HelloHealth

[Guest guest]

With a new IMP in mind, I demo'ed HelloHealth yesterday. Here's what I learned.

A very unique business model. It's a web portal designed for " patient

management, " instead of practice management. Patients pay for it. $3/mos to sign

up. As a patient, if you use it (and if your physician uses it), it's wonderful.

You log in and can view/use a secure messaging platform. You can request an

appointment, specifying the type of appointment, e.g., office visit, or virtual

video visit, or annual physical, and then you see a calendar of available slots.

You decide. Cannot get more open access than that! You can also review and amend

your health information, vitals trending, family history, medicines, allergies,

procedural history. Lastly you can see your " My Library " which is where you can

read copies of past visit notes, lab results, consult notes, etc. You can also

add information here.

Everything the patient can see is in the control of the physician. You decide

what part of the visit notes are visible, what kinds of appts are available,

when they're available, and, if someone does add something to their record, you

are prompted to approve it.

The physician logs in to the same site, sees a lot of the same information, but

also has access to the whole Schedule, TO DO lists, and the Visits section, or

the note generator part of the EMR. As an EMR goes, this section is fairly

boilerplate. Not that customizable. Easy templating. I would say, " functional. "

I think I would have trouble using this section in my current practice--wouldn't

be quick enough--but might be fine in a micro practice. Once you are done with

the note, you can tab over to a billing section, and enter, for example, a visit

charge, and charge for any additional supplies. You have on that screen the

option of choosing CARD or CASH. If you choose card, their credit card on record

simply charges the visit. But they have the option of paying on the spot

instead. Finally, the next tab opens and generates a Superbill which can, with a

click, be sent to their " My Library " as a pdf, and which they can use to TRY to

get their insurance to reimburse (MWHA HA HA, we all know what that means!).

It does not any further billing functions. If you're using this in a traditional

practice, you would have to print the day's Superbills and simply send them to

your biller.

So, overall, the strengths are an elegantly simply interface, from the patient's

perspective and the physician's. Also just the new way of running an office. The

weakness is its use as a Note Generator and the lack of insurance billing

functionality. And, possibly, its newness and questions about their longetivity.

I don't know the whole story, but I guess HelloHealth started as a project of

(or included) Jay Parkinson, MD, the pediatrician that got a lot of press a few

years ago for his innovative Brooklyn practice. But there was trouble and there

was a big split and he is no longer part of the project. It's now run by a

Canadian company called Myca Health.