A new tech device that could improve your practice!

Phreesia, the patient check-in company, was started by Chaim Indig and Evan Roberts who saw that EMR and Practice Management Systems focused on changing the process of health records in the back office, but did little to help patients check-in.  They wanted to involve patients with their care starting from the moment they stepped into a clinician’s office.  They also wanted to eliminate the unnecessary steps of administrators re-entering handwritten data.  

Today, Phreesia has evolved to include automated insurance eligibility and benefits verification, and a variety of clinical scales. Recently, Chaim Indig took some time to discuss Phreesia’s role in clinician offices and Phreesia’s future plans. 

What exactly is Phreesia?

Phreesia is an electronic patient check-in system that allows patients to input information using a wireless touchscreen tablet, instead of the traditional clipboard.  The PhreesiaPad looks a bit like an etch-a-sketch, but ours are orange.  Once a patient fills out the interview on the PhreesiaPad, it is all stored in a secure online portal and can also be printed out at the clinician’s office.

How is Phreesia’s business being helped by the stimulus package?

Since there is a very strong push,  and financial motivation, for clinicians to switch to paperless offices or to use electronic records, clinicians are looking to use Phreesia to either begin the process of switching to new record-keeping methods, or to further expedite and expand the time and cost-saving practices that the EMR revolution has started. Phreesia integrates with many EMRs and Practice Management Systems to allow the information gathered at check-in to automatically populate into practice’s software.  We truly want to eliminate any extra steps that administrators and clinicians have to take, and allow people to spend more time on patient care.

How much does this cost the doctor?

We have found that price is not a deciding factor for many clinicians, but unlike many expensive EMRs, Phreesia is very affordable.   Phreesia is sponsor-supported by leading healthcare companies.  Because of this, Phreesia is able to offer the entire system, including PhreesiaPads, technical support, and the required software, for just $50 per practice per year.

What are some reasons clinicians would not want to adopt the system?

Although many people are averse to change, the current state of healthcare in the United State indicates that change is necessary.  For many clinicians, the idea of downsizing their paper files, training administrators on new processes, or even taking the time to find out about new products is very daunting.  Furthermore, some people have security concerns and fear that once a product is in place the price may go up.  

How does Phreesia address these concerns?

In terms of training a practice’s administrators, Phreesia provides instruction to anyone who asks for it, at any time.  We have found that when people really take the time to train properly, they embrace Phreesia, since it ultimately saves incredible amounts of time, and thus money.  

Thanks to enterprise security, Phreesia’s data is as secure as data stored in databases used by the large institutions, such as financial companies.  All data submitted and stored by Phreesia is encrypted at each step of the process.  Essentially, electronic data is much more secure than paper files that can be easily misplaced or taken from an office. 

Phreesia does not make money from the service it provides to clinicians.  We do not intend to raise the price of PhreesiaPads, or the basic services that we currently provide, like insurance verification.  In the future, we may implement fees for collecting payments, but clinicians already pay merchant services fees for credit card transactions. Also, some clinical surveys or scales are copyrighted, so there may be fees if clinicians choose to score those using the PhreesiaPads.

Speaking of money, how does Phreesia save clinicians money?

Most importantly, Phreesia saves time – and this allows clinicians to save money.  Phreesia’s insurance eligibility and verification capabilities also provide savings. The workforce is increasingly mobile, and patients’ insurance coverage is constantly changing. Phreesia verifies insurance while patients check-in, so that by the time someone hands in the PhreesiaPad, administrators know whether the insurance, copay, coinsurance and deductible information are accurate. When patients who have already used Phreesia return to their clinicians’ offices, all they have to do is verify the information they have already input.  This streamlined process includes a prompt to update their insurance information, if necessary.  

Do the PhreesiaPads collect patient payments?

Currently, Phreesia does not collect payments, but PhreesiaPads will have this feature shortly.  Also, we are looking into implementing a system where patients can choose to allow the upload of their e-prescription information from the past, or from other clinicians, when they check-in. This will provide clinicians with a comprehensive catalogue of their patients’ medication histories, without spelling or medication name errors.

How does Phreesia aid with HIPAA compliance?

Phreesia is HIPAA compliant, and we help to reduce the paper required to provide patients with the HIPAA contract.  A typical copy of the HIPAA contract is four to five photocopied pages.  With the PhreesiaPad, patients read the form and sign it electronically, saving paper and enabling administrators to pull up signatures easily.  Furthermore, every time patients check-in they have to confirm their identities, and whether or not they want to share information that they may have input on a PhreesiaPad at a different office.

Administrators will soon have to fulfill new “Red Flag” requirements.  What role will Phreesia play in the process?

Any institution that acts a as a creditor, or essentially allows people to pay for services after they are provided, will have to implement identity theft prevention programs.  Phreesia requires each patient to identify him/herself by providing: birth date, address, social security number and a PIN number.  If the address, birth date or social security number on a patient’s insurance card does not match the information provided, Phreesia will be able to immediately identify the discrepancy.  Although an administrator will still have to check a person’s photo identification, Phreesia will be able to quickly indicate any inconsistencies in identifying information.  Phreesia is able to verify and authenticate information in real time.

You mentioned clinical surveys.  Can you discuss those some more?

 Many Phreesia users take advantage of the free scoring of clinical scales such as the HAQ-II, the M-CHAT, AUA symptom score, SHIM, WOQ-9, GAD-7, SRQ, Epworth Sleepiness Scale and Edinburg Postnatal Depressions Scale.  All of your readers test in-office, and this is another opportunity to automate and allow clinicians to save time, since they are not required to score these basic surveys.  They can view the results immediately, to enable discussion about potential problems.

What are your goals as a company?

We hope to extend our role as the link between patients, clinicians, insurance carriers and administrators, by expanding our technology capabilities to include payment collection and the population of e-prescription information.  As a company, we hope to grow by enlarging our regional teams of District Managers and Field Agents to provide clinical offices with more in-person service.

Phreesia has many faithful followers.  Dr. Kaufman, a urologist in New York who has used Phreesia for a year, told us that “Phreesia far exceeded my expectations….it has made the patient sign-in process an easier process, a more technological process.  It reflects well on me, and patients are impressed.”  When asked about how his older patients respond to Phreesia he replies, “I am always surprised at how many of my older patients can do it…it is intuitive…that is a credit to Phreesia, and to the senior citizens in this country.” Phreesia is so appreciated by Dr. Kaufman that one of his requirements as he searches for a new EMR system is that it “must interface with Phreesia…those [EMRs] that did not were crossed off my list.”  

Considering Phreesia’s low-cost and high value, it is certainly a product worth considering for any practice.  Any product that can save time and allow clinicians and administrators to focus on patient care and education is a valuable business tool in today’s changing healthcare climate.