Your patient paid the hospital. Why are you the last to know?
· 2 min read
A patient flies to Delhi, gets treated, and pays the hospital. Then everyone waits to find out what actually happened.
The patient doesn't know whether the full amount arrived. You, the facilitator who brought them there, don't know how much they paid, so you can't check the referral fee the hospital will send you later. And the hospital, the one party that does know, rarely tells either of you unless someone chases it.
How it plays out
A facilitator we spoke to this week asked a hospital's accounts team where a patient's payment was. It took them three days to find it, for a bank transfer with a reference number on it.
The reasons are dull, which is partly why nobody fixes them. A patient sends $10,000 and the hospital receives $9,900 after bank fees, so the amount doesn't match the invoice. The money often comes from a brother's or an employer's account, so the name doesn't match either. The accounts team ends up matching transfers by hand, and you end up on the phone.
The payment
₹ ?
The patient
You
Hospital accounts
What it costs you
Your fee is a percentage of the bill. If you can't see what the patient paid, you can't check the figure the hospital sends at the end of the month; you take its word for it.
Then there's the call from a worried patient who has just paid for surgery in a foreign country and can't get anyone to confirm the money landed. You're the one they ring, and you don't have the answer either.
What fixes it
One payment, one reference, and the same view for everyone who has a stake in it.
Payment PLENY-4471
$10,000
The patient
You
Hospital accounts
When a payment goes through Pleny, it gets a reference the moment it's sent and keeps it all the way into the hospital's account. The patient can see it arrived. You can see the amount and the date, so the fee you're owed becomes arithmetic instead of trust. And the hospital receives the money with the patient's name and reference attached, which turns a three-day hunt into a quick lookup.
More phone calls won't fix this. A payment that carries its own paper trail will.
If you're tired of chasing accounts teams for answers, join the Pleny waitlist.
Frequently asked questions
Why don't hospitals tell facilitators when a patient pays?
Usually because it's nobody's job. The accounts team sees a bank credit, not a referral, and linking the two takes manual work that gets done when someone asks.
How do I know my referral fee is right?
You only know if you know what the patient paid. Without that, you're relying on the hospital's own figure.
Can Pleny show me when a patient's payment lands?
Yes. Every payment through Pleny carries one reference from the moment it's sent, and you can see where it is and when it lands.