Running a physical therapy clinic is not for the timid. Of course, you have patients in pain or with diminished quality of life looking to you for relief. That was the job you trained for and why you’re in the practice. But did your coursework and physical therapy (PT) certifications prepare you to manage regulations, build efficient workflows for your team, or hire, manage, and motivate therapists and office staff? Mine didn’t either.
Your PT business succeeds or fails on the same principle as any business: balancing efficiency and effectiveness. If you are too efficient, your outcomes suffer. If you are too effective, your profits – and viability – suffer. It’s a harrowing trial by fire for many business owners.
How do you manage the main business fundamentals of a physical therapy clinic? Let’s do what successful entrepreneurs have done for centuries: Get qualified advice and support from people with experience and tools that help you make a difference.
An Essential Physical Therapy Tool
One of the essential modern tools is electronic medical record (EMR) software for practice management. It can help you streamline your processes, keep your records, simplify compliance, run your billing, build your schedules, and – most important – save time for you and your clinic’s staff. And that even helps to boost everyone’s motivation.
It’s efficiency and effectiveness all in one place. But only if you rely on the PT EMR that actually delivers on those promises. All software is not the same. In fact, you might already be using EMR software that’s not exactly doing what you want. So let me quickly take you through ways to improve your clinic with EMR and introduce you to iAM-PT. We’ll look at some of the challenges of running a physical therapy clinic, the ideal characteristics of physical therapy EMR systems, and then some specific examples of how all of this comes together in a solution you can start using this afternoon.
Make Your Practice Better With EMR
All of us can streamline our operations with the help of electronic medical record (EMR) software. EMR supports many tasks, including scheduling, billing, documentation, and patient communication and can bring crucial benefits to your clinic:
- Enhance efficiency: Save time and money by automating many of the frequent tasks involved in running a physical therapy practice. For example, it can automatically schedule appointments, send out billing reminders, and generate all your reports.
- Improve accuracy: Make your records more accurate by including templates and checklists that guide your documentation. By avoiding errors, you improve the quality of patient care.
- Increase compliance: Stay compliant with government regulations by supplying tools to track patient progress and generate reports. This can help you avoid fines and penalties.
- Better patient communication: Improve communication with your patients by providing them with a secure patient portal where they can view their records, schedule appointments, and send messages to their therapist.
- Strengthen patient relationships: Attract and retain patients more effectively because patients are more likely to choose a physical therapy practice that uses modern technology to deliver high levels of service and convenience.
EMR Can Even Pay for Itself
The cost of EMR varies quite a bit, depending on the features and functionality of the software. However, you can quickly offset its cost with the savings it generates. For example, EMR can save time for you and your teams by automating many tasks and freeing your staff to focus on more patients and better patient care, which in turn can lead to more revenue. It also helps you improve the accuracy of your records, which can reduce the risk of fines and penalties. This can also save you a lot of money in the long run.
What To Look for in Your EMR Selection
If you are considering EMR for your clinic – and you should – do your research to be sure it meets the needs of your practice. There are many systems offered with many different features and functions. Your careful selection can be the difference between improving your practice and bogging it down. But with your eyes wide open, you will be able to find the one that fits your budget and your specific requirements.
Let me tell you about the choices I made. For nearly 30 years, I’ve run a physical therapy practice in Texas, with two clinics including one with 15,000 square feet. I’ve been through the ups and downs of our industry, and I’ve seen EMR grow steadily. I’ve also seen EMR systems that just don’t do the job, haven’t improved with time, or get in the way more than they help. That includes some very popular ones that you might be using today.
I knew that better was possible, so I pulled together a team of physical therapists and software engineers to build it. Over the years, I’ve enhanced it with feedback from other clinics using it and with ongoing advances in software design. It’s called iAM-PT, which stands for Interactive Advanced Medicine – Physical Therapy. Our focus has always been on changing how physical therapists interact with their patients to make their work more efficient and effective. iAM-PT has become widely accepted as one of the most functional pieces of software available to physical therapists.
Here’s What Our Many Clinicians Have Found With iAM-PT:
- Clean documentation that reduces and simplifies overall data entry, uses voice dictation for notation, standardizes data entry, improves compliance on documentation, and reduces clerical errors.
- Intuitive billing that automatically generates billing when patient notes are completed, instantly adds billing to schedules, increases claim amounts by reducing errors, and tracks same-day payments and receivables against claims.
- Simple scheduling that gives you drag-and-drop scheduling on demand, schedule appointments across multiple locations with multiple staff members, customize colors for different types of visits, and automatically generate text and email reminders for patients.
- More compliance with our patented ComPAT™ Computerized Pain Assessment Tool, comprehensive compliance metrics, simple MIPS, outcome compliance, a patient survey builder, and outcome analysis.
Perhaps Most Important: Predictable Pricing
This was the biggest pain in my neck: pricing. All the features and benefits in the world don’t mean anything if the software costs too much or surprises you with unexpected charges. The EMR industry seems to have lost its way with opaque, confusing fees. I won’t have it. With iAM-PT, we have simple pricing that lets you easily project total costs for the services you use. The only surprises are your clinic’s new efficiency and your therapists’ enhanced effectiveness.
It’s About Time
The simplest way to look at good EMR software is by the time it saves. That’s time that can go into further billable work and better outcomes. We’ve found that on average, a physical therapist using iAM-PT will save enough time by lunch on the first day to pay the monthly iAM-PT price. Let’s look at the numbers. (Feel free to adjust them to your clinic’s actual numbers.)
- Physical therapist: $40 per hour
- Clinic’s patient billing: $100 per hour
- Time saved in documenting an evaluation: 1.5 hours x $40 = $60
- Time now available for billable work: 1.5 hours x $100 = $150
- Total amount: $210
- Typical cost for a single user on iAM-PT: $75 per month
- Clinic savings before lunch time on the first day: $135
Hear What Our Clients Have To Say
“It’s changed our practice and has given us better ways to become efficient and profitable.”
—Dr. Dustin Dixon
“Using this software helped my clinicians reduce human errors by reducing multiple data entries. Our compliance issues have been reduced greatly.”
—Josh Crow
Your Patients and Your Staff Deserve the Best
Many clinics already have EMR software that they know isn’t really helping enough. Or is actually holding them back. I get it. With all that clinicians must do, switching to a new system sounds unwise. It’s not. Ask your peers what they’re using and if they’re happy. Get demos of some different EMR systems, including iAM-PT. Look for simplicity, automation, and predictable pricing. The benefits to your finances and staff morale are worth the small inconveniences of shifting to a better system. And if it’s the right system, your payback comes in right away.
Learn More and Book Your iAM-PT Demo
If we can help you evaluate iAM-PT, please get in touch:
- Call us: 1-833-554-2678
- Book a demo: iAM-PT.com
Start today
Give Your Practice More: Freedom