To look at its website, you might make mistake HealthPost for a consumer-facing website focused on helping people find and book appointments with specialty and primary care physicians in the Houston, Texas, region. But there’s more to this startup than meets the eye. It has cultivated a business helping providers including accountable care organizations and patient centered care homes embed its scheduling system to coordinate care.
In an interview with MedCity News, HealthPost CEO Omar Alvi talked about how he came to start the health IT company in 2011. He came from a health system grappling with the issues he wanted to solve: how to improve access and better coordinate care. The scheduling system Alvi developed not only helps members of a health system locate providers in their network, it also helps them schedule tests such as mammograms, bone density scans, X-rays as well as classes or new moms and patients considering elective surgery, which has the potential to be a huge driver for growth, Alvi notes.
It also offers an ER check in solution — a service that tends to be used by people with commercial insurance so from a revenue perspective, Alvi observes, this can help providers produce incremental volume growth of these patients who appreciate the hospitality industry feature.
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In a move to avoid needless readmissions, its system helps providers schedule follow-up appointments and reminders. It can also track referrals, provide call center tools and discharge tools applications for each access point.
“The value proposition we offer is we bring our customers a network of touch points integrated throughout network, and the network is more powerful than any one point,” Alvi said.
Every hospital is focused on building its own brand in order to offer a digital access point to communities that they serve to make it easier for communities to search for providers across their outpatient delivery network. HealthPost even adjusts the appearance of its cloud-based platform to reflect the colors and template of the provider.
In addition to working with providers, Alvi has also collaborated with physician rating and search websites Healthy Grades and Vitals by embedding its scheduling tool in these sites.
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It is currently working with health systems in Texas and five other states: Florida, Alaska, Kentucky, Arizona and Massachusetts, and expects to expand its geographical footprint later this year. It also expects the number of physicians it works with to grow from 1,000 to 5,000 by the end of 2013.
