Is MilkNotes right for you?

I’m a big fan of my colleagues who are out there taking risks and developing products for our community. Hardly any of us would be here today without the paper charting forms developed by Diana West or Pat Lindsey’s superbill, which trained so many of us in understanding how insurance reimbursement works. These products are still invaluable and irreplaceable in a paper-based workflow and I recommend you check them out if you’re not ready to make the leap to a paperless charting system.

Since paperless is the name of my game, I want to make sure that you know about MilkNotes, developed by IBCLC Liz Flight to be a cloud-based charting system designed specifically for lactation work.

Here’s what I love about MilkNotes

Liz is in the trenches with us, and the workflow of the app “feels” like private practice to me
The reports generated by MilkNotes are simple and beautiful, and will make great marketing tools for those pediatricians you’re communicating with. Better reports may mean more referrals.
The interface functionally separates the mother and the baby’s chart, while visually keeping them on the same page using tabs. I’m a huge fan of this feature because the less jumping around I have to, the better!
The feeding record toggles between lbs/oz and grams. Enter one way, and the app will do the conversion for you.
The physical assessments use dropdown menus (easy) and also let you add your own options.
The narrative fields are well placed to encourage you to add more as needed.
Online scheduling works well.
Telehealth is integrated.

Client Communications

MilkNotes offers secure messaging in their professional plan so that you can meet your obligations to offer secure messaging for your clients if they want it. I use Spruce myself for secure messaging because it also gives me a business phone line, and if you mention me we will both get a free month.

Because you’ll need secure email and document storage that conforms to your country’s privacy laws, I do recommend having a paid account with G-Suite or Office 365. Both of those services will provide a Business Associate Agreement making them suitable for storing and transmitting PHI.

Care Plans and Pediatrician Reports

Your care plan, which will have clickable links, can be easily shared with your client through the portal, which is included with the Standard plan.

Milk Notes also creates beautifully formatted PDFs that can be sent to your clients or faxed to their care providers. With the Professional plan, you can have integrated faxing that will make it really easy to send those reports.

Billing and Invoicing

MilkNotes won’t yet track financial information for you, such as payments received or insurance claims generated, and it won’t create a superbill for you. You’re going to need your own system for that.

SquareUp works great for receiving client payments and tracking your financials. You can swipe credit cards at the time of the visit or integrate your SquareUp account with Acuity Scheduling for online payment. It has some questionable sharing policies but my payment policies cover that for you.

Milk Notes doesn’t have integrated superbills or claims yet, so you’ll want to manage those outside of the program. The Crash Course has a superbill template (along with all kinds of other useful information on out-of-network and in-network insurance issues).

Consent for Care and Payment Policies

MilkNotes comes with a built-in consent form which do mention payment policies. If your policies differ from what the forms describe, you’re going to want to replace that with your own personalized consent form. You can modify what Liz has created, or customize the consent forms and payment policies in my Toolkit and provide them to the client on paper or in advance. You can learn how I recommend using MilkNotes here.