A ThoroughCare alternative, if the gap is staff.
ThoroughCare sells a care coordination platform and TULQ sells licensed nurses. They are not really substitutes, and knowing which problem you have decides it in about a minute.
ThoroughCare is the comparison most likely to be a category error, and it is worth resolving early: ThoroughCare principally sells software, and TULQ sells nurses. If your problem is that your care coordinators lack a good tool, we are not the answer. If your problem is that you have no care coordinators, a tool will not fix it.
What ThoroughCare is
Per its own materials, ThoroughCare is "a platform built by clinicians, helping providers engage patients," covering chronic care management, remote patient monitoring, annual wellness visits, behavioral health integration, principal care management, transitional care management, advanced primary care management, and advance care planning. It states that its platform is "NCQA Prevalidated for Population Health Management in Health Plan Accreditation."
It is not purely software: it offers a clinical advisory team for workflow design, training, documentation review, and compliance support, and it has built AI features and a patient education integration. Its content library on CPT and reimbursement is among the deepest in the category and is genuinely useful reading, whoever you end up buying from.
If you already employ the staff, ThoroughCare is a strong choice and this page is not an argument otherwise.
TULQ is launching in 2026. We do not have an operating history, call volume statistics, or client references at scale, and a comparison that implied otherwise would be worth nothing to you. What you can evaluate today is the clinical model, our director's credentials, licensure, protocol standard, escalation design, and pricing structure. If a multi-year track record is a hard requirement for your decision, the incumbent is the right answer and we would rather you knew that now.
Side by side
| ThoroughCare | TULQ | |
|---|---|---|
| What you are buying | A care coordination platform, plus advisory services | Licensed nurses who do the clinical work |
| Who makes the calls | Your staff | Our nurses |
| Who documents the time | Your staff, in the platform | Our nurses, in your record |
| Programs supported | CCM, RPM, AWV, BHI, PCM, TCM, APCM, ACP | CCM, APCM, PCM, TCM, AWV, plus after-hours triage |
| Remote patient monitoring | Supported | Not offered |
| NCQA prevalidation | Stated for population health management | Not applicable, we are not a platform |
| Software to buy | Yes, that is the product | None |
| Solves a staffing shortage | No | Yes, that is the product |
| Works alongside the other | Yes | Yes, our nurses will work in a platform you own |
Choose ThoroughCare if
- You already employ care coordinators and what they lack is a good tool.
- You want remote patient monitoring in the same system as care management.
- NCQA prevalidation for population health management matters to your accreditation work.
- You want to own the workflow and keep the clinical work in-house.
Choose TULQ if
- Your care management program keeps stalling because nobody has the hours, not because the software is bad.
- You would rather buy the clinical time than hire, train, and cover for a care coordinator.
- You want the same nurses covering after-hours triage and wellness visits.
- You already own a platform and simply need somebody to work inside it.
The questions that actually decide it
Ask every vendor the same six, write the answers down, and compare them side by side:
- Who employs the people doing the clinical work, and what licensure do they hold in our patients' states?
- Does the documentation land in our record, or in yours?
- Are you paid a flat fee, or a share of what we collect?
- Are your staff compensated per enrollment?
- Who verifies each month that no other practice is billing that patient?
- What happens to our program, our data, and our patients if we leave you?
Questions people ask
Do we need both?
Sometimes, and there is no conflict. If you have already bought ThoroughCare and the problem is that nobody has time to use it, our nurses will work inside it. We do not require you to abandon a platform you have paid for and trained on, and we do not sell a competing one.
Which one is cheaper?
Software is almost always the cheaper line item, because it is not paying anybody's salary. The comparison only becomes fair when you add the loaded cost of the clinical staff time the platform assumes you have. At 200 enrolled patients, twenty tracked minutes each is roughly 67 hours a month. Price the software against the software, and the nurse against the nurse.
Is a platform better for audit defence?
A good platform makes time-logging consistent, which genuinely helps. But insufficient time documentation is the most common denial in this benefit, and the failure is nearly always that the work did not happen or was not recorded at the time, not that the recording tool was inadequate. A tool cannot document a call nobody made.
Sources
- ThoroughCare.
- CMS, Chronic Care Management Services booklet, MLN909188.
- CMS, Care Management, Physician Fee Schedule.
Competitor information is summarized from each company's own public website and was accurate as reviewed; services, pricing, and positioning change without notice. This page is written by TULQ and is not independent analysis. Verify anything that matters to your decision directly with the vendor.
Ask us the same questions.
Put the same evaluation questions to us that you put to everyone else and compare the answers. That is more useful than taking any vendor's comparison page at face value.