What is Decoda Health building?

An AI-native operating system built for the next generation of clinical care. We're empowering medical practices with the tools they need to thrive in an AI-native world. From autonomous front desks to intelligent charting, we've got you covered.

How much did Decoda Health raise and who led the round?

Decoda Health Raises $4.5M to Build the Operating System for Modern Care, led by Y Combinator.

What are the new med spa laws in 2026?

State legislatures are regulating med spas directly for the first time. Indiana's SB 282, Texas's Jenifer's Law, California's SB 351, and New Jersey's S2996 — each has specific requirements, deadlines, and a 2026 compliance checklist.

How can med spas reduce no-shows?

Cut your med spa no-show rate below 5%. See which reminders, deposits, and card-on-file rules to use for each appointment — with research, a copy-paste cancellation policy, and a plan for backfilling empty slots.

How much does it cost to open a med spa in 2026?

Med spa startup costs in 2026 run $150K–$500K. See the full cost breakdown, medical director requirements, and how long until a new med spa is profitable.

How can med spas set up VIP memberships and patient wallets?

Modern med spas can set up custom membership tiers, auto-convert recurring charges to patient credit, and split payments across wallets, gift cards, and physical cards at checkout.

What's the best way to manage recurring memberships for a med spa without a separate CRM?

A purpose-built med spa EMR like Decoda handles multi-tier memberships natively — including per-item rollover, tiered discounts, configurable billing cycles, and automatic credit conversion — so you never need a separate CRM or spreadsheet to track member benefits. Membership configuration that most general-purpose tools fail to deliver is built directly into the checkout and patient profile.

How do I set up and conduct telehealth or virtual follow-up visits inside my practice management software without letting patients self-book them?

You can configure virtual locations within your scheduling settings and restrict them to staff-initiated booking only, keeping telehealth appointments — like post-operative follow-up calls — fully internal. The virtual visit lives inside the same scheduling and clinical documentation environment as your in-person care, so notes and records stay in one place.

AI-native EMR vs. legacy EMR with AI added on — what's the real difference for a med spa?

A legacy system that bolts AI on top can only apply intelligence to what its rigid architecture allows — typically scheduling or chat. An AI-native system is built so that AI understands context across the full patient journey, from the first phone call through clinical notes, inventory, and follow-up campaigns. For a med spa, that difference shows up in charting speed, front desk automation, and inventory tracking — not just appointment reminders.

What are the biggest software switching triggers for elective-care clinics in 2026?

The most common reasons independent practices switch software are poor customer support, fragmented tools that don't talk to each other, missing or broken membership features, and compliance gaps in clinical documentation. Multi-location growth and new state licensing requirements in 2026 are also pushing owners to find a single system that works across locations.

Can I manage high-risk payment processing — like peptides, semaglutide, or ketamine — through my med spa software?

Yes — Decoda supports high-risk payment processing through its Rainforest integration, which covers services and products like peptides, semaglutide, GLP-1, ketamine, and TRT/HRT. If you currently have a merchant relationship with Stripe or Square, it's worth verifying compatibility before assuming your existing setup covers high-risk categories, since those processors routinely freeze funds for these service types.

How do I reduce the time my front desk spends on phone calls without losing the personal feel patients expect?

An AI front desk answers missed calls, texts patients back immediately, and handles routine booking and follow-up questions 24/7 — so your staff focuses on the patients already in the room. Clinic partners using this approach see a 70% reduction in inbound call volume on average, which gives the front desk time to deliver the attentive experience that keeps patients coming back.

What should I look for in a med spa EMR if I'm running GLP-1 or weight loss programs?

Look for billing cycles that match your program cadence — 6-week, 10-week, and 12-week options are standard for structured weight loss and GLP-1 protocols — along with automated patient follow-ups and high-risk payment processing for compounding medications. Clinical note templates and care plan timelines purpose-built for weight loss workflows prevent the documentation gaps that create compliance risk.

Will patients see my personal or work email address when they join a telehealth video call?

No — telehealth video calls initiated through Decoda are conducted within the platform's virtual visit environment, so your personal or work email address is not exposed to patients. The invite and join flow is handled through the scheduling and communications layer, keeping your contact information private.

How long does it actually take to migrate from an existing EMR to a new practice management system?

A well-managed migration from an existing EMR takes three to four weeks when the new vendor handles the heavy lifting — data transfer, appointment history, and team training. The practices that report painful migrations are almost always ones where the vendor handed them a checklist and disappeared; white-glove migration support, where the team configures the system to match how your practice actually runs, is the difference between chaos and a clean cutover.

What does a system of record actually mean for an independent med spa, and why does it matter?

A system of record means every patient interaction — calls, bookings, clinical notes, payments, inventory usage, and follow-ups — lives in one place and feeds the same patient profile. For an independent med spa, this matters because fragmented tools create data silos where rebooking reminders don't fire, membership credits get miscounted, and providers walk into appointments without full patient history. One connected record is how a small team operates like a much larger one.

How One Weight Loss Practice Manages 15 Locations on a Single Platform

When software can't keep up with 15 locations, care suffers. See how one weight loss practice fixed that with Decoda.

When Growth Outpaces the Software Built to Support It

This isn't a staffing problem. It's a system problem.

Practices at this scale need software that was built with multi-site operations in mind, where intake, documentation, billing, and communication work together without manual handoffs between tools. When those pieces don't connect, growth creates friction instead of momentum.

That's the situation Riva's Medical Weight Loss faced before switching to Decoda. What changed wasn't just the software stack. It was how the entire care delivery model functioned day to day.

The Problem: Fragmented, Inflexible, and Unresponsive

Before Decoda, Riva's Medical Weight Loss was stitching together a handful of disconnected tools: one system for scheduling, another for charting, a third for billing, and separate channels for patient communication. Nothing talked to each other.

Staff spent hours each week manually transferring data between systems. Providers were re-entering the same patient information across multiple screens before a visit even started. And when the group opened new locations, the chaos compounded, it never resolved.

The tools their team had were built for single-site clinics. None were designed with multi-location weight loss care in mind, and none could adapt to the group's membership model without expensive custom workarounds.

Weight loss care makes those gaps worse, not better. Programs run on recurring visits, GLP-1 agonist protocols and peptide protocols, and memberships that bill on cadences a standard EMR never anticipated. When a patient starts a program at one location and continues at another, the record has to follow them. When a membership renews on a 6-week or 12-week cycle instead of a monthly one, the billing system has to handle it without a workaround. The old stack did neither, so staff filled the gaps by hand, every week, at every site.

Scheduling across 15 locations required manual coordination that no single tool could own
Patient records were scattered, making longitudinal weight loss tracking inconsistent across sites
The membership billing structure couldn't be configured without outside developer support

The Search: What Most EMRs Get Wrong for Practices Like This

Riva's Medical Weight Loss had outgrown its original setup long before anyone said it out loud. Scheduling software built for a single-location clinic buckled under the weight of 15 locations. Patient records lived in one system, billing in another, and front desk workflows varied by site. Staff spent more time patching gaps between tools than actually helping patients.

Why Adding Seats Doesn't Solve the Coordination Problem

What most EMRs get wrong for multi-location elective care is the assumption that scale is just a matter of adding more seats. It rarely is. The real problem is coordination: getting intake, scheduling, clinical documentation, and follow-up to behave as one connected system across every location, not a patchwork of workarounds that each office manages differently.

For weight loss practices in particular, patient journeys are long, membership-based, and highly personalized. A system that can't track tiered memberships, automate check-ins between visits, or give a provider instant context at the point of care creates friction that compounds across thousands of patients.

Most platforms the practice looked at handled memberships as a simple monthly charge. That model breaks the moment a program needs per-item rollover, tiered discounts, or a billing cycle tied to a GLP-1 protocol. The alternatives either couldn't configure it at all or quoted a custom development project to get close. And when the practice asked how quickly a requested change could ship, the real answer from legacy vendors was weeks for a settings tweak and, in some cases, years for an actual feature. At 15 locations, that pace isn't a nuisance. It caps how fast the practice can grow.

Why Decoda: A Team That Builds, Not One That Waits

Decoda is built by a team that has worked inside healthcare practices, which means the product roadmap reflects real clinical friction, not abstract feature requests. When Riva's Medical Weight Loss needed something the system couldn't yet do, the answer wasn't a workaround or a support ticket that aged in a queue. It was a conversation that led to a build.

That kind of responsiveness is rare. Most EHR and practice management vendors operate on annual release cycles. Decoda ships continuously, with feedback from practices like this one shaping what gets built next.

The tools that came out of this relationship, including AI Scribe for documentation, AI Front Desk for patient intake and scheduling, and Ask Decoda for querying clinical and practice data, weren't designed in isolation. They were refined through real-world use at scale, across multiple locations, and with the complexity that comes with running a high-volume weight loss group.

What Changed: The Platform That Grew With the Practice

When Riva's Medical Weight Loss expanded past its fifth location, the cracks became hard to ignore. Scheduling lived in one system, billing in another, and patient communication happened through whichever staff member had a free moment. Coordinators were spending hours each week on tasks that should have taken minutes.

How Connected Workflows Replaced the Patchwork

Area	Before Decoda	With Decoda
Scheduling	Manual coordination across 15 locations, no single tool in charge	Multi-location scheduling unified in one place, with leadership reporting across every site
Clinical documentation	Providers charting after hours, re-entering patient data across multiple screens	AI Scribe captures visit notes in real time during appointments
Patient communication	Inbound calls handled by front desk coordinators, pulling them away from in-person patients	AI Front Desk fields inbound calls and appointment requests without adding headcount
Membership billing	Custom billing cycles (GLP-1, 6-week, 12-week programs) required manual workarounds	Tiered membership tools configured to match actual program structures and billing cadences
Data access	Staff hunting through separate systems to find patient records or practice data	Command+K and Ask Decoda let any team member pull up records or query data in seconds

Decoda gave the practice a single place where those workflows actually connected. AI Scribe handled documentation during visits so physicians stopped charting after hours. AI Front Desk fielded inbound calls and appointment requests without pulling a coordinator away from a patient standing at the front desk. Command+K let staff pull up anything across the system without hunting through menus.

Tiered membership tools let the group structure recurring revenue around its actual programs, including the longer billing cycles that GLP-1 and structured weight loss plans depend on. Multi-location scheduling and reporting gave leadership one view across every site instead of 15 separate spreadsheets. And when the team hit something the system couldn't yet do, the response wasn't a support ticket that aged in a queue. Decoda's team answers in a dedicated channel in minutes, configures workflows to match how the practice runs, and builds what's missing in days.

The result was less about adding tools and more about removing the friction that had quietly stacked up across 15 locations. Decoda clinic partners report an average of 1.5x more appointments scheduled and a 70% reduction in inbound call volume handled by front desk staff. When the infrastructure finally matched the scale of the practice, the team could focus on patients again.

In Riva's Words: What "Beyond What I Expected" Actually Means

The founder of Riva's Medical Weight Loss didn't use vague praise when she described her experience. She said the system went beyond what she expected, and for a practice owner managing 15 locations, that's a specific claim.

What she expected was basic coordination: scheduling that didn't break, records that stayed consistent across sites, and staff who weren't constantly patching gaps between disconnected tools. What she got was a setup where AI Scribe handled clinical documentation during visits, AI Front Desk managed inbound communication without adding headcount, and Ask Decoda gave her team answers without hunting through separate systems.

The gap between "expected" and "delivered" wasn't about flashy features. It was about whether the software could handle the actual weight of a multi-site weight loss practice without requiring their team to compensate for it. For Riva's Medical Weight Loss, it did.

The Takeaway: What Software That Compounds With Growth Actually Looks Like

The right software grows with a practice instead of forcing the practice to work around its limitations. For a 15-location weight loss group, that meant needing one system to handle scheduling, clinical documentation, billing, and patient communication without stitching together five separate tools.

Decoda was built for exactly this kind of practice. AI Scribe captures visit notes in real time. AI Front Desk handles inbound calls and appointment requests without adding front-desk headcount. Command+K lets any staff member pull up a patient record, task, or workflow in seconds. Ask Decoda gives providers a way to query clinical and practice data conversationally. Tiered membership tools let the practice structure recurring revenue the way they actually want to.

When a practice reaches 15 locations, the gap between software that was designed for growth and software that merely tolerates it becomes impossible to ignore.

Final Thoughts on Finding Software That Actually Fits a Multi-Site Weight Loss Practice

The gap between software that was designed for growth and software that just tolerates it shows up in small ways every day: in the extra steps your staff takes, the notes your providers finish after hours, and the coordination that falls through the cracks. Your practice deserves a setup where those things just work.

Schedule a quick intro with Decoda to see how AI Scribe, AI Front Desk, and Ask Decoda fit into your workflow.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the best EMR for a multi-location weight loss practice running GLP-1 programs?

Decoda Health is built for this use case, with tiered membership tools that handle 6-week, 10-week, and 12-week billing cycles natively, no custom development required. Most general-purpose EMRs treat memberships as simple monthly charges, which breaks the moment a GLP-1 or structured weight loss program needs per-item rollover or cycle-specific billing. Decoda also connects scheduling, clinical documentation, and patient communication in one system across every location.

Can a 15-location weight loss practice run without stitching together separate scheduling, billing, and charting tools?

Yes. Decoda consolidates scheduling, clinical documentation, billing, and patient communication into one connected system, so staff stop chasing data across tools and providers stop charting after hours. AI Scribe captures visit notes in real time, AI Front Desk handles inbound calls without pulling coordinators off the floor, and Command+K lets any team member pull up records or workflows in seconds across all locations.

How does Decoda handle membership billing for weight loss programs that don't bill on a standard monthly cycle?

Decoda's tiered membership tools are configurable to 6-week, 10-week, and 12-week billing cycles, the cadences that GLP-1 and structured weight loss programs actually run on. You can also configure per-item rollover and tiered discounts without outside developer support, which is where most legacy EMRs either fail outright or quote a multi-week custom project.

What do weight loss practices with multiple locations typically see after switching to Decoda?

Decoda clinic partners report an average of 1.5x more appointments scheduled and a 70% reduction in inbound call volume handled by front desk staff. For multi-location groups, the compounding effect comes from removing manual coordination across sites, with intake, documentation, billing, and follow-up working together instead of each office managing a different workaround.

How long does it take Decoda's team to build a feature a weight loss practice needs but the system doesn't yet have?

Decoda's team responds in a dedicated Slack channel in under five minutes and builds missing features in days, not weeks or years. For practices that have previously submitted tickets to legacy vendors and waited months for a response, this is one of the most common switching triggers, the practice shapes the product roadmap instead of waiting on an annual release cycle.