By Joyce Peng
Diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in her 20s, PicnicHealth CEO and co-founder Noga Leviner went through a difficult time. Not only did she have to deal with the physical and emotional effects of the disease, but also had to manage her records and understand her care.
“Most people get the idea that there will be a doctor in charge that will know what’s going on and explain to you and any doctors and specialists involved,” Leviner explained. “But my experience as well as many others was that there is nobody like that. The patient has to do all the work. It was clear to me how hard and tedious the process was. I had to get basically all the records I needed to manage my own care. It was a nightmare to pull everything together and move it around doctors.”
Leviner wanted to tackle this issue, so she came up with the idea behind PicnicHealth, a website that helps patients deal with their medical records. The San-Francisco-based company requests and digitalizes customer records and displays them in an easy and understandable online profile.
This is how it works: a customer lists information about his or her doctors. From there, the customer e-signs an authorization (HIPPA release form) allowing PicnicHealth to act on his or her behalf to request records. After receiving them, the company digitizes and structures the records into a comprehensive online timeline of the customer’s health care.
If a Patient Portal, an online medical records database managed by medical institutions, exists for the customer, PicnicHealth will pull data from that Patient Portal. CTO, co-founder, and Laguna Hills native Troy Astorino said when they first starting building PicnicHealth, the company members wanted to get information electronically through Patient Portal. But later they found not all of a patient’s information was there, only a subset.
Records, medical images, doctor notes and reports, and lab trend graphs can all be accessed in the customer’s PicnicHealth Timeline. The company updates records and sends them to doctors before the customer’s next appointment.
The service addresses the inoperable and disorderly system that underlies the medical world. A patient with a chronic health problem will see many doctors and specialists, but doctors often lack the time to communicate with each other. Add that to the fact that records are often illegible and fractured. Because of these downsides, patients bear the burden to understand, maintain, and move their records among doctors.
Besides work, time and money can also be saved by customers, Astorino voiced. Patients can avoid lines and limited office hours. Also, PicnicHealth takes care of all service fees.
Customer Stephanie Scott of Huntington Beach found convenience after signing up with PicnicHealth in early 2015 to manage her son’s medical records. Her two-year old son Paul has cystic fibrosis. She enjoys the organized and sectioned off digitalized records that make it easier to navigate through than her paper records. Scott also loves the customer service.
“They get back to me within a couple of hours,” Scott said. “If I am missing information, they will get that to me as soon as possible, and if not, they will give me a status update. They also will point out and teach me features [on the website] that I didn’t know existed.”
But the most important benefit of PicnicHealth is the accuracy and completeness of records.
“When you have a serious condition like cancer, you need to know everything, like how well your body is reacting to treatment, in order to make the best decisions going forward,” Astorino explained.
Astorino has first-hand experience of what effects a disorganized and incomplete medical records system can cause. When his grandfather moved between care teams at a hospital, incorrect communication occurred between his doctors. Because of this, his drug dosage got mistranscribed, and he got extremely sick. The dosage change almost killed him, and Astorino’s grandfather never fully recovered from what he had been through.
Currently, PicnicHealth is launching into the greater LA area. Leviner said the company plans to collect as much information about Southern California doctors and hospitals as it can, so when it gets Southern California customers in the future, it can handle their requests faster and with more volume.
Launched in August 2014, the website has amassed a few hundred subscribers. One of PicnicHealth short-term goals is to reach out to more customers. Other goals include creating a different web interface for doctors and lowering subscription costs. PicnicHealth costs $39/month.
Visit www.picnichealth.com to learn more about the service. The company has an LA rollout coupon code: picniclovesla. Customers using the code will pay $19/month, $20 cheaper than the regular rate.
