Charts written from memory at midnight
You scribble on a clipboard between feeds, then rebuild the whole note hours later. Detail fades, transfer volumes get approximate, and the note takes longer than the drive did.
About 6 unpaid hours every week
For private practice IBCLCs
Every family keeps a written feeding plan before you reach the car
LatchDesk turns the assessment you already do into a finished chart, a weight curve and a plain language plan the parent gets by text at the curb. The note is done when the visit is done, not at eleven at night with cold coffee.
- 412 practicesUS home visit practices charting daily
- 31 minutesAverage charting time saved per visit
- One afternoonTypical set up, templates included
The part nobody bills for
You finished four visits. Now you owe four charts.
The clinical work is the easy part. What wears consultants down is the paperwork tail: notes rewritten from memory, weights typed twice, and a phone that keeps buzzing with questions you answered in the living room.
Parents lose the paper by the second night
A handwritten plan lives on the kitchen counter until someone moves it. At 2 a.m. the parent cannot remember whether you said 15 minutes per side or 20, so she guesses.
1 in 3 families call back with a question you already answeredWeights scattered across three notebooks
Visit one is in a spiral notebook, visit two is a photo on your phone, visit three is a text thread. Plotting a real trend line means hunting through all three while the mother waits.
9 minutes lost per follow up visitSuperbills that hold up reimbursement
A missing diagnosis code or a blank NPI sends the claim back to the family. She calls you, you dig out the chart, and the whole thing eats a lunch break you were going to spend eating.
$180 to $340 in delayed reimbursement per rejected claimUnpaid follow up in the group chat
Questions arrive by text at all hours because there is nowhere else to put them. Answering feels like care, and it is, but it is care nobody has scheduled or paid for.
Roughly 40 unbilled messages a weekNo clean handoff to the pediatrician
The office wants a summary, you want to be helpful, so you retype the whole visit into an email. It gets sent late, or it gets sent short, and the family repeats their story again.
2 in 5 referrals arrive without a written note
How a visit runs
The same visit you already do, finished on the doorstep
LatchDesk follows the order of a real home consult. You open the template on the way in, you tap through the assessment while you work, and the plan leaves your hands before you do.
Open the visit template in the driveway
Pick initial consult, weight check or follow up. The family's history, allergies, birth details and last plan are already loaded, so you walk in knowing where you left off.
Chart the assessment while you work
Latch score, oral assessment, maternal comfort, pre feed and post feed weights and milk transfer go in with one hand. Nothing needs a keyboard and nothing needs a signal.
Build the plan from what you charted
Feeding intervals, pumping schedule, supplement volumes and red flag signs assemble from the assessment. You edit the wording in the mother's own language and add anything the template missed.
Send it, then close the file
One tap texts the plan to the parent and files the signed chart. The superbill, the pediatrician summary and the follow up reminder go out with it, before your shoes are back on.
What is inside
Built around milk transfer, not around generic appointments
Every screen was drawn with working IBCLCs looking over our shoulder. If a field does not earn its place in a real consult, it is not in the template.
Weighted feed capture
Pre feed and post feed weights record in grams and convert to milk transfer as you enter them. The math is done before the mother has finished asking whether it was enough.
Weight curve that fills in point by point
Every visit adds a point to a curve plotted against birth weight and expected regain. Parents see the line rise instead of hearing a number they have no way to judge.
Plans written in plain language
The parent copy drops the clinical shorthand and keeps the instructions: how often, how long, how much, and when to call you instead of waiting. You approve every word before it sends.
Superbills with the codes filled in
Your NPI, the CPT code for the visit length and the ICD-10 codes you selected during the assessment come through on a document the family can submit the same day. Fewer rejected claims, fewer callbacks.
Follow up that schedules itself
Set the next weight check at the end of the visit and the reminder goes to the parent and to your calendar. Families who would have drifted away at day nine come back on day four instead.
Pediatrician summaries in one page
A referral ready summary pulls the weight trend, the assessment findings and your recommendations into a single page with your credentials on it. Send it by secure link or print it for the family to carry.
What changes by week three
The numbers consultants report after one full caseload cycle
These are medians from 412 US practices charting on LatchDesk between January and July 2026, measured against the eight weeks before they switched.
31 min
Saved on every visit
Charting happens in the room instead of twice, once on paper and once again on a laptop after dinner.
64%
Fewer repeat questions
The written plan sits on the parent's phone, so the 3 a.m. question gets answered by the plan and not by you.
2.4x
More follow up visits booked
Booking the next weight check before you leave turns a vague intention into an appointment on the calendar.
$1,180
Recovered per consultant, per quarter
Clean superbills and fewer rejected claims mean families get reimbursed and keep coming back for the full package of visits.
The curve the parent watches
Each visit drops one point onto the chart. By the third check, a mother who was told her baby was "a bit slow" can see the line she is actually on, and so can her pediatrician.
Plotted against birth weight, day of life and expected regain, with your own annotation on every point.
From the practices
Consultants who chart on the doorstep, in their own words
Three IBCLCs running very different practices, all of them tired of the second shift at the kitchen table.
"I used to keep a stack of clipboards in the trunk and rebuild every note after bedtime. Now the mother has her plan before I finish loading the scale, and my evenings are mine again. The weight curve does more to calm a worried family than anything I can say out loud."
"My second consultant and I chart the same way now, which matters when one of us covers the other's follow up. She opens the file and sees exactly what I saw at day four. Our repeat visit rate went from patchy to predictable inside two months."
"The superbill was the surprise. Families were losing $200 claims over a missing code and blaming me for it, quietly. Six months in, our reimbursement questions have almost stopped and I have stopped dreading the Monday voicemail."
412US practices charting daily
96,400Feeding plans texted to families
4.9 of 5Average rating from practice owners
Who works this way
Built for the consultant who drives to the family
LatchDesk was designed around private practice home visits. If your day looks like one of these, the templates will already feel familiar.
The solo consultant with a full car
Scale, pillows, pump parts and a clipboard, four visits a day across two counties. You need the note finished between the driveway and the next address, because there is no office to go back to.
The two person partnership
You cover each other's follow ups and holidays. Shared records mean your partner opens a family's file and sees the same assessment, the same weight curve and the same plan you sent on day four.
The growing practice with associates
Once three or four consultants carry your practice name, consistency is the product. Shared templates keep every plan recognizable, and the access log tells you who touched which record.
What LatchDesk does not try to be
It is not a hospital electronic health record, it is not a payment processor, and it is not a marketing platform for your practice. Those tools exist and some of them are good.
Charting, weights, plans, superbills and follow up. That list is deliberately short, and everything in it is finished.
What it replaces on day one
The clipboard, the spiral notebook of weights, the template document you keep re editing, the reminder you meant to set and the pediatrician email you write from memory two days later.
Most consultants stop printing intake forms in the first week and never start again.
Pricing
Priced for a practice, not for a hospital budget
One flat monthly rate covers unlimited visits, unlimited families and unlimited plans. No per chart fee and no charge when your caseload spikes in January.
Solo IBCLC
$29 per month
One consultant, one caseload, everything included.
- Unlimited visits, families and feeding plans
- Assessment, weight check and follow up templates
- Weight curve and milk transfer tracking
- Text delivery of the parent plan
- Superbill and pediatrician summary exports
- Calendar sync and offline charting
Two Consultants
$69 per month
For a partnership or an owner with one associate.
- Everything in Solo IBCLC, for two logins
- Shared client records with coverage handoff
- Custom templates rebuilt from your paper forms
- Team calendar with visit routing by zip code
- Practice level reporting on visits and revisits
- Priority support answered by a consultant, not a script
Practice
$139 per month
Up to eight consultants under one practice name.
- Everything in Two Consultants, for up to eight logins
- Per user access log on every client record
- Business associate agreement on request
- Referral pipeline from pediatric and OB offices
- Billing export for QuickBooks, Wave and CSV tools
- Onboarding session for your whole team
Every tier is charged month to month in US dollars and stops the moment you cancel it. No annual contract, no setup fee, and your charts export in full whenever you ask.
Questions we get asked
Straight answers before you book anything
Solo IBCLC is $29 per month, Two Consultants is $69 per month and Practice is $139 per month. Each tier runs month to month in US dollars, and you can end it yourself from account settings whenever your caseload changes. There is no annual lock in, no per visit fee and no charge for the families you serve. If your caseload drops for a season you can move down a tier and keep every record you have already written.
Most consultants send their first plan on the same day they sign up. You start from the built in assessment, weight check and follow up templates, then edit the wording to match how you actually chart. Consultants who want their old paper forms rebuilt send us a scan and we return the templates within two business days at no extra cost. Set up is an afternoon, not a project.
Records are stored encrypted at rest in US data centers and every transfer runs over TLS. Only the consultants on your own account can open a chart, and the Practice tier gives you a per user access log showing who viewed which record and when. We sign a business associate agreement with every practice that asks for one. We never sell data, we never train advertising models on it, and you can export everything as PDF or CSV whenever you want.
LatchDesk exports a completed superbill with your NPI, the CPT and ICD-10 codes you selected during the visit, and the family details already filled in. Calendar sync works with Google Calendar and iCloud, so visits you book elsewhere appear on your route for the day. Invoicing tools that accept CSV, including QuickBooks and Wave, import our billing export directly. If you use a system we do not cover, the open API and webhook feed let your bookkeeper pull the same data.
Cancel from your settings page and billing stops at the end of the current month with no exit fee. Your account stays open in read only mode for 60 days so you can download the full archive as PDF charts plus a CSV index. After that window we delete the records permanently unless you ask us to keep them longer for a records retention obligation in your state. Your data belongs to you and to the families you serve, never to us.
Paper works in the room and fails afterward. The parent puts the sheet down during a 3 a.m. feed and cannot find it, then texts you a question you already answered. LatchDesk keeps the same handwritten rhythm during the visit, then sends the plan to the parent's phone where it stays searchable at every feed. Consultants who switched tell us the biggest change was not the charting, it was the drop in unpaid follow up messages.
The document itself
What lands on the parent's phone at 11:52 a.m.
The plan is not a PDF she has to pinch and scroll. It is a short page written in your voice, laid out for a woman holding a baby in one arm at two in the morning.
Today in one paragraph
What you saw, in plain words: the latch, the transfer, the weight and what it means for this baby on this day of life. No abbreviations she has to look up.
The feeding schedule, hour by hour
Intervals, minutes per side, pumping times and supplement volumes in a table she can read at a glance. Times adjust to the baby's actual pattern, not to a generic template.
The weight line so far
Every point you have plotted, with birth weight marked and the expected regain shaded behind it. A mother who was told her baby was slow can finally see the trend.
Call me if you see this
Your own red flag list, edited per family: fewer wet diapers, refusal at the breast, a temperature, cracked skin that is not healing. Each one links to your practice number.
The next check, already booked
Date, time and address of the follow up visit, with a calendar file attached. She does not have to remember to call you when the week gets loud.
Your credentials at the bottom
Your name, your IBCLC number and your practice details, so a pediatric office or an emergency room knows exactly who wrote the plan they are reading.
Practical questions, answered early
How it behaves in a real week of home visits
The unglamorous details that decide whether software survives past the first month in a practice that drives all day.
Offline first, sync later
Charting works with no signal at all. Weights, notes and photos save on the device and upload the moment the phone reconnects, so a basement apartment never costs you a record.
The plan queues too, and sends as soon as you are back in coverage. You will see the delivery receipt on your route screen.
Your route, in visit order
The day view lists visits in the order you drive them with the family's last plan one tap away. Calendar sync with Google Calendar and iCloud keeps bookings you made elsewhere in the same list.
Cancellations and reschedules push a text to the family and free the slot without a phone call.
Records handled like clinical records
Encryption at rest in US data centers, TLS in transit, access scoped to your own practice and a business associate agreement whenever you ask for one.
On the Practice plan, every chart carries a per user access log so you can see who opened what and when.
Leaving is as easy as arriving
Export the whole archive as PDF charts and a CSV index at any time, not only on your way out. There is no export fee and no ticket to open.
Cancel from settings, keep read only access for 60 days, and take everything with you.
99.9%Monthly availability target
Under 1 daySupport reply time, answered by a person
60 daysRead only export window after cancellation
The Visit Bag
Reporting from the front seat of a home visit practice
Our magazine covers the business of private practice lactation consulting: what to charge, how to get paid, what to document and how a full day of visits actually runs.
numbers and benchmarks
How do I actually set my home visit fee when most families expect insurance to cover it?
Private practice pricing rests on four checkable inputs: drive time, visit length, charting time, and your payer mix. Here is how to build a fee from those instead of copying a competitor.
regulation and compliance
What does it actually take to get credentialed with a commercial insurance plan as an IBCLC?
Credentialing is a paperwork process with a fixed sequence: NPI, taxonomy, CAQH, contracting, then fee schedule. Knowing the order prevents the six month stall most solo practices hit.
practical guide
When should I refer a family to a physician instead of trying to fix the latch myself?
Scope of practice is the line between a strong consult and a liability. This walks the clinical red flags that end an IBCLC visit and start a referral, and how to hand off cleanly.
Talk to us
Tell us how your visits actually run
We will walk your own visit flow on a screen share, template by template, and show you exactly where the thirty minutes come back. No slide deck, no sales engineer, no pressure to decide on the call.
If you already know what you need, say so in the message and we will send a written quote and a sample plan the same business day.
Written and maintained by Jimenez Julien, publisher of LatchDesk at MLJ, SASU. He answers the demo requests himself.
We reply within one business day, from a real inbox, and we never add you to a mailing list. Prefer email? Write to jimenezjulien42@gmail.com.