SimplePractice

Benefits:

Generally, everything is user friendly. It is secure and relatively easy for myself and my clients to use. It is organized and aesthetically pleasing.

Drawbacks:

Adding forms is challenging. Despite having many templates and the ability to create documents, you are unable to add them to a chart. You need to create them, fill them out, print them, and then scan them back into the chart. There MUST be an easier way.

In sum:

Overall, I really like Simple Practice and will continue to use it. I hope they continue to take input from it's users and make adjustments.

Benefits:

This software is richly featured. I've appreciated the ability to create very sophisticated custom online intake forms, and and the autopay enrollment for automated batch credit card billings. There is a lot of video how-to documentation and customer support is timely and attentive if not always able to resolve issues.

Drawbacks:

Simple Practice has its own add-on telehealth option but makes it difficult to appear professional to clients if you are using another technology for your virtual sessions. The first office location you enter is what is displayed both on the customer portal and on superbills, with no way to separate the two. In my case this means the Post Office hosting my PO Box is displayed as my practice location on the portal with an associated map. Users of SP's telehealth option can input a separate billing address.

Benefits:

I love how FAST and transparent the claims billing and processing experience is. It takes just moments to file and send information out to insurance companies. Whereas we used to have to manually work back and forth from various accounts when using our previous EHR program. I love the reporting features. We can cut out having to manually track information in excel sheets because Simple Practice makes it available to us at any time. This helps us to track claims, understand our financials and to keep on target with our clients' copays and claims. The dropdown menus featured, to pull up information on a specific clinician, and pull up their practice information, clients and more is SUCH a great feature for managing our group practice. Did I mention, that sending claims is easier than ever? - this ease alone is what has me and my team jumping for joy.

Drawbacks:

I don't like your calendar. This is where things seem to go awry for myself and our clinicians. I think that you guys would benefit by updating and creating a much more user-friendly experience with more control and detail from the calendar. Before making the change to Simple Practice, our office utilized and paid for Acuity Scheduling. While we totally understand that things would naturally be different from one program to the other, we were, and continue to be baffled and very confused with your calendar programming. Especially using it as a group practice. The calendar is very unorganized, there really is no detail and it technically takes us 2-3 minutes longer to schedule new clients because you do not offer a drop-down box or mini-calendar to select from in order to see available times. I also cannot stand, the way that when you click in an availble slot in the day view, it defaults to the very minute -- 60 minute sessions need to begin on the hour, and when we are selecting the date, we are having to correct it from " 5:15 pm" to "5:00 pm". Managing therapists schedules is also a pain. I would like to see an overhaul to your calendar that features new availability designation, new appointment selection, and one that works based on the times and hours that each therapist states for their own schedule. I want to see more control int he calendar. End request: Create a much better, user friendly calendar!

In sum:

So far, very excited, very pleased with your customer service and overall happy that we made the jump from three separate software over to one. Please see the comments above, in regard to your calendar which -- is the main criticism for your software. I would be happy to follow up on my ideas via email. The overall cost for simple practice technically isn't saving us any money, but it is saving lots of time.

Benefits:

I enjoy the software has integrated assessments, a client portal accessible to place on your practice website, Wiley Treatment Planner, and built in paperwork needed for new clients. I am appreciate of the customer service that is prompt with response. The software has amazing training videos that assists with new users like myself.

Drawbacks:

Billing insurance does not seem intuitive, however I signed up for a class to gain knowledge in billing.

In sum:

I switched to Simple Practice from another EHR due to the features offered and the customer support. It is important for me as practice owner to have features such as managing the client portal access and the ability to send new client paperwork via the client portal. Simple Practice has all that is needed with integrated insurance billing, invoices, super bills, clinical note structure, video therapy, and credit card swipe. I am thrilled to have Simple Practice and look forward to learning more about all the features the EHR provides! I know Simple Practice will help me and my practice grow exponentially!

Benefits:

Lots of important pros. 1) Online scheduling and intake, 2) integrated payment processing and auto-pay, 3) cloud based, 4) competitive pricing, 5) very easy to learn, 6) the team is getting faster (slightly) with updates/improvements, 7) works for chiropractic billing now, 8) free online help articles, and 9) free month trial. We looked into so many options, and Simple Practice was clearly the best in our opinion. We're still happy with our choice; the pros outweigh the cons!

Drawbacks:

1) Text reminders: you only have a few options of when they go out, and all options are 24+ before the appointment. A text reminder shortly before greatly reduces no-shows, so it's a major feature missing. 2) Confirming appointments: you can't turn off the need to confirm appointments, and it's time consuming to confirm every. single. appointment. We want the option to turn off confirmation, or at least for some appointment types. 3) Email reminders: you have to turn them on for every patient, and it's not quick to get to it. 4) Sales tax: they don't track it, so you have to manually keep track. You shouldn't use this software if you sell products regularly. 5) Customer service: too slow. Not just initial response time, but how many back and forth emails it takes to get an answer. I tried the live q&a and it didn't get me an answer any faster. Chat would be a big improvement. 6) Group practice: overall it works well. The thing that is lacking is the report to help with payroll. It's confusing and needs better instructions/help articles 7) Online scheduling: overall good. The con is cancelling online. A) it's hard to find, so we get more phone calls than we used to. B) we let patients cancel up to 12 hours beforehand, but the software cuts it off 24 hours before, so we again get more calls than before. 8) Color coding: you can't set the background color of appointments. For us, it would be so helpful to make insurance appointments a different color than self-pay.

Benefits:

I truly appreciate the ease of use in managing client information. This EHR is comprehensive, user friendly, and does everything needed for a private practice. I wish I had started with this EHR.

Drawbacks:

The Wiley Treatment planner is not as comprehensive as it is in TherapyCharts for some reason. It also does not code exactly as stated as the DSM-V, but I'm sure we will get used to it and adjust.

In sum:

So far, it has been a good experience as we are adjusting to this software.

Benefits:

I love the editable notes/forms and the online access! Client portal is also more streamlined and user friendly compared to competitors. Reports are nice and helpful for the most part. Free text and voice are nice (however you pay the difference with the higher cost of claim submission compared to competitors).

Drawbacks:

The billing tabs are difficult to understand as they don't seem to be graphically easy to understand where each invoice is being applied. Looking quickly at the billing tab, it looks as if I have twice as many invoices than I actually need and some invoices, invoice for a zero balance (or even before an insurance payment is made). This makes the billing harder to understand than some of SimplePractice's top competitors. Also, I wish the reports would show overall totals of figures (I.e. insurance payments owed, client balances owed, etc.). These features allow me to look quickly at client balances and billing and get an idea of where billing sits very quickly, and again, is a feature with competitors. Being a one man office right now, theses features save valuable time and seem like easy fixes to the system. I also wish Simple Practice had phone support - just for the fact that time is valuable and I don't want to wait to resolve an question.

In sum:

Good. Some key features that I wish were present with billing graphics and information, which I mentioned in the cons section. If these upgrades/changes could be made, I would rate SimplePractice as excellent.

Benefits:

Overall this software is very intuitive. It's relatively easy to customize and I love having my documentation in billing all in one place for such a low cost. The customer services is exceptional. Anytime I have a question I simply send a message and link and I have a helpful response within 24 hours.

Drawbacks:

As a pediatric SLP, I have had to create my own templates for pretty much everything due to insurance requirements and the nature of my assessment and treatment. This can be time consuming for sure. I would love to be able to use the telehealth software, but I really need to be able to give the kids remote control in order to keep them engaged and as far as I know that isn't a feature at this point. The billing can get confusing, but the customer service has been incredibly helpful with this and I feel it's mostly due to the complexity of the billing for that client more so than the software.

In sum:

Overall would recommend to anyone with a small practice who is willing to put the time/effort into creating their own templates.

Benefits:

I'm a new Simple Practice user, but not new to using electronic health records for my private practice. I made the decision to switch to Simple Practice from my previous software to allow me to access my records from any device. I now have a virtual presence for the first time in my work, so having this type of access, in a HIPAA compliant format, is crucial. I love how user-friendly the software is and found I was able to migrate all the data from my previous software in a relatively short amount of time. My clients have provided positive feedback about getting automated appointment reminders, automated billing / payment options, and a dedicated client portal. I look forward to using the billing functionality in the near future.

Drawbacks:

I'm new to cloud-based software so I am concerned about all of my practice information existing in the cloud only. There was no clear information in the portal for how to go about backing up data to your own hard drive but I was able to contact support and learn the necessary steps to complete a backup through a Data Export function. Also, insurance companies who require electronic billing (such as Medicare) require an account ID to be assigned to the client record. Simple Practice software does not automatically do this (my other software did) and therefore the practitioner has to manually create a system and assign one and then attach it as sticky note in the client record.

Benefits:

I'm still very new to SP but, first and foremost I so appreciate the integrated digital form! Having not had that with my last EHR, it is such a relief to not have to deal with stacks of paperwork that need to be scanned. I also appreciate that text appointment reminders are included in the monthly fee as well as the ability for clients to easily schedule a consultation appointment from my website.

Drawbacks:

Nothing beats having live customer support easily and quickly accessible so it's an adjustment not having that feature with SP. I'm also not a fan of the language, "let's manage expectations for your call". Makes me feel like I'm going to need to rush and not take up too much of the customer service rep's time. That being said, the live chats have actually been helpful and have gone smoothly.