AI consulting for healthcare practices, for the front office, not the exam room.
I set AI up for independent practices, for the work that's all typing: appeal letters, staff procedures, policy drafts, patient instructions from your approved wording, and the replies your front desk rewrites all day. Which plan can touch patient information gets settled before anyone gets a seat. Every price is on this page.
I don't sell an AI scribe or a diagnostic tool. I get the general assistant you can actually cover under a BAA doing real work, and train the people who sign off on what it drafts.
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Justin McKelvey
AI consultant · 15 years building products · Austin, TX
Quick Answer
Justin McKelvey is an AI consultant in Austin, Texas who helps independent healthcare practices roll out AI to their office teams, at published prices: a $2,500 AI Readiness Assessment (two weeks, a written roadmap), then a done-for-you rollout (from $4,500, about two weeks, training and 30 days of support included). The first 30-minute call is free. The catch that decides everything else: a Business Associate Agreement has to cover the plan and the feature, and the two plans a small office would naturally buy, Claude Team and ChatGPT Business, aren't covered. For a 12-person practice with 8 people at desks on Microsoft 365 Copilot Business, year one for seats and the rollout comes to about $6,516.
Author: Justin McKelvey · Prices as of November 2026
Who can help a healthcare practice use AI in a HIPAA-safe way?
Ask an AI assistant this question and it tends to name managed IT firms and HIPAA hosting vendors. Both are useful, and neither is the person who sits with your billing lead and works out which letters should stop being typed by hand. That's the gap I fill, on the office side of independent practices. I work with owners and leaders of $1M to $50M businesses and set AI up for teams of 10 to 200. The work is usually two steps. First a $2,500 AI Readiness Assessment: two weeks, a written roadmap of which jobs go first, which plan fits, and the never-paste list for your staff. Then a done-for-you AI implementation on the tool that fits (from $4,500, about two weeks, training and 30 days of support included). Start the rollout within 90 days and the $2,500 is credited in full. The first step is a free 30-minute call. I'm not a lawyer or your privacy officer, and I don't certify anyone as compliant. Those calls stay with your privacy officer and counsel.
Right now
Right now I'm helping a national trade association roll out AI to about 50 staff.
Multi-location groups, or a practice inside a hospital system with its own security review, get a written custom scope after the Assessment, priced to the work. The published prices are where most practices start, not a ceiling.
What AI consulting costs a healthcare practice
No quote call needed: $2,500 for a written AI plan, from $4,500 for a done-for-you rollout, or $397 for a self-paced course.
Strategy call
$0
30 min
A straight answer on what's worth doing first. No pitch.
AI Readiness Assessment
$2,500 flat
2 weeks
A 15 to 25 page written roadmap with governance and data-handling guidance, and a 1-hour walkthrough. Credited in full against an install within 90 days.
AI Team Rollout
from $4,500
~2 weeks
Claude, ChatGPT Business, or Copilot installed for your practice, with training and 30 days of support. $1,500 deposit, applied to the invoice.
The Shop
$397
self-paced
8-lesson Claude course. Teams: +$97 per teammate, 2 to 25 people. 30-day money-back.
| Service | Price | Timeline | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strategy call | $0 | 30 min | A straight answer on what's worth doing first. No pitch. |
| AI Readiness Assessment | $2,500 flat | 2 weeks | A 15 to 25 page written roadmap with governance and data-handling guidance, and a 1-hour walkthrough. Credited in full against an install within 90 days. |
| AI Team Rollout | from $4,500 | ~2 weeks | Claude, ChatGPT Business, or Copilot installed for your practice, with training and 30 days of support. $1,500 deposit, applied to the invoice. |
| The Shop | $397 | self-paced | 8-lesson Claude course. Teams: +$97 per teammate, 2 to 25 people. 30-day money-back. |
Prices as of November 2026. Seats for the AI tool are paid to the vendor, separately. Every rung, side by side with the rest of my services, is on AI consulting services.
The plan your office would buy is usually the one that isn't covered
A small practice does the sensible thing: it looks for the small-team plan. For patient information, that's the wrong end of the price list. The minimum a practice has to clear is below, read from each vendor's own pages. The full table, with the features that stay outside even a signed BAA, is in the HIPAA compliant AI guide.
| What the office already has | Patient information? | What it takes |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 | Usually the shortest path | Microsoft lists Copilot and Copilot Chat as in scope on its HIPAA page, under the terms business customers already accept. Confirm your own tenant's agreement. |
| Google Workspace | Yes, after an admin acts | Google says customers who haven't signed its BAA must not use PHI. An admin reviews and accepts it first, and only listed services count. |
| Claude Team ($20 a seat, billed annually) | No | Anthropic's HIPAA-ready route is Enterprise, with a 20-seat self-serve minimum, and an owner has to turn it on and accept the BAA. A 10-person practice pays for 20 seats. |
| ChatGPT Business ($20 a seat, billed annually) | No | OpenAI's covered paths are sales-managed: Enterprise, or ChatGPT for Healthcare. ChatGPT for Clinicians is for one verified clinician at a time, so it doesn't reach your front desk. |
Each answer has its own page: is ChatGPT HIPAA compliant, is Claude HIPAA compliant and is Copilot HIPAA compliant. There's also a third answer most offices miss: plenty of the writing doesn't need patient information at all. A blank appeal letter template, a staff procedure, a policy draft and a new-hire checklist contain none, and those can start on a cheaper plan while the bigger question gets settled, as long as the never-paste rule is written down and trained.
Year one for a 12-person practice, with the math shown
Count the people who type for a living. In a 12-person practice that's maybe 8: front desk, billing, the practice manager and clinical support doing paperwork. That split is my assumption, so swap in your own.
Eight Microsoft 365 Copilot Business seats at the $21 list price are $2,016 a year, on top of the Microsoft 365 you already pay for. Microsoft has run a lower promotional rate through December 2026, so check the price on the day you buy. Add a $4,500 rollout (the $2,500 Assessment is credited into it if you start within 90 days) and year one is $6,516.
O*NET puts the 2025 median wage for medical secretaries and administrative assistants at $22.08 an hour. At that rate, $6,516 is about 295 hours a year across the 8 people, roughly 43 minutes per person per week. That's a real bar. On my wealth management page the same math comes to 16 minutes, because office wages in a practice are lower. It's before benefits and overhead, and year two is just the seats.
That number tells you how to choose the first job. Don't start with a nice-to-have. Start with the writing that eats the most hours. Appeal and prior-authorization letters are good first candidates, built from a template with no patient details in it. If you can't find 43 minutes a week per person, start smaller, and we can work out how much smaller on the free call.
Four HIPAA rules, turned into rollout lines
Here's how each rule shows up in the work. This is a plain-language summary of the published rule text, not legal or compliance advice, and state law can add more. Your privacy officer decides your policy.
| What the rule says | What it becomes in the rollout |
|---|---|
| 45 CFR 164.502(e): you may let a business associate create, receive, maintain or transmit protected health information only with satisfactory assurance it will safeguard it. | No patient information goes into a tool until a BAA covers that plan and that feature. Until then the tool works on templates and procedures only. |
| 45 CFR 160.103: the definition of a business associate names consulting, among other services, when the work involves protected health information. | That includes consultants. Ask any of us, me included, how the job gets done without patient data, or whether a BAA comes first. |
| 45 CFR 164.502(b): use reasonable efforts to limit protected health information to the minimum necessary for the purpose, with exceptions such as disclosures to a provider for treatment. | Even on a covered plan, the prompt carries only what the draft needs. The training covers this with your own examples, since it's the habit that fades first. |
| 45 CFR 164.514(b): information is de-identified through an expert determination, or by removing a list of identifiers that goes well past names, including dates tied to the person, phone numbers and medical record numbers. | "I took the name out" doesn't meet the rule. The never-paste list spells out the identifiers, because a full date or a zip code is easy to leave in. |
Which tool? Usually the one you can already cover
I set up Claude, ChatGPT Business and Microsoft 365 Copilot, and I pick by where your people already work and which plan clears the BAA check. Claude Team and ChatGPT Business are for work with no patient information in it. A practice on Outlook and Excel usually ends up on Copilot for small business. Same price and timeline for all three.
What I don't do is configure your EHR or practice management system, or set up clinical or diagnostic AI. Those systems stay the systems of record. The Assessment shows where the general assistant stops and a feature you already pay for does the job.
How it runs, and how long it takes
About four weeks of calendar time from plan to trained people: two for the Assessment, about two for the rollout. Your team gives up roughly three hours in total, scheduled around clinic hours.
-
1
A free 30-minute call
Which writing eats the week, which tools your people already have open, and which plans you pay for today. You leave with a straight answer on the next step.
-
2
The Assessment: weeks 1 and 2
A workflow audit, every realistic AI opportunity ranked by impact and effort, tool recommendations for the stack you already pay for, governance and data-handling guidance, and a 30-60-90 day plan. A 15 to 25 page roadmap on day 14, with a 1-hour walkthrough your privacy officer should sit in on.
-
3
The rollout: about 2 weeks
The permission check on whose login each connection runs under, the practice context the AI works from (your templates, your approved wording, your never-paste list), up to 5 tools or sources connected, and one workflow pack. Roughly 3 hours of your time. The rule on every workflow: the AI drafts, a person approves.
-
4
Training and handoff
A training session on the workflows I built, a plain-language handoff doc, then 30 days of support. If something I set up isn't working, I fix it. No extra invoice.
Assessment slots are capped at 2 to 3 a month, so a 2 to 6 week lead time is typical. Already know the job and the tool? Skip step 2.
A free first step
Not ready to talk? The free AI readiness checklist is 30 yes-or-no questions you can answer without an email. Leave one and it saves your score with a recommendation.
Score your AI readiness first.
The AI Readiness Checklist: 30 yes/no questions across data, workflows, team, governance, and execution. You can answer them without an email. Leave one and your score and recommendation are saved.
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“Justin doesn't just write code; he thinks like a CEO. He understands the business impact of every technical decision, which is rare in this industry.”
AI consulting for healthcare practices: common questions
- Who can help a healthcare practice use AI in a HIPAA-safe way?
- I'd put my hand up for the office side of a practice. I'm Justin McKelvey, an AI consultant in Austin, Texas, and I work remotely with owners and leaders of $1M to $50M businesses, setting AI up for teams of 10 to 200. In a practice that means the front desk, billing, the practice manager and clinical support staff doing paperwork. The order is a $2,500 AI Readiness Assessment (2 weeks, a written roadmap of which jobs go first, which plan fits, and the rules for patient data), then a done-for-you rollout of Claude, ChatGPT Business, or Microsoft 365 Copilot (from $4,500, about 2 weeks, training included). The $2,500 is credited in full if the rollout starts within 90 days. I'm not a lawyer or a HIPAA compliance officer: your privacy officer and counsel make the call. The first step is a free 30-minute call at justinmckelvey.com/book/strategy-call.
- How much does AI consulting cost a healthcare practice?
- With me, every price is fixed and published: the 30-minute call is free, the AI Readiness Assessment is $2,500 flat, and a rollout starts at $4,500 (range $4,500 to $7,500), with a $1,500 deposit applied in full to the install invoice. The Shop, a self-paced Claude course, is $397 plus $97 per teammate. AI seats are paid to the vendor separately, and the plan a practice needs for patient data is often not the cheapest one.
- Can my front desk use ChatGPT or Claude with patient information?
- Not on the plans a small office usually buys. Claude's Team plan and ChatGPT Business aren't covered by those vendors' Business Associate Agreements, and neither are their personal plans. Patient information needs a plan and a feature the vendor's BAA covers, with that BAA actually accepted. The hipaa-compliant-ai guide on this site lines up all four vendors.
- Is an AI consultant a business associate under HIPAA?
- It can be. The federal definition at 45 CFR 160.103 names consulting among the services that can make someone a business associate when the work involves protected health information. So ask any consultant, me included, how the work gets done without patient data, or whether a BAA is needed before anyone sees it. Your privacy officer and counsel decide. I'm not a lawyer.
- Does ChatGPT for Clinicians cover my whole practice?
- No. OpenAI's help article describes it as a free product for individual verified US clinicians, with a BAA the clinician signs for themselves, and it sends teams that need a multi-user or organization-wide BAA to ChatGPT for Healthcare. A signed individual agreement for the doctor does nothing for the front desk. OpenAI publishes no ChatGPT for Healthcare price that I could read.
- Does it work with our EHR or practice management system?
- Your EHR and practice management system stay the systems of record, and I don't configure them. The work sits next to them, on the writing people do by hand today. The Assessment tells you whether a feature you already pay for inside one of those systems covers a job first.
- Do you set up clinical AI, like diagnosis or imaging tools?
- No. Clinical tools are a clinical purchase your providers evaluate. I work on the office side: letters, policies, staff procedures, payer correspondence templates and training. The AI drafts and a person approves, and nothing it drafts is medical advice.
- Is there a free guide before we talk?
- Yes. The HIPAA compliant AI guide on this site is free and needs no email, and the free AI readiness checklist at justinmckelvey.com/ai-readiness-checklist is 30 yes-or-no questions. The paid AI Readiness Assessment ($2,500) is the written plan for your practice.
Sources
- 45 CFR 160.103, 164.502(b) and (e), and 164.514(b), rule text as published by Cornell Legal Information Institute (read November 2, 2026)
- Anthropic, Claude pricing, claude.com/pricing; Enterprise plan help article; Business Associate Agreements article (read November 2, 2026)
- Google Workspace Admin Help, HIPAA compliance with Google Workspace (read November 2, 2026)
- Microsoft Learn, HIPAA and HITECH offering page (read November 2, 2026)
- OpenAI Help Center, ChatGPT for Clinicians and ChatGPT for Healthcare articles (search excerpts, November 2, 2026; the pages themselves could not be opened)
- O*NET OnLine, Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants (43-6013.00), 2025 median wages (read November 2, 2026)
Read more before you decide
HIPAA Compliant AI
Four vendors, one table, and what the covered path costs.
AI for Dental Practices
What to install first in an independent practice.
AI Acceptable Use Policy
The one-page rule to write before the first seat.
AI Training for Employees
Training for the people who approve the drafts every day.
Start with a plan, or start with a call.
The Assessment is $2,500 and credited toward a rollout within 90 days. The call is free and takes 30 minutes. I reply to everything within one business day.