What this comparison covers
Luma Health and PHIGuard cover different parts of clinic operations. This page explains what each tool does, where each one stops, and why clinics running Luma Health often have an unaddressed compliance program gap.
What Luma Health covers
Luma Health is a patient engagement platform focused on improving care utilization and reducing no-shows. Key capabilities include:
- Patient recall campaigns for preventive care and follow-up
- Automated appointment scheduling and reminders
- Referral tracking and coordination
- Two-way patient messaging
- Multilingual patient communication support
- Broadcast messaging for health announcements
Luma Health processes PHI as part of the patient communication workflow. It operates as a business associate. Their privacy documentation is available at lumahealth.io/privacy-policy. Luma Health is a strong tool for practices that need to drive appointment volume and reduce gaps in care. It is not a compliance management tool.
What PHIGuard covers
PHIGuard does not send patient recall messages, schedule appointments, or communicate with patients.
PHIGuard handles the internal compliance program:
- Compliance task management with assigned owners and deadlines
- BAA tracking for all business associates — including Luma Health, your EHR, your billing vendor, and every other relationship the practice has with a BA
- Workforce training records with documented completion dates and expiration tracking
- Incident response workflow with a timestamped record from discovery through resolution
- Policy acknowledgment cycles with staff sign-off documentation
- Immutable audit trail for operational compliance activity
The audit trail PHIGuard creates is distinct from Luma Health’s activity logs. Luma Health logs show patient message delivery and appointment activity. PHIGuard logs show whether your staff completed HIPAA training, whether your BA agreements are current, and how your clinic responded to a privacy complaint. Those are the records HHS asks to see.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Luma Health | PHIGuard |
|---|---|---|
| Patient recall automation | Yes | No |
| Appointment scheduling and reminders | Yes | No |
| Two-way patient messaging | Yes | No |
| Referral tracking | Yes | No |
| Multilingual patient communication | Yes | No |
| BAA with vendor | Yes (verify) | Yes |
| Compliance program management | No | Yes |
| BAA tracking for all vendors | No | Yes |
| Workforce training logs | No | Yes |
| Incident response workflow | No | Yes |
| Policy acknowledgment tracking | No | Yes |
| Immutable operational audit trail | No | Yes |
| Pricing details are published on the pricing page (pricing details published on the pricing page) | No | Yes |
Pricing
Luma Health uses volume-based pricing tied to patient outreach volume. Pricing is available through their sales process. Costs scale as the practice sends more patient messages and recall campaigns.
PHIGuard uses pricing details published on the pricing page regardless of staff count or message volume:
A BAA is included at every PHIGuard tier. For practices comparing total cost, the PHIGuard pricing model does not scale with headcount or volume.
Where Luma Health falls short on compliance operations
Luma Health is designed to drive patient engagement, not manage a HIPAA compliance program. The two objectives are different.
Deploying Luma Health creates a BA relationship. That relationship needs to be documented, tracked, and periodically reviewed. When a staff member reports a possible privacy incident involving a patient communication, there needs to be a documented response process. Staff who use Luma Health need HIPAA training, and those completion records need to be maintained.
None of that is in scope for Luma Health. It is in scope for PHIGuard.
A well-run clinic uses both. Luma Health drives the patient engagement layer. PHIGuard manages the compliance program that governs every vendor relationship — including Luma Health itself — and creates the audit trail that covered entities are required to maintain.
See the PHIGuard pricing page for tier details.
Bottom line
For small clinics trying to run HIPAA every week, PHIGuard is built for the operating record the administrator has to maintain. Luma Health may be useful in its own lane, but PHIGuard is built around the work a clinic has to prove later: training, policies, incidents, vendor BAAs, risk follow-up, and audit evidence.
Luma Health still makes sense when patient engagement automation is the project. That is the honest caveat. For clinic HIPAA operations, PHIGuard keeps the work and the proof in the same place.