Best Practice Management Software

Practice Management Software Reviews

You got into your medical practice to heal people—not to spend most of the day’s hours fiddling with client intake and medical supply inventory. Fortunately, practice management software offerings—like those you see below—can take over many of the duties of running your practice so you’re free to deliver high-quality care to your patients. But which practice management software wins out, and for which markets? Let’s look at the best practice management software for therapists, dentists, and more as we dive in.

SimplePractice – Best Overall Practice Management Software

Sometimes, these software offerings live up to their names. That’s what you get with SimplePractice, a software offering that puts control over your practice back in your hands, whether you want to run things digitally, virtually, or in a physical office.

The platform includes everything you need to start a practice from scratch, from a website builder up to tracking hours or dealing with its robust customer support.

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SimplePractice features

• Invoice processing – Though some customers had trouble allowing clients to make partial payments, the overall invoice processing here is simple and straightforward, taking a lot of work out of your hair.
• Patient records – HIPAA compliance is abundant here, including HIPAA-compliant telehealth offerings that can keep your practice out of the office without compromising the privacy of your patients.
• Patient intake – Let patients schedule appointments from their mobile device, seamlessly plugging into your system of schedules and calendars to keep your practice on top of everyday tasks.
• Inventory/supply management – Includes everything from inventory tracking to documentation so you can check on how often you have to order new supplies, helping you get a handle on expenses.
• Survey management – Follow up with customers to see what you’re doing well, helping you earn a stellar reputation when someone searches for your practice online.

What markets does SimplePractice serve?

Small practices, especially for M.D.s. You don’t have to have a general medical practice to get the most out of SimplePractice, but if you do, you’ll probably find that you’re smack dab in the middle of their target audience. It’s also great for any practice specializing in telehealth services, which can be great if you typically offer quick check-ins with patients that don’t require more thorough, in-person services.

Dentrix – Best Dental Practice Management Software

Dentrix is incredibly robust when it comes to patient engagement, offering automation for patient communication so you can confirm appointments without having to constantly poke at your phone.

There’s even a feature for letting patients book their own appointments so you can sit back and watch your schedule fill without lifting a finger—er, plaque remover.

You’ve heard the phrase, “Like a trip to the dentist.” Negative connotations galore. But Dentrix wants to make the process painless for you and your patients.

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Dentrix features

• Invoice processing – Handle incoming patient payments with seamless invoice forms that easily integrate into your software.
• Patient records – Features include contactless patient experience, and an online portal so patients can upload key medical information without filling it out in the waiting room.
• Patient intake – Includes a “patient portal” that makes patient interaction a two-way street, helping you fill your schedule while patients input their own booking information.
• Inventory/supply management – Use the same portal to handle new orders and manage your supplies as you generate a fuller schedule with the patient intake features.

What markets does ChurchTrac serve?

Make no mistake: Dentrix is for dental practices. Although many of the features overlap with the kinds of offerings any doctor would like to offer, this software is built exclusively for dental work—making it easily the best fit on our list—as well as the best orthodontic practice management software on offer.

AdvancedMD – Best Practice Management Software for Physiotherapists

Though AdvancedMD has different offerings for both therapeutic and medical practices, it’s one of the options on our list with the best overlap for those exclusively devoted to mental health and physical therapy practices.

As such, the features line up neatly with what you’ll need if you’re building up your therapeutic practice, excluding the features you might not need so much—such as a detailed inventory system.

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AdvancedMD features

• Invoice processing – Easy to handle invoicing, including billing with patients that makes the process seamless from both ends, which is critical for therapy services. Also includes a central billing office feature if you have multiple sites.
• Patient records – Plenty of features for patients to input their own information, giving you access to up-to-date records without constantly asking patients for updates.
• Patient intake – Patient-centric scheduling and automated appointment reminders can keep your practice humming.
• Reporting – Offers over 150 standard reports and nearly 500 custom reports to measure your success at one site or several.

What markets does AdvancedMD serve?

AdvancedMD works for a wide range of practices, which also includes physical therapists and straightforward medical clinics. Make sure you choose the right option for your practice, however, to ensure that every feature aligns with what your business needs.

Epic – Best Practice Management Software for Dermatologists and Specialists

You may already be familiar with the wide-ranging offerings of Epic, one of the most famous names in medical practice management software. Although it is more of a back-end medical practice and clinic manager, Epic’s robust features make it a must-consider for any specialized medical practice with enough volume.

While SimplePractice is great for a general practice that you’re starting, we wanted to highlight that Epic isn’t just good for dermatology practices, but any specialized medical practice you want to manage.

As you consider the reasons to incorporate practice management software, here’s why it’s great for dermatology and beyond.

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Epic features

• Invoice processing – Epic is used across the country in hospitals and clinics, which means it can handle scaling for invoice processing across multiple practices.
• Patient records – Highly secure and HIPAA compliant, the system of accessing patient records is straightforward.
• Patient intake – Maybe not as robust and customer-friendly as other options on this list, which is why Epic is better for established medical practices.
• Inventory/supply management – Easily track inventory and supplies—after all, Epic is often designed for large-scale clinics and hospital operations. If they can track inventory that big, they can do it for your dermatology practice as well.

What markets does Epic serve?

Epic isn’t limited to any specific type of practice. If you’re the kind of practice that gets a referral from a general practitioner, there’s always a chance you might consider Epic for managing large-scale practice operations.

eClinicalWorks – Best Practice Management Software for Therapists

Although eClinicalWorks is for a wide range of medical practices—including physical health—this cloud EHR system does have a history of offering psychiatric and therapeutic platforms for therapists.

Many of the standard features you’d want out of a practice management software system for therapists are here, giving you the freedom and flexibility to focus on the mental healthcare your practice provides.

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eClinicalWorks features

• Invoice processing – Easily handle billing for your practice, no matter which type of physical or mental health services you’re providing.
• Patient records – A neat feature here is an alert eClinicalWorks offers you if you search similar patient names—it will ding you with a warning to avoid looking at the wrong patient.
• Patient intake – Self-service portals help patients navigate your practice, which is important, especially for therapist practices, which is where patients are highly likely to want to get everything filled out and scheduled before heading in.
• Inventory/supply management – eClinicalWorks synchronizes with all sorts of offerings, including vision care and dental, to offer full “health center” solutions. You may not use all of these features, of course—but it’s always good to know it’s there.

What markets does eClinicalWorks serve?

Beyond therapists, eClinicalWorks is designed for general practice management across a range of health care fields. We include it here on our list because the features line up so nicely with what therapists might want to achieve with their practice—but that is by no means a limitation.

Compare the best practice management software side-by-side

What is practice management software?

Practice management software includes a suite of features for onboarding patients, managing your schedules, securing patient information, and running the day-to-day operations of medical practice. Specifically, the offerings on our list include inventory management services, financial reporting, invoicing features, and self-service portals to ensure your patients can sign up for an appointment themselves.

Medical practice management software uses

Doctors and health administrators use medical practice management software to run operations of various sizes—from large, multi-site healthcare companies to small, individualized practices. For example, SimplePractice software provides website building and telehealth services for medical practitioners who may just be starting out, while Epic is more appropriate for large-scale, administrative operations.

What does practice management software do?

Practice management software helps health information management professionals handle patient scheduling (including patient-facing portals), billing, invoicing, supply management, and even reputation management aspects of running a medical practice. While the individual features can vary depending on whether you need veterinary practice management software or dental practice management software, it all comes down to the basic administration and day-to-day operations of making your practice work.

Practice management software benefits

You’ll save time, sure, and you’ll make it easier to run the complicated schedule of a medical practice. But what else can practice management software offer you? One key answer is automation: you can automate patient appointment confirmations, which reduces cancellations and keeps your docket full, eliminating wasteful hours spent at your practice. You can also incorporate invoicing and billing into your practice management software to automatically go through and remind patients what needs to be paid.

Automation is the key. After all, a medical practice is one of the most challenging businesses to scale. It requires your presence to keep things going—and if you aren’t doing it efficiently, it can feel difficult to make progress and grow your practice. But the possibilities of practice management software introduce automated elements that extend you and your staff’s ability to reach out to a larger portion of patients without sacrificing the quality of the work you do.

Even more importantly, HIPAA compliance is key to this software—without it, you run the risk of using generalized scheduling and invoicing tools that may unnecessarily expose your patients’ health information.

How much does practice management software cost?

How much you pay for practice management software depends on how quickly you want to scale, how large your current practice is, and what you want to achieve with your practice. The prices are wide-ranging.

• AdvancedMD could cost as little as $200/month but up to $1,000 per month
• SimplePractice was the most affordable on the list here at just $29/month
• Epic could cost $1,200 a month and up for much larger clinical and medical operations

If you have a large specialty practice with multiple locations and many different doctors, Epic is likely going to be the price you’re looking at. If you’re just starting out, SimplePractice’s $29/month—barely the price of a website builder—is a budget-friendly option.

Practice Management Software FAQ

What type of medical practice management software is best?
The practice management software that suits your practice’s specialty and size is going to be best, which is why we divided these reviews up by explaining the markets they serve. For example, SimplePractice is a great start-up software offering for practices that are offering telehealth and just starting to grow, while Epic is great for large, big-time operations with lots of specialties.

What is practice management software in healthcare?
Practice management software is usually a cloud-based, HIPAA-secure platform for scheduling, invoicing, and planning your day-to-day healthcare operations. It also offers services for keeping up to date on patient files so you can quickly access secure patient information when it’s time to reference previous visits and provide the best possible care in a timely manner.

What software do most medical offices use?
Software like Epic is popular across the United States, especially for large medical practices, hospitals, and major health centers. When it comes to individual private practices, popular offerings include eClinicalWorks, Dentrix, AdvancedMD, and SimplePractice.

What is an example of practice management software?
A good example of practice management software is SimplePractice—think of it as everything you need to get a medical practice up and running in one offering.

How we chose the best practice management software

We whittled down a list of nearly 85 practice management software companies to a shortlist of finalists, then selected 15 of the best offerings.

From there, we compared customer service options, pricing, and the breadth of features offered to rate the best practice management software.

This included information gained from websites, contact with the software vendors, video and live demos, and customer reviews. We then scored companies on a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent) across multiple criteria:

• Feature variety. There is a lot of overlap in the features offered by medical practice management software, which is why it can be tricky to delineate between offerings. We honed in on inventory management, patient scheduling, HIPAA compliance, and more – which are all basic features that you’ll want to see in your medical practice software.
• Pricing and transparency. Medical practice management software can run the gamut in pricing, so we explored pricing even when that pricing wasn’t fully transparent on the offering’s website. We then weighed that information for specific uses when recommending each platform in a specific category.
• Onboarding and support: Onboarding can be tricky, and customer support is important, but fortunately, the customer support features in this category tended to be fairly robust across the vendors we reviewed.
• Brand reputation: We gathered information from customer reviews and ratings to gauge the overall brand reputation score of each offering on a scale of 1 to 5.