Clinic Management Software

Medical clinics occupy a unique niche within the field of health care providers. They are different from medical practices in that they are either larger or focus on a specialized subfield of medicine (such as orthopedics or geriatrics). They differ from hospitals in that they are smaller and primarily focus on outpatient care.

The software needs of medical clinics are equally unique. They need a mix of tools and functionality covered by general medical practice management software, as well as the specialized electronic medical records (EMR) functions their field of practice requires.

This buyer's guide will discuss what makes clinic management software unique before looking at some common features. It will also provide important questions you should consider before choosing the right software for your clinic.

Here's what we'll cover:

What Is Clinic Management Software?
Common Features of Clinic Management Software
What Type of Buyer Are You?
Key Considerations

What Is Clinic Management Software?

Clinic management software combines practice management software with EMR software to create a software product that will handle both the business and practitioner sides of a medical clinic.

The practice management side of the software helps physicians and their staffs schedule patient appointments, perform billing procedures, manage charge capture and record patient demographics. These tools focus on improving doctors' workflow efficiency in regard to the business side of their practice. This can lead to a higher reimbursement rate from health care insurance company providers.

The EMR side, on the other hand, focuses on automating doctors' clinical operations, through digitally stored patient charts that provide access to demographics, histories, medications, test results, and SOAP notes. EMR tools can vary widely by the type of medicine practiced—psychiatric medical notes are very different from pediatric medical notes, for example—so specialty clinics will require software that is geared toward their field's needs.

Common Features of Clinic Management Software

What Type of Buyer Are You?

Between your options for individual practice management software and EMR software systems, there are several hundred options to choose from for your clinic management needs. Some of these are general management suites for any type of practice, while others are highly specialized for particular medical fields.

With so many options catering to so many specialties, you might be overwhelmed by choices when looking for the right clinic management software. You can narrow down the field by understanding what type of buyer you are, based on the following common categories of clinic types:

• Primary care MDs/DOs and related specialists. These clinics are private practices that provide internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, OB-GYN, cardiology, oncology, orthopedics, urology etc. Their needs will by and large be met by broad management systems and specialty-specific EMR templates.
  
• Specialists with other designations (DC, OD, PT, PhD, LCSW etc.). These clinics include chiropractors, psychologists, therapists, counselors and optometrists. Their needs are similarly rather straightforward, but they may require more specialized EMR systems for their specific medical field.
  
• Midsize to large clinics. These clinics have anywhere from 5 to 100 physicians, and have larger practice management requirements than small clinics. Eliminating paperwork and improving efficiency will be a high priority for these clinics. They will also need to integrate with other health care networks' systems, track information across several physical locales and ensure consistency of care across multiple providers within the same clinic.
  
• Inpatient care organizations. These are clinics that have evolved into large hospitals and acute care centers that will need to add inpatient care functionality to their software suites. They will need to be able to manage patient rooms/beds and assign nurse and physician rounds. These organizations will require the most robust clinic management tools that integrate with a wide variety of other applications.

Key Considerations

Other factors to take into consideration when picking the best clinic management software for your medical practice include:

• Integration with other systems. A large number of clinic management software providers are primarily providers of practice management software, EMR software or both. If you are purchasing two separate systems for these two functions, even from the same vendor, you want to be absolutely certain that the two suites are able to integrate with one another. Your clinic management process will be much smoother if you are able to easily pass patient records between your doctors and your billing department, for example. If you end up purchasing practice management software and EMR software from two different vendors, then it is vitally important to double check with both that the two systems will be able to integrate.
  
• Cloud-based software vs on-premise software. The majority of software sold today is provided through the cloud, meaning that you receive access to your software over the internet, and you won't need to purchase or install any hardware. This saves on time and money, especially up front, because you won't need to invest in IT resources to install, implement and maintain any hardware. However, for extremely large clinics—such as those that are part of a larger hospital network—there may be some value to on-premise software, which is actually housed at the clinic and maintained by an IT department. An on-premise solution requires storage space for hardware, but can be slightly faster and doesn't necessarily rely on an outside internet connection in times of crisis or emergency.