What is Practice Management Software (PMS) and how can it help me as a rehab practitioner? This question may have crossed your mind a few times with PMS’s rise in popularity.
In the field of healthcare, rehab practitioners devote themselves to helping patients and giving them the tools they need to thrive in their everyday lives. But oftentimes, you may find yourself getting bogged down with mountains and mountains of paperwork. Here’s where practice management software comes in. No matter your field—occupational therapy, mental health, or speech-language pathology—this tool can help automate all your manual tasks so you can spend more time with patients and less time at your desk filling out paperwork.
Practice management software is especially helpful if you run your own clinic. As a rehab practitioner and a business owner, it’s important to be adept in tools that take your practice to the next level. Read on to learn more.
What is practice management software?
The short answer is: Practice management software is a “one-stop-shop” for rehab practitioners. This tool helps you move away from scattered workflows that require the use of multiple systems to keep your practice running. The overarching goal of PMS is to increase efficiency and improve professional care in service delivery. Here are some features that PMS comes with that can help centralize your workflows.
Intake
Streamline your intake process, standardize your intake questions, and keep all of your intake forms in one single place with practice management software. With an all-in-one solution, it’s easy to find and keep track of documents like consent for treatment forms, medical information release forms, and any other policy and procedure forms you have as part of your intake.
Billing
Invoices and payments are an aspect of private practice that can get cumbersome quickly. Your practice management software should be able to track your sessions, transfer that info to your billing section, and connect your services with funder info. Therabyte is an example of practice management software that can help you take care of billing tasks. Once you have set up your billing settings, it’s as simple as one-click to generate the invoice and two-clicks to share it with your funder and/or client. It doesn’t get easier than that!
Documentation
Since notes are the way we keep track of the wonderful treatment rehab practitioners provides, this is a key feature. This is the electronic medical record (EMR) portion of the practice management software. Things you want to look for within the system, are the ability to:
- create a plan for your session
- easily write your notes
- add PDFs and pictures to your notes
- created templates
- link goals
- feed session information into your billing tasks
- support you in tracking the completion of your client documentation
All of which encourages speed and efficiency.
Scheduling
This feature is based on your clinic location. Some providers like to control their schedules, especially if they are traveling therapists or have clients with specific scheduling needs. In this case, scheduling may not be a “make or break” feature in your practice management software.
However, other providers view scheduling as a huge hassle, so they prefer having a system that does the legwork for them. In any case, if you want this included, find a practice management software that offers team scheduling, the ability to schedule various types of sessions, and online booking.
What are the benefits of practice management?
There are many benefits of practice management software for rehab practitioners. Overall, this technology aims to simplify processes, make workflows more efficient, and help serve patients better. Here are a few examples below:
- Simplify the intake process: Standardizing and getting the right information you need to intake clients is very important to make a great first impression. No more printing out forms and giving them to clients to fill it out by pen and paper, you can easily send a link and have them fill it out on their computer or even on their phone in your office.
- Digitize documents: Get rid of your filing cabinets because practice management software will help digitize all of your forms, notes, and other documentation. You’ll never need to worry about missing loose papers, making it much easier to store information.
- Track everything in one platform: No more cross-referencing papers or giant files for your clients! Keep your intake, goal tracking, summary reports, invoices, and more in one platform organized to the way you work. Say goodbye to searching in multiple places for that one document you need because with practice management software, it’s all kept in one secure place.
What is the difference between practice management software and an EMR?
While individual programs such as electronic medical records (EMRs) and client management tools can assist with tasks such as documentation or schedule, they don’t cover all the bases that practice management software does.
Think of an EMR as just one part of a practice management software. An EMR will help keep your documents in order and keep track of your schedule, but it can’t send out invoices. An EMR is just a database that holds information, but it can’t really do anything with that information.
While you can have both tools, it’s much more efficient to just have one so you don’t have to switch systems constantly or worry about potential data duplication or that a record is up to date in one system and not the other.
What to look for in a practice management software provider
Customer support
No matter how experienced they are, it is not uncommon to hear a health practitioner refer to themselves as “not tech-savvy”. Good support can make all the difference in your experience with PMS. The last thing you want to do is get stuck with an issue you can’t resolve while working on notes at the end of the night, or start planning client sessions only to be met with an error code you can’t get past. Customer support can help with these problems, both big and small.
Telehealth
Having a practice management software that is mindful of this new fixture in healthcare is a huge plus. Secure, private sessions are the centerpiece of optimal outcomes and play an especially large role in the satisfaction of patients who may still be leery of digital health. Therapists should also be able to navigate the platform easily and experience little to no technical issues throughout each session.
Final thoughts
As you can see, technology like practice management software doesn’t have to feel scary. To maximize the effort and time your practice management software saves, this all-in-one solution should have each aspect integrated and in communication with each other.
Therabyte is not only a very user-friendly PMS but has just the right amount of features without being overly complicated.
Your success is important to the Therabyte team, that is why we offer various onboarding options to support you in your transition.
- Self – serve
- Full – serve
- Personalized strategy sessions – helping you streamline your services while using all the features of Therabyte that support your business.
Try Therabyte for yourself, sign up for a FREE trial today!
Still, have questions? Check out our comparison chart for how Therabyte stands up to the competition.
Try Therabyte for FREE
