Stripe Integration for Healthcare Platforms

Stripe is not HIPAA-certified by default — it offers a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) for qualifying accounts, but that BAA only covers what actually flows through Stripe. The architecture decision that matters most is keeping Protected Health Information (PHI) out of Stripe's metadata, descriptions, and custom fields entirely, so your BAA scope stays as small and defensible as possible.

Keeping PHI Out of Stripe's Scope

• Never pass diagnosis codes, treatment descriptions, or patient names into Checkout line-item names or metadata
• Reference an internal patient/invoice ID in Stripe, and resolve PHI only inside your own database
• Co-pay and payment-plan logic should live in Stripe Billing/Invoicing; insurance adjudication stays entirely outside Stripe
• Confirm your Stripe account is on a BAA-eligible plan before processing any patient billing at all

Payment plans for patient balances (post-insurance) are usually the actual engineering challenge, not the initial charge — a $4,000 balance rarely gets paid in one transaction. We set this up via Stripe Billing with a fixed installment schedule or Invoicing with custom due dates, both configured so a missed installment triggers your dunning flow rather than silently going uncollected.