Best physical therapy EMR

Physical therapy EMRs represent a pivotal shift towards technology and innovation in the physical therapy industry over the past few decades.

Summary

• Physical therapy electronic medical records (EMRs) have revolutionized patient care and practice management by enabling therapists to streamline documentation, billing, and communication. These systems help providers document treatments, manage administrative tasks, and offer clients self-service options like scheduling and accessing treatment plans.

• The best physical therapy EMRs offer essential features such as scheduling, insurance management, billing, claims processing, and HIPAA compliance. Solutions like TheraPlatform, WebPT, DrChrono, and NetHealth provide varying levels of automation, customization, and integration to enhance practice efficiency.

• The article reviews four popular EMRs - TheraPlatform, WebPT, DrChrono, and NetHealth - highlighting their unique strengths. TheraPlatform stands out for its AI-powered intake process and telehealth tools, WebPT excels in home exercise programs, DrChrono specializes in revenue cycle management, and NetHealth offers advanced analytics and patient engagement tools.

• Selecting the best EMR involves balancing cost, features, and usability. Therapists should evaluate pricing structures, including hidden fees and add-ons, and consider free trials to test functionality before committing. The right EMR should align with a practice’s needs, improving efficiency while minimizing unnecessary expenses.

Streamline your practice with One EHR

• Scheduling
• Flexible notes
• Template library
• Billing & payments

• Insurance claims
• Client portal
• Telehealth
• E-fax

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These tools, numbering in the thousands, are instrumental in enabling physical therapists to elevate the quality of patient care and boost revenue in their private practices.

Healthcare professionals and patients use physical therapy EMRs across the continuum of client care to capture, transmit, store, display, and use data.

• Providers, for example, use physical therapy EMRs to document care, inform treatment decisions, deliver services, communicate with clients, and manage their practices.

• Administrators for larger practices use physical therapy EMRs to manage operational tasks such as scheduling, billing, and administrative work related to insurance claims.

• Clients use physical therapy EMRs to complete intake forms, review policies, schedule appointments, access mobile monitoring tools, or view therapeutic exercises as part of homework for their physical therapy treatment.

If you're a physical therapist in private practice or an administrator for a practice researching the best physical therapy EMRs, understanding how features will help you best accomplish your goals and how your customers will interact with a physical therapy EMR is key.

In addition to identifying and maximizing features, you'll also want to fully understand the costs associated with physical therapy EMRs. For example, in addition to monthly subscription costs, you'll need to understand whether additional fees exist for additional users and whether add-on features benefit you and your practice.

You want to balance using your practice's most essential features fully without paying for features you don't need.

So much to think about, right?! To help make your search and decision easier, we examine some of the best physical therapy EMRs, looking for common and unique features, varying price points, and whether companies offer the ability to test physical therapy EMRs, a critical component in understanding whether the software solution is best for you.

Standard features for the best physical therapy EMRs

Many of the best physical therapy EMRs come with a list of 'standard' features that typically include:

• Scheduling
• Notes and documentation
• Insurance management
• Practice management
• Billing and invoicing
• Claims management
• HIPAA compliance

Comparing the best physical therapy EMRs

We'll examine the best physical therapy EMRs: TheraPlatform, Dr. Chrono, Nethealth, and WebPT.

TheraPlatform

What is it? TheraPlatform is an all-in-one EHR, practice management, and teletherapy solution explicitly built for therapists in private practice. A therapist founded the Los Angeles-based software company, and its product features are informed by customer feedback and emerging technology (such as AI).

Who's it for? TheraPlatform offers functionality for physical therapists working as sole practitioners and larger group practices that need powerful advanced features such as reporting, multi-location scheduling, and filtering.

Highlights

• AI-empowered intake process: Through innovative optical character recognition (OCR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP), physical therapists can automatically extract information from client documents like driver's licenses and insurance cards. Clients upload a picture of their driver's license and health insurance cards, and data is automatically extracted from the cards and saved securely in the client's chart.

• Efax options: This HIPAA-compliant efax is a secure, convenient, low-cost alternative to traditional faxing. Incoming and outgoing documents, such as progress notes, treatment plans, discharge notes, and other documents, are sent via fax and stored digitally.

• Automated billing and claim validation: Automated billing features save time and speed up payments. Creating and submitting claims in batches and using real-time validation minimizes rejected claims.

• Client portal. The secure client portal offers educational resources and allows clients to schedule, complete, and sign forms and view invoices.

• Speech-to-text technology: Upload video and audio or record telehealth sessions and transcribe them with a few clicks.

• Customer feedback response: Ability to request features and excellent customer service response.

• Teaching tools: A TheraPlatform exclusive, physical therapists can use features such as a built-in whiteboard, interactive screen sharing with live annotations, and document upload and storage (including audio and video files such as YouTube videos) that can be shared and used during live sessions (Advanced plans.)

Practice Management + EHR + Telehealth

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WebPT

WebPT: WebPT is a Phoenix-based software company founded by a physical therapist in 2008 and was built specifically with physical therapists in mind.

Who it's for: While originally conceived for physical therapy practices, WebPT's offerings have expanded into other rehabilitation industries. It is built for small and large practices and has robust features.

Highlights:

• Home exercise programs: Professionally produced audio and video exercises in multiple languages with the ability to build branded exercise plans in minutes.

• Remote therapeutic monitoring: Remote therapeutic monitoring collects and monitors high-quality, non-physiological data from patients through a connected medical device.

• Scheduling: Easy-to-use scheduling features with color coding and the ability to view multiple therapists' schedules simultaneously.

DrChrono

What is it? DrChrono EHR was founded in New York City and has specific features optimized for physical therapy, including the ability to annotate images or X-rays. Clients can also view their take-home exercises or education material through a patient portal.

Who it's for: DrChrono serves small, single-provider, and large medical group practices with multiple specialty customizations, including medical, non-medical, and physical therapy businesses.

Highlights:

• Revenue cycle management (Plus version): Dedicated billing experts, in-house coding compliance officers, and certified medical coders handle the complete lifecycle of medical claims. Offers a free custom ROI analysis.

• Business intelligence tools: Tools can be used to identify claim denial trends and root causes to avoid denials in the future. Another tool allows practitioners to analyze payments, including income sources and amounts.

• Unlimited staff accounts: Allows for practice growth without additional fees

Free Resources for Therapists

Click below and help yourself to peer-created resources:

• Ready-to-use worksheets, checklists, assessments & more!
• Master insurance billing with our expert-led course
• Telehealth 101: On-demand videos
• Curious how TheraPlatform solves private practice pain points?

NetHealth

What is it? Net Health was founded in 1992 and provides powerful software solutions for a wide spectrum of physical therapy care settings, although occupational therapists may also find the features useful.

Who is it for? Net Health was initially designed for wound care, but its EHR solutions are also used in physical therapy and other rehab practices.

Highlights

• Diagnostic and predictive analytics: Predicts outcomes of particular clinical scenarios. An example would be the ability to predict the likelihood that a client will self-discharge vs. missing an upcoming appointment. Such analytics can help therapists understand revenue better and mitigate any loss opportunities.

• Patient engagement site and communication management: Ability for a private practice to automate online review capture, promotion, and moderation.

• Clinical performance analysis allows practices to benchmark their performance against national averages, track therapist strengths and processes, and better understand client satisfaction through Net Promoter Scores.

Choosing the best physical therapy EMR for your practice

When it comes time to select the best physical therapy EMR for your practice, it's clear that there are plenty of options.

How do you decide on the best physical therapy EMR for your practice?

• Understand pricing. Taking a holistic approach to examining prices (vs. focusing on a monthly subscription rate) will minimize surprises in the future and help you manage revenue and expenditures better. A high monthly subscription price doesn't necessarily mean you get all the needed features. Think about what add-ons are worth paying for. If a feature can save you time, it may be worth the additional fees. Consider whether you'll need to add staff in the future and whether fees are associated with growth. Are there fees for canceling your subscription?

• Features: Most therapists want to increase efficiency around administrative tasks like notes, scheduling, and billing. Also, consider other administrative tasks specific to you. For example, do you spend a lot of time faxing documents manually? Do you want to offer telehealth as an option to clients? If so, how interactive would you like that experience to be?

• Free trials: One straightforward way to understand whether a physical therapy EMR is right for you is through a free trial. Many, but not all, EHRs will allow you to test their features and determine which features are most important to you during a trial period that typically lasts 14 to 30 days. Trying out a product before committing will help you save time and money in the long run. (You're seeing a theme here, right?)

Now that you know how some best physical therapy EMRs can help you manage everything from documentation to billing and scheduling, consider choosing the best physical therapy EMR to help streamline your business.

If you're starting a PT practice, the best physical therapy EMR can help you evolve your business by providing the tools you need to do more in less time.

Start a 30-day Free Trial and explore TheraPlatform. HIPAA Compliant Video and Practice Management Software for Therapists.

Streamline your practice with One EHR

• Scheduling
• Flexible notes
• Template library
• Billing & payments

• Insurance claims
• Client portal
• Telehealth
• E-fax

Learn More

While numerous options exist, your decision should be based on features you will use at a friendly price and the ability to try out the software before subscribing. TheraPlatform is an all-in-one EHR, practice management, and teletherapy software built for therapists to help them save time on admin tasks. It offers a 30-day risk-free trial with no credit card required and supports different industries and sizes of practices, including physical therapists in group and solo practices.