BLOCKCHAIN-ENABLED SECURE MEDICAL BILLING SYSTEMS: QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF TRANSACTION INTEGRITY

Abstract

The integration of blockchain technology into medical billing systems presents a transformative approach to addressing long-standing challenges in data security, transparency, and transaction integrity within healthcare finance. This quantitative study examines the implementation and performance of blockchain-enabled medical billing frameworks, focusing on their capacity to ensure immutability, traceability, and fraud prevention in electronic health payment transactions. By employing a mixed-method analytical model that integrates transaction latency metrics, cryptographic hash validation rates, and decentralized ledger consistency indices across 152 sampled healthcare billing networks, the study quantifies the impact of blockchain on billing accuracy and system resilience. Results indicate that blockchain-driven systems demonstrate a statistically significant 38% reduction in billing discrepancies and a 45% improvement in data reconciliation efficiency compared to traditional electronic billing infrastructures. Furthermore, smart contract automation within Ethereum-based frameworks reduced claim-processing times by up to 62%, mitigating human error and unauthorized modifications. The research also highlights how consensus algorithms, particularly Proof of Authority (PoA) and Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT), enhance the verification process for medical transactions without compromising processing speed. These findings underscore blockchain’s potential to redefine financial trust structures within healthcare ecosystems by ensuring end-to-end transactional integrity, auditability, and compliance with data privacy regulations such as HIPAA and GDPR. The study concludes that blockchain-enabled secure billing systems can significantly strengthen institutional accountability and patient trust while establishing a robust foundation for interoperable, tamper-proof financial data management across global healthcare networks.