Is Alma HIPAA compliant?
No. Alma is a chatbot for your public website, it is not HIPAA compliant, and we do not sign Business Associate Agreements. Keep protected health information (PHI) in your PMS or EHR. Set up the bot to ask only what your front desk needs to follow up, such as the patient's name, contact details, the type of visit, and a preferred time.
Can it integrate with my PMS or EHR?
Not directly. We do not offer native integrations with Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental, Athenahealth, NextGen, eClinicalWorks, or Epic today. On the Growth plan and up, Zapier can send each new lead to other apps, so check whether your PMS or EHR is on Zapier. On the Agency plan and up, a webhook can send each lead to an address your IT contact sets up. Practices whose systems cannot accept outside records use the new-lead email instead.
Does it handle insurance verification?
The bot asks the insurance questions: carrier and plan type. It does not check eligibility with insurance payers in real time, because that requires a different kind of tool. You receive the request with the carrier name, and your scheduler runs it through your normal verification process. Member ID numbers are collected by your office, not in the chat.
Can patients reschedule or cancel via the bot?
You decide how the flow works. The Appointment Reminder template records requests to reschedule or cancel and sends them to staff with the patient's preferred new time. The bot does not change the PMS calendar directly. Your front desk makes the change, just as it would for a reschedule by phone.
What about telehealth booking?
It works the same way as in-person booking. The bot records the patient's preferred time, the type of visit, and the platform they expect to use (your portal, Zoom, or another service), then sends the request to the scheduler. The Care Options Bot, which routes patients to a visit type and shows your emergency line, is a good starting point for practices that mainly offer telehealth.
Will the conversations show up in the EHR?
Only if your EHR can accept them. On the Agency plan and up, a webhook sends each new lead, with the answers from the conversation, to an address your IT contact chooses, such as the EHR's intake endpoint (the address that receives new records). Whether the EHR can turn that into a note or task depends on the EHR, so check with your vendor. We can give your team the payload schema, which describes the data the webhook sends. For practices without that connection, the conversation stays in Alma's lead inbox, and the scheduler enters it into the EHR by hand.
How do I install the widget on my practice website?
You paste one line of JavaScript code into your site's header or footer. It works on WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, and custom-built sites. If an outside vendor manages the practice site, forward them the snippet, and the work takes about five minutes. You also choose which pages the widget appears on, so you can show it across the whole site or only on the services and contact pages. Nothing is installed on the office computers.
How is patient data stored?
Conversations are kept separate for each workspace, and no other practice's account can see your data. Data is encrypted at rest (while stored) and protected by TLS in transit (an encrypted connection while the data travels online). You get standard data export and deletion on request. You decide how long data is kept and which fields the bot asks for. Deleted data can remain in our encrypted backups for up to 90 days. Our advice is to collect only what you need to schedule the visit, and to keep health details in your actual chart system.
