Remember the days when all you needed in your PT practice was a few therapists, an office admin, and some comfy waiting room chairs?
Well, today brings its own challenges. You might be struggling to meet demand, preparing to launch new locations (and everything that comes along with the process), or facing billing and insurance complexities that grow more unmanageable by the day.
What you don’t need is an EHR or PT practice management solution that can’t keep up. To set yourself up for sustainable, long-term PT practice growth, you need the right foundation. Look for configurable, scalable, and efficient software.
Configurability: Have It Your Way
Before you commit to any specific system, make sure it’s one you can configure to meet the needs of patients in your particular healthcare field.
A report in the Annals of Family Medicine found that primary care physicians spend an average of about six hours per day on the computer, with a majority of that time (almost two-thirds) spent on clerical and inbox work. With the wrong systems in place, you’ll find that your workflows are working against you.
You and your team will have unique processes, and when you combine them with industry best-practices and time-saving features, you just might be unstoppable! Plus, youll find that alleviating as many manual, repetitive administrative tasks as possible will free up clinicians’ time and reduce the risk of burnout.
While many systems can work for physical therapy in the short term, you don’t want to invest in a solution that isn’t scalable. In the end, making the switch to a new EHR is possible, but can be prevented with strategic decision-making early on.
Scalability: One Size Does NOT Fit All
Too often the solutions offered to healthcare practices fall into a “one-size-fits-all” platform that can actually create more problems than the system is capable of solving. EHR scalability issues often fall into the following categories:
- Your healthcare EHR doesn’t (really) support your specialty. EHRs for hospitals are built, well, for hospitals. And even outpatient physician practice EHRs can fall short for rehab therapy, leading to time-consuming workarounds.
- Your physical therapy EMR has its limits. Many physical therapy and rehab practices turn to specialized EMR systems, but may find that these solutions can’t handle increasing regulatory complexity as your practice grows. (Do you know the difference between EMRs vs EHRs?)
- Your tech stack is all over the place. When your EMR or EHR doesn’t integrate well with other tools, it can cause an administrative nightmare. Looking for a unified platform that includes practice management and EHR systems can reduce the friction!
(Good news: Raintree offers specialized software for rehab therapy with enterprise-level power.)
As your practice grows, your system needs to grow with it, which means it must be scalable, functional, flexible and cost-effective. That’s why you should seek out an easy-to-configure, all-in-one platform that combines intuitive practice management with the patient engagement tools that are necessary to enhance patient care, optimize productivity and streamline your practice’s operations.
Efficiency: Do More With Less Effort
In a physical therapy practice, the amount of time spent interacting with an EMR/EHR can cut a good chunk of time out of personal engagement with your patients. When staff have to spend more and more time on non-patient care activities, such as billing, scheduling, filling out evaluations or correlating various data points for everyone from local health departments to insurance companies, not only can the quality of patient care suffer but clinical burnout could raise its ugly head.
The solution is to make certain you are automating as much of the overall data collection, record maintenance, scheduling, billing and collection activities as possible, so that your staff is freed up to provide the excellent level of patient care everyone wants to give and every patient deserves to receive.
PT Practice Growth Requires a Solid Foundation
If you’re running a tight ship and leaving patients satisfied with their care, it won’t take long for word-of-mouth to spread! Patient-to-patient referrals are a major source of growth for physical therapy practices, especially with the normalization of direct-access care. Having the right systems creates a foundation upon which your entire practice can succeed.
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Physical Therapy Software for Growing and Enterprise Practices
When it’s all said and done, there’s really only one thing that matters when it comes to the software you choose for your growing healthcare practice. Determine what exactly you want the technology to do, how much flexibility you need in your platform, and define your long-term goals… Then request a demo of the perfect software fit for your practice.
