Premier Health Group (PHGI) (PHGRF) Launching Virtual and Remote Medical Services

Premier Health Group (CSE: PHGI, OTCQB: PHGRF, Frankfurt: 6PH) (the “Company” or “Premier Health”), a Company focused on developing innovative approaches that combine human skill-based expertise with emerging technologies for the healthcare industry, is pleased to announce it will be launching a range of virtual and remote services to be offered to primary care clinics, including Nurses,  Medical Office Assistants (MOA) and Office Managers. The initial launch will focus on current Juno EMR clients in BC with plans to roll out to other provinces by the end of Q2 2019.

More and more physicians are opting to become hospitalists, citing higher income and no business overhead or administrative headaches. With a rising number of family physicians retiring and/or burning out, high fixed overhead and the lack of business support represent major deterrents to recruiting young doctors to take over private practices. As a result, patients are suffering. In a cost effective and efficient division of labor, physicians would focus on formulating diagnoses and treatment plans, while nurses and MOAs oversee routine health maintenance, discuss lifestyle changes, and educate patients on their medical conditions and treatment needs.

Premier Health’s remote nurses will be automatically alerted of any patient follow-up. This process is enabled through the Juno EMR with no manual interaction or need for dedicated labour by the clinic. In addition to improving the patient backlog and long wait times that currently afflicts our healthcare system, this remote shared service model will increase the clinics billings revenue by allowing physicians to be dedicated to seeing patients while reducing the clinic’s fixed labor cost. In some cases, where smaller clinics don’t have the resources for adequate patient follow-up, implementing an automatically-prompted and systematic process could significantly improve the quality of care and improve patient health outcomes. In addition to remote shared nurses, Premier is also planning to add remote shared billing services by Q3 2019. This initiative will include forensic billing to detect missed or incorrect billing.

MOAs and Office Managers can improve workflow and increase clinic efficiency by focusing on EMR documentation, managing the day to day clinic operations and other administrative tasks. Premier is launching both a virtual AI powered phone assistant and a shared MOA/Office Manager system for Juno EMR clients. The AI system will be able to triage and manage many of the repetitive tasks while the shared MOA will complete the back-end administrative tasks needed to operate a clinic. Both systems will work seamlessly with the clinic’s current staff and doctors. As an added service, to complement this offering, Premier Health has developed comprehensive templates for manuals required in clinics including, but not limited to, privacy and equipment training manuals. Keeping up with documentation requirements is a real problem for many smaller clinics today who are unable to afford the time or resources involved in adhering to stringent and evolving regulations placed on them.

Rising labour costs and inefficient use of resources amount to increasing challenges in primary care. Premier Health’s new initiative is curated for medical clinic owners and operators to reduce the burdensome overhead associated with day to day operations. These offering will transform the primary care landscape from a fixed labor cost to a variable cost model that is customized for the individual needs of clinics. This increased efficiency and lower operating cost will increase the overall profitability of primary care clinics.

“From my own clinical experience, I see the benefit of offering these services to other privately-owned clinics,” said Dr. Essam Hamza, CEO of Premier Health. “We have successfully integrated shared resources across our four HealthVue Medical clinics. With rising labour costs, many clinics simply cannot afford dedicated staffing. With our recent acquisition of Cloud Practice, we have the opportunity to provide virtual and remote services to the 287 clinics currently using Juno EMR.”

The company already has a list of clinics immediately interested in virtual nursing services in BC and plans to provide further expansion updates in Q2 2019.