthcare organizations managing payments across multiple facilities, departments and legal entities. A vendor payment partner should integrate directly with the organization’s existing ERP, accounting system or AP automation tools. If they create yet another disconnected layer that requires parallel management, they haven’t done their job as a partner effectively.
Once a payment is approved, the partner should own what comes next: payment execution, vendor enrollment and payment delivery. That division of responsibility is how healthcare organizations reduce manual touchpoints without sacrificing visibility or control. The goal is a system where vendors get paid accurately and on time, using fewer internal resources, with minimal new complexity introduced upstream.
Flexibility and scalability matter here, too. Healthcare finance environments are anything but static. Organizations grow, merge and restructure. A payment partner that works well at one facility or for one payment type should be able to scale across the full organization without requiring significant reconfiguration.
3. Can they reduce manual work and create measurable financial value?
Healthcare organizations have become increasingly rigorous about the ROI they expect from operational technology. That expectation is well-founded.
CAQH reported that U.S. healthcare avoided an estimated $258 billion in administrative costs in 2024 through electronic transactions and improved data exchange, representing a 17% year-over-year increase in administrative cost avoidance. However, a remaining $21 billion savings opportunity still exists through fuller automation of manual and partially manual workflows.
Healthcare buyers should approach vendor payment automation with the same expectation: tangible, measurable efficiency gains that reduce administrative waste and free up staff capacity. That means looking beyond implementation promises and asking for specifics.
Capabilities like realtime vendor enrollment, payment execution support, and dedicated follow-up can significantly reduce the internal burden of vendor onboarding and ongoing payment management. Finance teams that spend less time chasing approvals, resolving payment exceptions and managing manual workflows have more capacity to focus on higher-value work.
In evaluating any partner, ask how they measure and demonstrate that value over time. A vendor payment partner worth the relationship should be able to show what has changed and improved.
What’s at Stake
Vendor payment automation in healthcare should be focused on preserving control, reducing administrative burden, strengthening vendor relationships and freeing up resources that can support patient care and the communities these organizations serve.
Healthcare finance teams operate inside complex, highly integrated ecosystems where every process change has downstream consequences. The right vendor payment partner understands that reality and brings clarity, control and reliability to payment operations without adding work for already-stretched teams.
When the back office runs well, there is a foundation that protects the organization’s capacity to focus on what matters most.
Healthcare vendor payment solutions offered by REPAY are built for exactly that environment—complex, high-stakes and intolerant of disruption—giving finance teams the control and reliability they need to keep their attention where it belongs. Contact our team today to learn more about our approach to offsetting the high cost of healthcare with exceptional payment solutions.