After a decade practicing medicine, Dr. Jamie Lindsay, founder of NuStart Health in Wabash, Indiana, found it frustrating that many of the diseases she spent her days treating were preventable. Patients would leave her office with a clear plan for important lifestyle changes, but more often than not they would return in the same shape—if not worse—for their next visit.
“I knew that as a doctor I needed to offer more help to my patients—to guide incremental changes in the way they think, act and communicate about health and wellbeing.”
Dr. Lindsay launched NuStart Health to extend her primary care practice to include personal coaches that ‘walk alongside’ participants, teaching them the core principles of nutrition, sleep, exercise, and stress management. Over the years, the NuStart model of team-based coaching has been proven effective in helping patients achieve their goals, reduce medication dependency, and take control of their health.
Taking what they learned from helping patients at their two clinics, NuStart launched a suite of corporate and school wellness programs that offer tele-coaching to employees and educators through the Hale Health platform. Offering remote coaching has allowed the team to quickly scale new corporate partners across Indiana: participants can be set up and scheduled for their first session in minutes. Hale has enabled NuStart to build better relationships with patients by giving them greater access to Dr. Lindsay and staff.
“One of the key components to successfully coaching participants in a lifestyle modification program like ours is engagement. Hale gives them unlimited access to their coach between sessions—in a way that’s manageable and efficient for our staff—which leads to better results.”
And while the convenience of a live video visit or secure message is undeniable for participants, the technology is also helping NuStart staff continue to provide an incredible experience at scale. Coaches don’t get bogged down in phone tag—and features like scheduled messages and integrated health education content streamline their ability to offer individualized and timely support for every participant.
“Hale has enabled us to build better relationships with our patients by giving them greater access to me and my staff,” explains Dr. Lindsay. “The stuff we teach really works—and with the right technology we’re now able to offer our services to more folks than ever before.”
Based in New York City, Tara Mardigan—also known as The Plate Coach—is a nutritionist who inspires others to find the most nourishing foods and lifestyle choices to meet their health needs.
An ambassador of healthful food choices, Tara worked for a decade as the team nutritionist for the World Champion Boston Red Sox helping guide the team to victory through a food-first approach to optimized performance. She also counseled patients on-site as an integrative nutrition specialist at Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Lown Cardiovascular Center in Brookline, MA.
After her move to New York, Tara opted to establish her own virtual nutrition practice: providing consults and coaching through the Hale Health platform instead of opening a physical office.
“As a dietitian, frequent communication with my clients is extremely important — Hale lets me run my virtual business and connect with clients anytime, anywhere. People absolutely love the convenience.”
Using Hale has allowed Tara to expand her client base and remove the constraints of in-person consults. Primarily working with professionals and athletes, it’s important to find ways coaching can be incorporated into busy daily schedules. Easy-to-use messaging features allow clients to ask questions in between sessions and share photos of their meals—while video visits allow much greater flexibility when booking consults.
“The results speak for themselves,” says Tara. “One client swears the regular communication and support he’s been able to receive through the live video visits has helped him drop 200 pounds. It quite possibly saved his life.”
New care models — including nutrition and coaching — require continuous support and communication to be effective. With Hale’s flexible remote care solution, providers and coaches can reach their full potential and support their clients and patients to do the same through consistent, low-cost engagement when and where they need it most.
Want to share how your practice uses Hale to unlock the power of remote care? Drop us a line at hello@hale.co or on Twitter to share your story.
Hale connects clinical teams and their patients between office visits through live video visits, secure messaging, photo + video sharing, and more. It’s free, easy to use, and secure — get started at www.hale.co
