Many IT and operations leaders debate whether to build their own patient engagement, check-in, portal, and revenue automation stack around their EHR, or partner with a focused vendor. This page walks through the tradeoffs and when it makes sense to choose MediChatApp.
For high-volume practices and health systems, “patient engagement” and “check-in” are not side projects. They are the front door of your schedules, your revenue, and your patient experience. Whether you build or buy determines how quickly you can adapt to payer pressure, new locations, telehealth, and staffing models.
MediChatApp is intentionally opinionated: instead of giving you a toolkit and walking away, we bring software, implementation, and (optionally) virtual assistants under one BAA, starting with Greenway Intergy as the primary EHR. This page breaks down when that approach outperforms building everything internally.
Both approaches can work. The question is where you want your internal teams spending their time.
| Dimension | Build In-House | Buy MediChatApp |
|---|---|---|
| Time to impact | 3-6 years at minimum to assemble a full stack (intake, portal, messaging, website, reviews, automation, reporting, staffing workflows) around your EHR. | Days-weeks to launch core modules; phased onboarding of check-in, portal, communications, and VA program around existing Intergy deployment. |
| Upfront cost & risk | Significant internal FTEs (product, engineering, security, QA), plus ongoing maintenance and on-call responsibility for clinical-grade systems. | Subscription structure with clear scope, SLA, BAA, and implementation; internal teams stay focused on EHR, analytics, and enterprise stack. |
| Depth of Intergy integration | Requires in-house Intergy expertise, API familiarity, interface management, and long-term ownership of schema and workflow design. | Built from day one around Intergy schedules, charges, recalls, and balances, with proven patterns from high-volume practices. |
| Virtual assistants & staffing | Separate effort: recruiting, training, VPN, telephony, monitoring, QA, scheduling, and workflows must be designed and enforced internally. | Optional MediChatApp VA program, with VAs, supervisors, VPN, Google Workspace, RingCentral, and task queues in one place. |
| Security & compliance | Internal team owns policies, audits, technical controls, and every change to patient-facing workflows across web, SMS, and portal. | Platform shipped with HIPAA-ready patterns, BAA, security docs, audit trails, and implementation support aligned with your policies. |
| Flexibility over 3–5 years | Maximum control if you have a stable, well-funded product team and expect to support multiple EHRs or custom internal initiatives. | High flexibility within the MediChatApp stack, with room to integrate additional systems and adapt workflows as volumes, locations, or EHR strategy evolve. |
In practice, many organizations end up in a hybrid model: a focused vendor like MediChatApp for operational rails, plus internal analytics and specialty tooling on top.
When it makes sense to build internallyThere are real reasons to build. The key is being honest about capacity and long-term ownership.
Most practices and groups prefer to move quickly with a focused vendor and keep their internal teams aligned to core clinical and analytics systems.
There are valid reasons to build, and valid reasons to buy. We regularly help groups and health systems think through their roadmap, existing vendors, and internal constraints. The outcome might be MediChatApp, a hybrid model, or in some cases a build decision — but it should be deliberate.
If you are evaluating multiple vendors (Phreesia, Tebra, Luma, Klara, CheckInAsyst, Solutionreach) or considering a future move to a system like Epic, we can also discuss how MediChatApp can fit into that longer-term trajectory alongside your enterprise IT strategy.
We can show live workflows, Intergy-connected dashboards, and examples of how practices have replaced multi-vendor stacks with a single operational platform.