Healthy Life Review

Bottom Line:

Comprehensive health services, including 24/7 telehealth services provided through Hola Health (at a higher charge than on Hola Health’s site). Fast consultations, free delivery, reward points, and discounts as part of the Woolworths Group. 

Healthy Life, a comprehensive health service owned by Woolworths, offers telehealth consults via Hola Health’s doctors, eScripts, certificates, online pharmacy, and free medication delivery. Besides its telehealth consult-based offerings, it also provides users with access to naturopath consults, supplements, and an extensive health library.  

Pros:

1. One of the most comprehensive telehealth services in Australia. 

2. Includes free medication delivery and additional health services not offered by other telehealth services.

3. 24/7 telehealth consultations available within 15 minutes, provided by Hola Health. 

Cons: 

1. Significantly more expensive than Hola Health, the service delivering the telehealth aspect of Healthy Life. No bulk-billing, which Hola Health also offers. 

2. Limited customer service hours from 8.30 am to 5.30 pm Monday to Friday. 

3. Surcharge for after-hour doctors’ consultations, unlike most other telehealth services, including Instant Consult. 

Comprehensive Telehealth, Pharmacy, Weight Loss, and Naturopath Services 

Healthy Life is a comprehensive health service encompassing 24/7 telehealth delivered by premium provider Hola Health’s AHPRA-registered doctors, including some GPs. The extended offering via health library, weight management, online pharmacy, naturopath access, supplements, and health devices is more comprehensive than most other providers, including Prime Medic. There’s no bulk-billing available. 

Online Prescriptions: Prescription renewals can be requested without a doctor’s consultation, but not without a doctor’s review. For multiple repeats, you’ll need a long doctor’s consult. All eScripts are sent as tokens by SMS. You can directly fill the script in the Healthylife Pharmacy with free shipping. 

Online Information Hub: Online information hub provides free health advice, similar to Prime Medic’s library.

Medication Delivery: Online pharmacy fulfills your Healthy Life medication orders for free. 

Health Shop: Health shop offers supplements and other health-related products. 

Mental Health Plans: Naturopath consultations can be explored with 15-minute free discovery calls. They are available for supplements, herbal medicine, nutrition or general health advice. 

Weight Loss Support: Weight management program includes a personalised weight loss plan, monthly telehealth consults, expert support, and free discreet delivery, similar to Updoc, although more expensively.  

Medical Certificate: Medical certificates are available for work, study, and carer’s leave. They cannot be backdated. One-day certificates can be requested via form and doctor review. Multi-day certificates require a doctor’s consultation. All certificates are sent to you via email. 

Telehealth Consultation: Telehealth consultations are classed as short (8 minutes) or long (15 minutes). They are required for pathology/ imaging/ referral requests and for new eScripts. 

Wide Range of Prices, Very Short Wait Times

Healthy Life services requiring a doctor’s consultation cost $10 more after hours. (After hours are Monday to Friday before 8 am and after 6 pm, weekends and public holidays (AEST).) This includes new scripts, multi-day certificates, and all referrals. This is relatively unusual; most providers other than Updoc offer standard rates after hours. 

• Doctors’ consultations cost $39 (short) or $49 (long) during business hours. They are available within 15 minutes. This puts Healthy Life at the low end of providers, cheaper than Instant Consult. 
• Medical certificates cost from $19.90 (one-day, available within minutes if you qualify) and $39 (multi-day). The latter requires a doctor’s consultation. 
• Repeat prescriptions cost from $21.90 and are sent to you within minutes if approved. (Short consultation cost for new scripts and long consult cost for multiple repeats or scripts.) This is one of the cheapest repeat script offerings available other than Abby Health. 

• Standard weight management plans cost $299 for the first month (current offer), then $349, including medication and delivery. Available Monday to Friday 8am to 8pm AEST. Depending on eligibility and suitability final price may be higher or lower. This comprehensive offer includes more support than most telehealth providers’ weight management programs, for example Hub Health. 
• Free delivery on prescriptions and all other pharmacy purchases made while filling a Healthy Life script. Wait times are 1-3 days. This is typically only offered by prescription-focused services such as Burst Health. 

Note: Everyday Rewards members can collect points for every purchase. There’s no bulk-billing available on Healthy Life.  

Comprehensive and Informative Website  

• The Healthy Life website is comprehensive, owing to its diverse range of services. Still, the menus are relatively easy to navigate. The main services are near the top of the home page, making it easy to book, similar to premium sites such as Prime Medic.  
• Due to the volume of information to communicate, it requires a bit of scrolling or clicking through pages to get to some of the details, such as specific pricing and the details of the weight loss programs.  
• Some simple pieces of information, like a comprehensive price list, detailing the after-hour surcharges etc, are missing. This is the same on some sites such as Burst Health. 
• The booking process is pretty straightforward. The online pharmacy and free medication (and other purchases) delivery help manage the whole process for patients. This type of fully managed process is only available on a few prescription-based telehealth sites, including Simple Online Doctor. 

While it is relatively easy to book and find the most important information, the finer details may not be clear to users. As the service is a part of Woolworths, there are also plenty of offers on the site, which make it somewhat harder to find information. 

No Specific Privacy Policy for Telehealth Services Provided 

There are several privacy policies listed on the Healthy Life website but none referring to telehealth services specifically as far as I could find. This leads me to believe that this is either a recently added service (which the ”new” weight management tab shows, too) or that the Hola Health Privacy Policy applies (which is robust and up to the highest standards).  

It is likely that your information is subject to the Woolworth Group’s, the online pharmacy’s and Hola Health’s privacy policy. This means some of your personal data will most likely be stored on two to three service providers’ servers, when you use the Healthy Life service to book telehealth assistance and have medication delivered, as well. Woolworths requires you to specifically opt-out of marketing communication and has a number of programs, such as Everyday Rewards, that may hold some of your purchase information if you opt-in.  

Customer Support Only During Business Hours Only  

Healthy Life has live chat on its site as well as business hours-only 1300 number phone and email support, which responds within four hours. The customer care team also has a dedicated pharmacy email address and support line. Combined with its online help centre, this approach aims to resolve all customer enquiries promptly and thoroughly. Overall, this puts the service in line with Doctors on Demand, but its customer service operating hours from 8.30 am to 5.30 pm Monday to Friday (or 4.30 pm for the pharmacy hotline) are a little more limited. 

Customer reviews for the service aren’t numerous, but the online pharmacy service has consistently high ratings of 4.5 stars out of 5 on ProductReview. Reviews for the whole range of services aren’t readily available but the few available on Trustpilot commenting on customer service state that the service is slower than indicated. Customers give it 2.9 stars out of five [1] with 67% 1-star reviews. However, some of these may be customers erroneously confusing Healthy Life Australia with a NZ-based company with a similar name. 

Comprehensive Health Services at a Premium Price

Healthy Life offers some of the most comprehensive offerings available, including 24/7 telehealth services available within minutes, naturopath consultations, health shop, weight management solutions, online pharmacy, free delivery, and health advice. The service offers some discounts and free medication delivery for customers, as well as Everyday Rewards points. However, it charges higher rates than Hola Health, which provides the Healthy Life telehealth services and also offers bulk-billing. Healthy Life is a one-stop shop powered by Woolworths. Customer support is swift during business hours.  

All information provided is based on independent research and up-to-date at the time of posting. Please ensure you do your own research and compare prices and wait times before booking.  

Telehealth services are complementary to your primary doctor’s care. They are no replacement for the thorough physical assessments and guaranteed continuity of care at your GP’s practice.  

[1] https://au.trustpilot.com/review/healthylife.com.au
[2] https://www.productreview.com.au/listings/healthylife