Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for Users

You can sign-up after downloading the BoobFairy app from the Apple App Store (iOS) and Google Play (Android) under the name “BoobFairy.” After you have downloaded the app, you can create an “Expert” account. You won’t be able to sign-up on our website; please use these links to download the app:

App Store (iOS) download

Google Play (Android) download

Yes! There are no listing / sign-up fees or monthly subscription fees or messaging fees. Come join the BoobFairy platform, build up your brand, add your schedule / availability, start chatting with potential clients, and grow your business. We don’t think it’s fair when companies force us to pay for a product or service without even knowing if we will get any value from it. So, we decided not to force the same thing onto others. We believe fees should be tied to getting value / results.

The only fee you will pay is 10% of the telehealth consultation price plus a 3% payment processing that our payments vendor, Stripe, charges.

At the moment, the following “Expert Types” can offer their services on the platform:

• Lactation Consultants,
• Doulas (Childbirth Doulas and Postpartum Doulas), and
• Sleep Consultants.
  
  

We plan to open the platform up to many more “Expert Types” in the future within the Maternal & Child Health industry. If there is a certain Expert Type that you want us to prioritize, please let us know at hello@boobfairy.com

Yes, you must have either a certification or license in your expertise area to be able to engage with potential clients.

For example, if you want to offer Doula services, you must provide proof by uploading a copy of your Doula certification / training. If you want to provide Lactation services, you must upload proof of a lactation certificate or license. We only allow health professionals to become Experts on the BoobFairy platform to maintain high quality standards for clients. Until you upload a copy of your certification / license in an expertise area, your profile will remain “private” for that particular expertise area and won’t be shown to the public.

Your business should be and IS your business. Our aim is to have the smallest, minimum influence on the way you run your business. You have full control over your branding, working style, communications, scheduling / availability, work setting, time spent on the platform, which services you offer, and client relationships, etc. We will NEVER get involved in client advice, recommendations, and dispensing of general care. Most of our product / service offerings are optional and you can choose to use them (or not), on your own accord.

We are here to help take the “business operations” off your plate, outside of your core business activities. We help you:

• Build a technology platform and implement data privacy/security,
• Handle communication methods, e.g. in-app chats, video calls, etc.
• Process payments / handle billing
• Expand sales & marketing outreach via our marketplace
• Prepare forms & legal templates, and
• Create new, optional product/service offerings to sell to clients
• Organize documentation
  
  

The only area where we require cooperation is by abiding by our Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, and Independent Contractor Agreement (which includes Code of Conduct standards), conducting yourself in a professional manner, and always doing what is in the best interests of your clients.

Yes, we can! First, just know that you don’t need to create a legal entity in advance of offering your services on the BoobFairy platform. To start working with clients, all you need is a health certificate or license in the expertise area that you are going to offer your services in. That’s it.

To help you get started in setting up your own private practice, we created a “Guide to Starting Your Own Practice” to walk you through all of the steps you are likely to encounter along the way. This guide was written by one of our co-founders who has been literally writing the preeminent book on how to build a business in the United States.

You can find a copy of this guide within the “Resources” section of your Expert account to help you get up and running faster.

We know you didn’t get into healthcare to contemplate what business entity type is best to create, or to draft legal agreements, or figure out what an EIN number is or where to get your NPI number or liability insurance coverage, and other components of running a business. You want to spend all of your time working with clients. Hopefully this “Guide to Starting Your Own Practice” helps you get there quickly.

Maybe. The money that Experts have earned is being sent to them via ACH transfers, commonly known as “Direct Deposit.” ACH transfers only work domestically within the United States. Therefore, in order to accept ACH transfers, you will need to have a bank account in the United States. As long as you have a US bank account, you should be able to work from other countries. If you don’t have a US bank account, then we do not currently have a way to send you the money that you have earned on the platform. We do not do international wire transfers at this time.

However, we created an informational packet called “Guide to Starting Your Own Practice” which would likely be useful for you. Within this Guide, we have a section about banking / payments (Section 4) that tells you how to create a US legal entity and then with that US legal entity, you could also get access to a US bank account. If you follow the steps in this Guide, you could set-up your bank account and receive payouts on the BoobFairy platform. The free Guide is available in the “Resources” section of the app, after you sign-up for your own Expert account. Search for the words “Non-US Resident” to more quickly find the relevant information.

It is not mandatory to link an external calendar to your BoobFairy account. The reason we offer the option to link an external calendar is so that BoobFairy automatically blocks off your availability if you already have existing appointments in another scheduling system. This prevents you from accidently double-booking yourself.

We assume that you are already using a personal or work calendar to manage your schedule. A linked calendar ensures you never have any unfortunate, scheduling conflicts.
You can link your BoobFairy account to any of the following five calendar programs:

• Apple / iOS / iCloud
• Google / Gmail / Android
• Microsoft Outlook
• Microsoft Exchange
• Microsoft Office 365
  
  

If you do not manage your schedule / availability with an external calendar, you can just use/select BoobFairy’s internal calendar instead.

Yes! We’ve built BoobFairy with the understanding that most people are working other jobs or have variable schedules that change often. You can change your availability whenever you want and however often you want. You can even add multiple availability timeframes per day for completing appointments, e.g. 8AM-11AM, 1:30-5:30PM, and 10PM-2AM.

We give you a 1-week calendar (Monday-Sunday) and you can update your availability as you have more clarity surrounding your schedule. Or you can enter a set working schedule and keep it that way, forever.

With roughly 6,500 languages spoken in the world today, we didn’t feel like we could realistically list them all. We recommend you tell users, within the “About Me” section of your profile, that you speak that language too. We will be adding a “keyword search” tool very soon. Users will be able to search for “Serbian” for example and find Experts that wrote in their profile that they speak Serbian too.

Absolutely! While accessing your profile, you will see a button where you can switch to the “user-side.” Once you click that button, you will switch over and be able to search for Experts to hire too.

HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). This law required the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to adopt national standards for electronic health care transactions which includes rules surrounding data privacy and security. The law was intended to protect the Private Health Information (PHI) of patients who use the US healthcare system. This government website helps you better understand your rights under HIPAA. While not all services offered through BoobFairy are considered healthcare transactions under the laws of HIPAA, we are still implementing HIPAA throughout our platform, in all areas, to ensure high standards of encryption, data privacy, and security. By operating in a HIPAA-compliant way, you can be sure that your data is private and secure.

First of all, BoobFairy is HIPAA-compliant. We take everyone’s privacy and data security very seriously! Every message and consultation is fully-encrypted, private, and secure. We do not share any private health information (PHI) with anyone without the client’s permission. The only people that can view a client’s health information is an Expert that they are engaging with. Not even BoobFairy staff who maintain this technology platform will be able to view private health information (PHI).

HIPAA regulations only protect the client’s private health information (PHI); not the Expert’s information. But with that being said, we keep everyone’s information private and secure. We are firm believers in “treat others the way you would want to be treated.” Since we wouldn’t want others getting ahold of our private information, we do all that we can to protect everyone’s data.

All Experts have the ability to create a profile and tailor it for multiple expertise areas (if they possess multiple certificates / licenses). This easy-to-build profile helps to build your personal brand and encourage potential clients to engage with you. Via BoobFairy’s messaging platform, users can chat with you to get to know you better, free of charge. They can also view your current availability and book an appointment without you needing to get involved, upfront.

To protect users from unsolicited sales pitches, Experts can only engage with users AFTER a user has reached out to that Expert first.

At the moment, only Telehealth calls are possible. We plan to facilitate “Home Visits and “In-Office Appointments” soon, if an Expert desires to offer them. Telehealth calls can be for 15 minute-, 30 minute-, or 60 minute- increments.

You will be able to do so soon. We’ve been listening to your feedback and will be rolling out many new product and service options shortly, such as:

• In-app messaging subscription plans,
• Bundled packages,
• “Home visits” and/or “In-Office” appointments,
• And others that we can’t announce just yet…stay tuned!

Right now, we only display the next 8 days (which includes today) of your availability to potential clients.
For example: If today is Tuesday, November 9, 2021, a potential client can see your availability up until Tuesday, November 16, 2021 (for the next 8 days).

We don’t want to allow potential clients to book an appointment for months in advance because we believe BoobFairy is a supplemental platform for most people and we don’t want to force them to commit to appointments far into the future. Plus, most maternal & child health appointments are of a more “urgent” manner and we think 1 week of availability is sufficient about 80% of the time.

We’ll start by saying that entering any of that information is completely optional and if you feel uncomfortable disclosing any of it, then please don’t. The reason we are asking for this information is for 2 reasons:

• To build a more personalized approach to healthcare. We use these answers to provide “Inclusivity Filters” so that clients can more easily find and connect with practitioners that have a similar background or shared world views.
  – Note: We don’t openly “list” this sensitive information in your profile (e.g. we don’t say, “Ethnicity: Black” on your profile). Rather, we just filter out / narrow down the search results that don’t align with the search fields that the user considers important within the “Inclusivity Filters”
  
  
• To improve health outcomes. Clients that better relate to their providers tend to trust them more and are more likely to open up about the difficulties they might be experiencing. More transparency will hopefully lead to better maternal & child health outcomes.
  
  

Unfortunately, the maternal mortality rate for people identifying as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) is 3-4X worse than Caucasian people. One of the contributing factors to this alarming statistic is that many BIPOC either do not have access to proper care or do not feel comfortable discussing their health information with others in an American healthcare system traditionally dominated by Caucasian people. These “Inclusivity Filters” are our small way of trying to help correct these issues.

We take care of all of the paperwork for you. We have created extensive “Health Questionnaire Forms” to capture all of the relevant info, for each expertise area, that you might need to know before a consult starts. Once a client uploads the completed “Health Questionnaire Form,” you will be notified and be able to view it.

Yes, it really is “on-demand.” If you have ever used a ride-sharing app before like Uber or Lyft, you will see that our “on-demand” consultations operate in a similar way.

Since this is a new concept in the healthcare world, we’ll explain how it works in further detail below:

If you have some free-time (perhaps you just finished a shift at the hospital), you can change your status to “available” and add your hours of availability (e.g. available for the next 3 hours). We only allow Experts to be listed as “Available” for immediate consultations if they have open availability for AT LEAST the next 75 minutes. The reason is that it might take the client up to 15 minutes to finish their paperwork / prep. Plus, they might need a 60-minute consultation, especially since most “Immediate” consultations are for urgent issues that might require a lot of troubleshooting (so, 75 minutes total).

Once the client authorizes payment for an “Immediate” appointment with you, we will send you a push notification (and email) to alert you that a telehealth call is going to start within the next 5-10 minutes, so you can properly prepare. The client will fill out 2 legal forms and the “Health Questionnaire Form.” Once the “Health Questionnaire Form” has been submitted, you will receive another push notification (and email) that the form is ready to be viewed. At that point, we put the client into the “Waiting Room” and let them know that you are reviewing the form and will join the call shortly. After you finish reviewing the Health Questionnaire, join the call, and initiate the consult.

It’s that easy! You’ll be thinking, “Why hasn’t anyone built this before?!” We wonder the same thing…

All Experts should be developing a “Care Plan” within their expertise area in collaboration with their clients. That Care Plan should be uploaded post-consultation so that the client can have a copy.

If your expertise area accepts health insurance (e.g. lactation consultations), you should be preparing two more documents (potentially) for your client, post-consultation, and uploading them to the “Past Appointment” Card, for the client’s records:

• Chart Notes documenting the consult so that the documentation can be passed along to the client’s primary care physician (PCP) and be added to their electronic health record (EHR).
• A Superbill, at the client’s request, so the client can seek out reimbursement from their health insurer. There is a Superbill template within the “Resources” section of the app that is at your disposal, if you wish to use it.

We currently accept all major credit and debit cards, including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, and Diner’s Club. We also work with HSA/FSA payment cards too for even further savings.

Soon, we will accept Apple Pay and Google Pay.

At this time, we only allow refunds in rare circumstances. If an Expert has acted in a fraudulent manner or breaks our Code of Conduct, the client may request a refund. If our technology platform was experiencing technical difficulties and the client was not able to complete a telehealth consultation in an adequate manner, we will also issue a refund. In almost all other circumstances, we are not processing refunds.

After you sign-up and create an “Expert” account, you will find an in-depth, Onboarding Guide within the “Resources” section of the app. This Onboarding Guide likely contains the answers to your remaining questions. Please refer to it when creating your profile. If your answers aren’t there, then feel free to email us at hello@boobfairy.com.