Practice Fusion

Working with Practice Fusion has been a positive experience overall and I can't imagine what our first year in business would have been like without it. The last thing any practice wants to worry about or have issues with is is an EHR platform. Practice Fusion has been a solid system, allowing us to operate effectively on a daily basis and focus on growing our practice. The cost is definitely worth it (even though it was free when we started!) and Practice Fusion is by far one of the best EHR platforms available today. We won't be switching EHR systems anytime soon.

Puntos a favor

When we were opening our practice almost a year ago, there were 3 main EHR platforms we were considering. After the demos and in-depth trials, we ended up choosing Practice Fusion because of the clean interface, ease of use, add-on features, and integration options. We felt that Practice Fusion would allow us to customize our EHR system over time, building and adding only what we want. Having used Practice Fusion since beginning our business, we have been really pleased overall. It serves all of our current needs and has helped our practice run smoothly and efficiently. Practice Fusion is convenient to access online, has useful templates for charting, is intuitively navigable, and produces documents/reports that are clear and professional in appearance. Practice Fusion has been a great fit for us so far.

Puntos en contra

I would say that the main issue we run into with Practice Fusion is subpar customer support. While there is an option to chat with a live representative, the wait time can be excessive. When I finally connect with an agent (if I haven't moved onto something else and forgotten about waiting), the quality of the help that I receive is hit-or-miss. Also, there are a couple of minor things that I am hoping will be addressed (being able to search for patients by nickname/preferred name, documenting meds that have been called in vs. sent electronically, etc.), but no EHR platform is perfect and Practice Fusion is definitely the best system I have used thus far.

This software often felt way too busy and clunky for my needs. I started shopping for software specifically made for mental health. I test drove a bunch of new software programs. Simple Practice was my choice. It does everything I need at a price I can afford. It is also very simple and intuitive by design. I can accept credit cards and conduct HIPPA-secure tele-sessions through the site. They offered an easy way to do mental status exams and treatment plans. Not so in Practice Fusion.

Puntos a favor

It allowed me to use it at no charge for many years. This was helpful for me as a solo practitioner with high overhead costs.

Puntos en contra

This software is not built with mental health in mind. There is no way to customize the interface for the specific needs of my occupation. There were a lot of annoying pop-ups that I had to deal with that did not apply to mental health providers. The most frustrating thing was attempting to work with the calendar. It was impossible to review my schedule on my mobile phone because the calendar was not optimized for mobile. Another feature that did not work well was the client search feature. No matter how many times I would type in certain clients' names, the search box would not recognize or find the client. Also, there was no quick way to add a client unless I had all of the pertinent client data on hand. Most solo MH providers are wearing all of the "hats" in the practice and are trying to schedule new clients during the one or two minutes they have between sessions. Sometimes all we have to go by during that time is a name and contact number. My biggest complaint is that client data cannot be exported via CSV or Excel format. This is a big issue when you have to change software.

It was a good introduction to an EHR for a new and growing practice, when it was free. Now, at the new price point, it is not nearly the same value in comparison to it's competitors who offer integrated billing at the same cost, voice mail reminders, better product support instead of relying mostly on it's user-generated fourums, etc.

Puntos a favor

Little lag, reasonably cohesive interface, easy enough to use once you gett over the learning curve.

Puntos en contra

Poor support which relies on the Practice Fusion community of users to answer questions for each other, no voice mail reminders to patients, difficult to find correct documentation for MIPS and not notified when info changes.

When Practice Fusion was bought out this year, they sent an email to their customers, promising continued commitment to them; however, when they decided to change their structure to cost per Doc,, per month, including part-timers, there was no email notification, and no pop up on their site to let people know. I found the notice in an innocuous looking box on their dashboard, that was so plain looking I had missed it for two weeks. Apparently, they are giving their long-term customers only 3 months notice to pay full price for their subscription, or lose their functionality. That's not a lot of lead time to make a decision about an EHR or make a change, especially when they haven't even taken steps to inform most of their customer base. No ramp up, no grandfathering, no communication. No new features for paying for the same free product, and you still have to pay extra for integrated billing. At this price point, my group now has many more options for fully supported, versatile products. Sometimes the way that something is done, says a lot about how a company views their customers.

We are grateful this free EHR, it saves us a lot of money. However, we hope Practice Fusion will provide its own billing system for us, and we are willing to pay for the billing service. As we all know that the billing is the most important part of medical clinic.
Thanks!
Catherine Ye

Puntos a favor

1. Providing good features ( Schedule including online booking, Patient demographics, management documents, E Prescription, Insurance and verification, Immunizations, Allergies, Smoking status, Vital sign, customized templates, Referrals, lab order and receiving results, image order and receiving results, Soap Note, Message, Patient portal and MIPS report) for free.
2. Providing free learning center in Practice Fusion EHR system.
3. Providing a free custom service ( with Phone, Email. Message, Online chat).
4. Providing report for regulatory compliance and qualify for CMS incentives.
5. Practice Fusion provides Cloud based EHR system. So, you can access the EHR system at any time from any places including out of county if you have internet access.
6. HIPAA, ICD-10, CPT, HL7 compliance and ONC certified.
7. Practice Fusion EHR system is easy to learn with very good navigation design.
8. Practice Fusion provides some of useful reports ( Patient, Chart notes, Diagnosis Drug interactions, Allergy interaction,
e-Prescription per provider, Medication, Patient lists, Referrals, Appointment, Payer, and Activity feed and audit report).

Puntos en contra

1. Practice Fusion has no billing management feature although it can been integrated with other billing software.
2. There is Payer list problems with payer codes, and custom service staffer don't know how to solver the issues.
3. Practice Fusion don't provide our own account manager, we have to explain our issuers each time when we contact customer service representatives.
4. We don't have any communication channel with up level staffer and technical engineer. So, when we have technical or want to have better features, we are lack of connection with Practice Fusion EHR desire team member.
5. Because Practice Fusion is free, the integration with labs and image centers are limited and slower.
6. Practice Fusion doesn't provide onsite help, and there are no regional help centers.
7. Lack of billing feature is a good issue. The processor of integration is completed and have a lot of issues with billing software companies.
8. Because of the billing issue, there is a problem to meet the cost requirement for MIPS from CMC .
9. There is no upper level help staff available in Practice Fusion Customer service.
10. Practice Fusion only provide limited reports. There are no billing and financial Reports. Such as, daily, monthly, yearly receivable and revenue reports.
11. We hope Practice Fusion will provide its own billing system for us, and we are willing to pay for the billing service.

Make this open source so that providers can add functionality to their system. Retain your revenue through advertising as you are doing, from labs, pharmacy, radiology connectivity but give assess to tweak simple issues. Then you would truly be the leader so sought to be.

Puntos a favor

Free, able to get up and running in no time. Web based. runs on both desktop and tablets.free to the provider.

Puntos en contra

Simple tweaks that need to be done are completely neglected. Absolutely cannot talk to support. Difficult to have patients register and if you run a walk in clinic which most places are then forget it. Be ready to type in every last digit yourself. They tout integration with labs, pharmacy and radiology but only those integration to make them money and really i do not care, they should be profitable to remain in business but don't make me use to your product and when you have issues they throw it to a " crowd voting system". As a user i had never even realized that a voting system existed and as a busy provider i do not have the time to read through to find some fix i need already reported. How silly and draconian, who ever came up with this idea needs to be fired!. The founder definitely has no more involvement with this software otherwise he would have seen that no support and inability to adapt to simple tweaks leaves a horrible last. DO not use because you will have trained and gotten used to this and then issues would arise as they always do and you are faced with looking for another. No integration with billing software and this is why. A list of billing companies are given as partners but communication is one way. The super bill flows into the billing but no way to know what a patient owes when they return . There are lots of free clearinghouse but PF in their infinite wisdom will not integrate.