Choosing an Electronic Health Records (EHR) System

One of the biggest decisions you’ll make as a Therapy business owner is choosing an EHR for your organization.

I would not recommend running any kind of medical business without an EHR, and there is no perfect solution.

So, what are the most important features you need in an EHR? Do you choose the cheapest? The prettiest? The one with the most features? All good questions, but how do you decide what’s most important for your system?

We work with a lot of providers and every single one has a different list of priorities when it comes to choosing the right EHR. So, what I’ve tried to do here is list all of the items and questions that you might use to evaluate your EHR choices. I’m not going to compare different EHRs since there really are too many to list and it wouldn’t be fair if I missed the one you eventually decide to use. However, this should provide you with a list of features that are important to most providers.

1. Price: Cost is king, your margins are low enough as a Therapy office, choose something that won’t break the bank down the road. Be sure to ask if part-time users are discounted.

2. Scheduling: Scheduling is difficult enough without a web-based solution to help out. Make sure you can send visit reminders to patients.

3. Clinical Documentation: This is a huge part of your decision, be sure that it satisfies your specific requirements.

Are the documents customizable?
Are your patient goals trackable?
Can you quickly summarize and graph the patient goal data?
Can you track incomplete or unsigned progress notes?
Can you copy data from note to note?

4. Authorizations: Can you track expiring authorizations and run reports on all existing ones?

5. Billing: Does the system easily convert your visits into claims for billing? Can you send claims through the system to a clearinghouse?

6. Payments: Can you reconcile payments for claims with the visits listed in the system? Can the system receive automatic electronic remittances from insurers so you can match claims to visits?

7. Payroll: Does the system allow you to quickly convert therapists’ visits into payroll so you don’t have to spend hours calculating their checks.

Hopefully, this list helps you ask the questions you need to decide on the system that’s right for your business. Trust me, once you’ve decided on a system, you don’t want to switch. It is a massive effort to change so take your time and evaluate your options.