The popular booking engine has paused a controversial telehealth pilot and issued an apology to customers.
The CEO of online medical bookings site HotDoc has apologised to practices for running a telehealth pilot without broader customer consultation, following public backlash on social media.
In February, HotDoc launched a “telehealth on demand” pilot which matched patients needing a same-day, low-complexity telehealth consult with one of 50 participating GPs who had availability within the next two hours.
The telehealth pilot would only appear as an option when a patient started a booking from the HotDoc home screen and would show the open slots at a patient’s usual practice first.
On Wednesday last week, a post on a popular practice managers’ Facebook group detailed the experience of one clinic which feared the program was diverting away regular patients and potentially giving the impression that the telehealth pilot was affiliated with a patient’s regular clinic.
By the next day, HotDoc had sent its customers a letter apologising for “not being more transparent” about the telehealth trial.
“While we followed our usual process for small-scale tests, which included sharing details with a smaller group of customers, our GP Advisory Boards and at recent conferences, we should have recognised that this particular pilot needed input from our wider customer base,” the letter signed by HotDoc CEO Dr Ben Hurst read.
Dr Hurst stressed that the pilot was not intended to replace a patient’s regular GP, that no practices were piloting without their knowledge and that appointments were deliberately labelled as “not your regular care team” to avoid confusion.
News of the pilot, however, had moved fast.
In a LinkedIn post over the weekend, Business For Doctors founder Dr April Armstrong described the pilot as a “pivot toward direct competition” that “directly undermines the trust and collaboration” between practices and the booking engine.
“I hold it to all of the organisations that contract practices and provide services that they need a level of integrity – the same as we do, as medical practitioners – in not doing things that are unethical or not in line with their advertised business values,” Dr Armstrong told The Medical Republic.
“It’s not unethical to capitalise on business, but it’s unethical to do it without your clients knowing.”
In an updated statement released on Monday, Dr Hurst thanked HotDoc customers for sharing their honest thoughts and announced that the pilot had now been paused.
“The pilot was designed to test whether we could unlock available appointments for patients who would otherwise struggle to make a timely appointment, while also helping GPs fill their books,” Dr Hurst said.
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“Over the past week, many of our customers have shared their honest thoughts about the booking flow for HotDoc’s Telehealth On Demand pilot.
“We have been told this booking flow justifiably felt like it could compromise the trusted relationships customers have built with their patients.
“This was never our intention but what’s clear is that we got this wrong, and the pilot needed broader input from our customers.”
HotDoc has also started a changelog which will provide information on upcoming developments on the telehealth project and opened a wider customer consultation process.
The booking engine was reportedly examining a full sale as part of a strategic review as recently as May of this year.