Klara pricing vs. OhMD pricing. Klara patient communication details.

When you are researching your options for patient communication platforms you’ve likely plugged terms like “Klara pricing” into your search engine with varying success in finding what you’re looking for. Here we’ll break down the Klara vs. OhMD comparison including pricing information to help you make an informed decision.

OhMD

(source: G2)

  • Starts at $200/mo. per provider for EMR-integrated organizations
  • Includes Text Automation, Call-to-Text
  • Text-Enabled Landline and more
  • Monthly or annual billing available
  • Upfront activation fee
  • Two-week trial offer

Klara

(source: G2)

  • Acquired by ModMed EMR
  • Starts at $250/mo. per provider for EMR-integrated organizations
  • Monthly or annual billing available
  • Upfront implementation fee
  • No trial offer
  • No two-way SMS
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The cost of a solution is always one of the things you have to consider when making a decision as a healthcare provider. The key there though is it should truly be only one of the things you think about.

And we would argue not the most important one.

One of the things people find in common when they look up Klara pricing and compare it with OhMD is that both solutions are well regarded. Just look up Klara reviews and OhMD reviews. Both platforms have a slew of features and benefits.

You search for Klara pricing, Klara reviews, Klara features, Klara integrations, Klara app or Klara whatever-you-may-be-wondering-about. Then you do the same search for OhMD. What you’re really trying to understand is whether or not the tool fits your requirements and business needs.

When the tools you are considering offer similar functionality, what is usually helpful is to understand what sets them apart from each other.

The easiest way to understand the difference between Klara and OhMD? Think about the problem they are each trying to solve.

On the face of it, yes, both are working to solve the problem of open communication between doctors and patients so clinicians can offer better treatment. Digging deeper it becomes more clear where each solution’s focus lies.

We can break this down pretty easily.

Klara pricing compared with OhMD? You need to know that approach matters.

The OhMD approach

Start with the best patient experience.

What we mean by that is that we, at OhMD, believe the key to incredible healthcare communication is to understand and solve for the core issues patients face when communicating with their doctor first, building tools that are incredibly easy for the patient to use.

We then take those tools and build solutions that simplify the workflows for care teams serving those patients.

The Klara approach

Start with the best care team experience.

Klara approaches the issue of doctor patient communication by trying to solve for workflow issues of the care team first. They then use those workflows as the basis for building the tools the patient will use.

So now, when you look up Klara pricing and you land on their site and look around, think about the implications of these different approaches.

We are all patients at one time or another. You know the pain of not being able to get through to our doctor and having to jump through hoops just to contact them.

Solutions are essential for the care team’s problem of connecting efficiently with patients. We just go about it a different way.

What do we mean by that? For a moment, let’s take healthcare out of the equation.

Ask yourself: As a person… an individual, would you rather use a tool that was built to be flexible enough to solve your specific problems or a tool that was built to solve the problems of someone else?

Klara pricing? The bigger question is will patients use it?

We build tools developed for the consumer first.

With this in mind, when comparing Klara pricing with OhMD a key difference to think about is that, at OhMD, we put ourselves in the patient’s shoes first in trying to solve their problems. From scheduling visits, to communication on treatment and medicine, all the way through to engaging patients post-visit to share their experience with others, OhMD is built to make sure it is incredibly simple for the patient (your customer) to use.

As OhMD began to build solutions for patient communication, we talked to a lot of people. We drew on our own knowledge working in healthcare. It was critical that we talked with doctors and care teams around the country about their pain points in communicating with patients. We looked at the way other industries connect with consumers.

Most importantly though, we spoke with patients. Real people seeking and receiving care provided the “aha!” moments for us where we shaped OhMD.

A first principles approach to patient communication

We took a first principles thinking approach to building the OhMD patient communication platform. First principles thinking, defined as “a method of reasoning or a thought process in which you try and understand a problem or a thing by breaking it down into its most basic elements and building up your argument from there,” is the thing that allowed us to truly set OhMD apart from other tools.

We believe that understanding the patient’s most basic pain point and solving for it with a simple, convenient solution is the goal.

In talking with patients, what we heard time and time again was that communication with their care providers was broken.

Most of our conversations started with the patient saying this:
“Getting in touch with my doctor is frustrating.”

This was usually followed by an anecdote that illustrated the problem further. Things that make you understand just how inconvenient the process is for the patient like…

“Making a phone call and then waiting on hold to talk with my doctor is one one the reasons I don’t always seek out care when I need it.”

Or,

“If I need to get a question answered from my doctor, why do I have to jump through hoops to log in to a patient portal just to get in contact with someone who can help?”

And there is quantitative data to back up these sentiments.

The facts around what patients want

  • Over 63% of people cite communication as a factor in what makes a five-star patient experience. Press Ganey, 2021
  • 62% of people said that difficulty contacting the office (i.e. long wait times) was a factor that would discourage them from booking an appointment with a doctor. Press Ganey, 2021
  • COVID-19 has only compounded the issue as over 40% of people lost confidence in their doctor during the pandemic with over half of those people noting that lack of doctor patient communication was the cause. Actium Health, 2021

It starts to become clear that just asking for Klara pricing vs. OhMD vs. any other solution offering patient communication tools only gets you part of the way. You really need to understand what the patient wants to accomplish and what they are willing to use.

To find a solution to this communication problem, let’s consider the tool that nearly 100% of Americans have at their fingertips at any given time: a cellphone. Mobile technology has completely changed the way we communicate and gather information. Some of the tools are built on old technologies and old ways of communicating, and some are relatively new.

Let’s take the phone call for example. Calling your doctor isn’t new. It has been a part of communication in the healthcare industry for ages. How people engage with phone calls is what is evolving. In short, people are not engaging on the phone the way they used to.

The data shows phone calls are not as effective as they once were

  • 80% of Americans don’t answer calls from an unknown number. Pew Research Center, 2020
  • 85% of consumers have abandoned a call when they hit an automated attendant as opposed to a real person. People just hate phone tag! Vonage, 2019
  • Nearly half of consumers refuse to wait for the next available agent when receiving a message about “higher than normal” call volumes. ArenaCX, 2021

People are simply not picking up the phone to make or take calls the way they used to. For this reason, it’s clear, phone calling is not the solution to the doctor-patient communication issue.

On the flip side let’s consider text messaging.

  • The open rate for text messages is 98% with 90% of them opened within the first three seconds! Entrepreneur, 2016
  • 85% of consumers not only want to receive information via text but also to reply to businesses or engage in a two-way conversation. Twilio, 2016
  • 9 out of 10 people want to engage with businesses via messaging Twilio, 2016

Texting is clearly a preferred method of communication. It is right there staring us in the face. Need even more proof? Read a few Klara reviews or OhMD reviews and hear it from clinicians themselves.

If done right, it can provide a huge boost to trust and relationship building for the care team and their patients.

The key here, as with all technology, it has to be done right for people to use it. Klara pricing isn’t really going to give you the true picture of what you need to consider. We based our approach on doing it right for the patient first, removing as many barriers to meaningful conversation and patient care as possible before we tackled how it would fit into the provider’s workflows.

This method has allowed us to build an entire communication toolkit including video visits, automation, electronic forms, organization reputation management and more. The doorway to conversation with OhMD? A simple, frictionless text message.

Klara and OhMD in the real world

Simple and frictionless. We can all agree this is how we want our communication with our doctor to be. Every barrier to communication means less impact and more opportunity for frustration. This is why we believe asking how does Klara or OhMD work is more important to consider than Klara pricing or OhMD.

How do we remove those barriers?

What does a patient-down approach actually look like vs. a care team-down approach?

To understand this, let’s take a look at a scenario using a core feature of both OhMD and Klara: HIPAA compliant texting.

The OhMD experience

Primary First Care is using OhMD for patient communication.
Jane is a prospective patient looking to schedule an appointment. 

Tuesday, 2:32 PM: Jane goes to the Primary First Care website and sees that they have a call out at the top of their homepage that says “Call or Text ‘Appointment’ to schedule an appointment.” Jane texts the word appointment to the number. This experience is built using OhMD Autopilot which allows practices and healthcare teams to automate routine patient outreach.

Tuesday 2:33 PM: Jane receives a text back from OhMD Autopilot that says “Welcome to Primary First Care. We’d be happy to help you schedule your appointment. To get you scheduled can you please answer a few questions?” Before continuing to text over SMS, Autopilot also asks Jane if she would like to opt in to SMS texts or if she’d prefer encrypted messaging. If encrypted messaging is chosen, messages will be sent via a secure link in OhMD’s platform that Jane can click into from a text message where she will have to supply a code to access. Jane opts into SMS messaging.

Over the next two minutes OhMD Autopilot asks some simple questions to Jane to gather necessary patient information. Autopilot asks for information like name, date of birth, reason for appointment, and insurance information. Jane has a question though and needs to speak with someone live. She texts “talk with someone.” This triggers OhMD to deliver the information gathered to the front desk staff of Primary First Care.

Tuesday 2:36 PM: Sarah, one of the patient access medical providers working at the front desk of Primary First Care texts Jane back to see how she can help her. Sarah answers Jane’s questions via the OhMD platform on her desktop. The messages get delivered via SMS text message to Jane.

Tuesday 2:38 PM: Jane is scheduled for a Friday appointment at Primary First Care.

In this scenario, Jane sees the number to text on the website of her medical provider. Jane texts the number. Jane gets an immediate response and opts in to SMS texting. She then gathers the information she needs along with providing the necessary personal data, and she succeeds in her goal within minutes.

Let’s run back the same scenario with an organization using Klara.

The Klara experience

Main Street Family Clinic is using Klara for patient communication.
John is a prospective patient looking to schedule an appointment. The practice user goes to the Klara Staff Login.

Tuesday, 2:32 PM: John goes to the Main Street Family Clinic website and sees that they have a webchat option at the bottom of their homepage that says “Message Us.” John clicks the button and sees a note saying that if he has questions or wants to schedule an appointment to put in his phone number.

Tuesday, 2:33 PM: John enters his phone number, hits the button and is asked to enter a four digit code.

Tuesday, 2:34 PM: John receives a text on his phone from a 5 digit “Verificator” tool number. Upon receiving this text, John then copies the four digit code that was in the text and then enters it into the chat window.

Tuesday, 2:35 PM: John is asked if the chat inquiry is for him or someone else. He says it’s for him.

Tuesday, 2:36 PM: John is asked to fill in his full name and date of birth. He fills this out and clicks next.

Tuesday, 2:37 PM: The form asks what he is trying to accomplish with a list of seven buttons including things from “billing” and “medical questions” to “other.” John reads through the options and clicks “book an appointment.”

Tuesday, 2:38 PM: The automated chat tells John he is now connected with Klara and asks “How can we help you today?” At the bottom of the chat John sees that it shows him that he has chosen “book an appointment,” and asks him to “describe it in detail.”

Tuesday, 2:40 PM: John assumes they are asking him to describe what he wants out of his appointment for and types in that he hurt his knee and wants to see the doctor about it.

Tuesday, 2:41 PM: John receives a new chat saying that his message has been received and someone from the organization will be in touch with him.

Tuesday, 2:53 PM: John receives a text message that says “You have a new message from Main Street Family Clinic. Click here to reply” with a link underneath it.

Klara

Why the vast difference in experience?

The answer lies in the approach of the product build as opposed the pricing of Klara vs. OhMD.

Klara and others like it take the care team-down approach to patient communication. They are attempting to collect as much information as possible and route the communication to the appropriate care team member before actually connecting with the patient directly.

Don’t get us wrong. We get it.

It makes sense to collect as much information as you can before you put an actual person into conversation to answer questions one-on-one.

The down side? It is a terrible experience for the patient.

Think about it.

This is a real scenario that happens every day and it took five full minutes and multiple interactions with an automated service before the prospective patient could even say what they were looking to accomplish with their inquiry.

Then add on top the amount of time it takes to actually get in contact with a real person and it is an equation for patient frustration.

It must be taken into account here, that one of the reasons for the initial back and forth including verification of their phone number with the automated service is to secure protected health information (PHI). Encrypted exchange of personal data is also something OhMD offers.

The difference is, OhMD offers flexibility in how the organization uses secure encryption of messages. For some organizations, not all messages need to be securely encrypted. For example, a prospective patient reaching out to see if there is availability for an appointment.

With OhMD, if the prospective patient got into a text conversation and wanted to switch to an encrypted conversation, it is as easy as the care team member flipping a toggle switch which would deliver the message as a link that the user would have to enter their date of birth as verification to view.

Simplicity for the patient. Flexibility for the care team. Real conversations taking place that strengthen the doctor-patient relationship as excellent care is delivered.

Klara pricing vs. OhMD – Which solution makes more sense?

Now that we’ve laid out how both solutions approach solving similar problems for providers and patients, we hope we’ve provided some clarity in exactly why pricing, while certainly important, is only part of the equation when it comes to choosing your next patient communication platform.

Automated appointment reminders and hipaa compliant texting software

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