Secure Mobile Communication permits shift in practice’s care model

Getting in contact with the physicians of Direct Care Clinic of Northwest Arkansas is convenient—they are only a text or email away. Secure mobile communication with sufferers has become a key source of communication that permits the Rogers, Ark.-based practice to serve patients and provide them personalized care.

The physicians of the practice would not have it any other way.

“This is the way primary care should be done,” claims Dan Weeden, MD, one of the 2 physicians in the practice. “It is a good way to do primary care.”

Weeden and Joel Frankhauser, MD, have modified the practice’s approach, in part enabled by new IT systems. It is changed electronic health records (EHRs) systems, deployed a smartphone app and adopted the secure mobile communication or messaging software to enable better communication.

Direct Care now provides direct primary care to over 700 patients who pay a set amount each month—less than $50—for entire treatment and services. That is moderately different model than concierge service, under which a person or family pays an annual fee for care. And it is a far cry from the conventional fee-for-service model the practice employed before the change, when it treated more than 2,000 patients.

Before the switch, the practice utilized an EHR from Epic, and followed the conventional way of filing claims with insurers, which paid varying amounts for care. In making the switch, it is shifted to the InLight EHR system from Amazing Charts, which has better enabled the shift to direct primary care, assisting it offer the more consistent monthly fee approach.

Weeden claims that the new approach has opened up communication with sufferers, who might need an often visit but frequently just want a rapid answer to a medical query. This year, the practice sought a secure mobile communication or secure messaging application that could be integrated into the InLight EHR and discovered Twistle, which enables sufferers to use smartphones to send messages to the practice.

The app brings ease to the practice and patients, in accordance to Weeden. It mitigates the need for office visits and provides patients peace of mind while, at the similar time, quickly alerting clinicians to potential issues.

Patients who’ve the free Twistle app on their phone can send messages to the practice that go into nurse and physician computers as well as their smartphones.

Direct Care chose Twistle secure messaging because it is HIPAA compliant, but Weeden worries that few other doctors using the direct primary care model don’t follow HIPAA “and it’s imperative that they do so,” he states.