We been using RelayHealth for a few years for the portal. It seemed to be quite cost effective for us, and could potentially bring in revenue via online consultations. Alas, it hasn't been as effective as I wished.
1)The secure messaging is fine. We use this to message patients and send their labs to them. We have a basic usage package and don't have all of the extras, because each costs an additional fee. I haven't spoken with them lately on the additional fees, so i cant answer any questions about that.
2) RH was new when we signed up, so we got eRx for no charge. If you sign up now, eRx does not come in the basic package, unless they added it and just raised the price. Now we have eRx free through AC, so it is redundant,and we don't have to sign onto a separate system to send them. So we have stopped using the eRx on RelayHealth.
3)We don't use the appointment request feature of RelayHealth anymore. Alot of these portals use this methodolgy, including apparently practicom. Patients send a request in for an appointment(w/ 3 options as times they would like). We look and see if it is available, and if so book them. Then send a message back telling them the time and date of the appointment. Or if none of their choices was available, we tell them. This is simply Ludicrous! Its as much work as just taking the phone call. I, and many others, are willing to pay extra to have a true online schedule, like with AppointmentQuest. I suggested that RH try this, and that we'd pay $X extra to have this and that others probably would too. Alot of doctors use Appointment Quest or something similar. And dont even talk about Zocdoc, which may be able to be imported into Appointment Quest. So I wish these portals would make a scheduler like this and just charge an extra fee for it. It won't cost us anymore than currently, and it would be integrated with the whole portal.
4)Looking at what practicom does, I sure wish they'd add an internet fax serice and true online schedule. Heck, they could even make the scheduler and fax a "modular, value-added add-on" with an appropriate price. They'd have a comprehensive offering.
5) Online consultations just haven't taken off. It was supposed to at least pay for our RelayHealth cost so the system would be essentially free, but it hasn't worked out that we. We get less than than 10 per year.
We're getting less usablity out of RelayHealth since we dont use the silly appointment request system, and now we can eRx directly from our emr (AC) though its not as good a eRx system, it still basically gets the job done. So I'm looking at less expensive options for the other uses, and hope I can find a more cost-effective system to do the thing I want to do.
