Mr. Armstrong explained that his company’s core competency is technology. “But we kept thinking: “Why can’t health IT go beyond being a merely an electronic substitute for paper records? Why can’t it become something more: a business model, and an engagement platform?” So, over the last few years, we’ve moved away from being a purely EMR system to one that is more comprehensive. Hello Health has one foot in EMR and one foot beyond.”

He added, however, that the EMR at the heart of Hello Health qualifies for Meaningful Use, and users can obtain the federal incentive payments.

Reduce Cost, Raise Revenue

Hello Health licenses the system free to qualifying practices, which in turn make the patient portal available to patients for a small fee of $5 per month which is shared between the practice and the IT company.

Many practices offer patients a 30-day trial during which they can sign in for free and test the system. Following the trial, patients can opt in as paying subscribers. In concierge practices, the fee can be built in as part of the membership fee to join the practice.

Mr. Armstrong says that while Hello Health is proprietary technology, “We subordinate the Hello Health brand to the doctor’s clinic identity. It becomes your patient portal, not ours’. It lives and breathes as part of your practice.”

By making the system cost-neutral, Hello Health eliminates a major disincentive keeping many small practices from implementing conventional EHR systems. It also tries to minimize the other major disincentive—the time involved in converting paper records and ramping up a new system. Mr. Armstrong said most practices using Hello Health got up and running in about 90 days.

Hello Health is now in use in more than 100 clinics nationwide. Most recently, it was adopted by the University of Arizona’s Program in Integrative Medicine.

According to Dr. Gladd, flexibility is the hallmark of the system. “It can mold around whatever business model you have. If you want to go all cash, it has billing capability. If you bill insurance, there’s a 3rd party billing software. If you want to give patients a superbill, it lets you create one easily. You just check off a box to share the document with the patient, and a superbill is automatically generated to that patient as a PDF they can send to their insurance company.”

Missions & Margins

Dr. Gladd noted that many holistic physicians hold a “mission-based” mindset: they are driven by a sense of service to a greater good, and fiscal considerations take a back seat. But in today’s healthcare, there’s no mission without margins.

“Uncompensated care and uncompensated time demands are main factors breaking the fiscal viability of primary care. We face constant pressure to see more & do more for less,” Dr. Gladd said. “You need to think carefully about your business model and find ways to generate new revenue.”

GladdMD’s success in Ft. Wayne is living proof that American communities will support a practice that offers caring service and real solutions for improving health.

Dr. Gladd, an alumnus of the first Heal Thy Practice conference, is the program chairman for Heal Thy Practice 2013, Oct. 18-20, in Long Beach, CA.

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