The Best Medical Software of 2024

Medical software, including electronic medical records (EMR) systems and practice management software, are essential parts of medical practices and healthcare systems. Not only is the use of these platforms a regulatory requirement, but they enable medical practices to operate more effectively and deliver higher-quality care to patients. Medical software supports the many functions a practice needs every day, including setting appointments, updating patient information, checking insurance eligibility, storing medical charts and test results, prescribing medications, and generating claims and managing medical billing.

The best medical software makes it easy for providers to plan their day at a glance, with useful scheduling tools and the ability to review patient profiles in one or two clicks. This example comes from athenahealth’s medical software, our best pick for reporting. Source: athenahealth

Medical software combines electronic medical records (EMR) systems and practice management software to create a technology platform suitable for running a medical practice’s front office and clinical operations. Medical software includes patient demographics and scheduling tools that enable office staff to efficiently fill providers calendars and seamlessly share the information with nurses and clinicians. The best medical software also include insurance eligibility verification tools that confirm a patient’s insurance is up to date and valid, as well as patient portals that allow patients to update their own information via mobile app or web browser.

Medical software also includes important clinical features like patient charting tools, prescription management tools and lab testing tools, ultimately serving as a complete depository of patients’ medical histories. The best medical software can securely share this information with other healthcare providers as well, so every provider a patient sees has access to their records.

Medical software also includes helpful reports that help medical practice’s operate successfully as a business. These include financial reports that show how efficiently a medical practice is collecting payments for claims sent to payers like insurance companies. The best medical software companies may even offer reports that compare practice performance to other similar medical practices and offer guidance on how to improve key metrics.

Medical software offers key benefits that can help medical practices operate more efficiently and improve patient experience. These include:

• Improved front office management: Medical software includes tools that make it easier for a practice’s front office to do their job. Appointment schedulers make it easy to fill provider’s calendars and see at a glance what type of appointment a patient has requested. Insurance eligibility verification can confirm ahead of a patient’s visit that their insurance is valid. Office staff can even send forms to patients to complete before their visit to capture necessary information, and patient portals allow patients to update their information themselves.
• Helpful clinical tools: On the clinical side, medical software includes charting tools that allow providers to document all the details of an appointment, which are stored in a patient’s complete medical history. It also includes prescription medication tools and the ability to order lab tests and receive results, with integrations to pharmacies and laboratories. Useful features like drug interaction warnings and voice-to-text transcription are also commonly included in medical software.
  
• Digitized medical records: The data captured during patient encounters is digitized and archived. These records can easily be retrieved as needed and added to during each additional patient encounter. The best medical software is also interoperable with other systems, allowing healthcare providers to share patient data seamlessly with one another so that every provider a patient sees has access to their medical history.
• Streamlined patient requests: Patients can use a medical software’s patient portal, usually provided as an application or secure browser log-in, to update their personal information such as their address, insurance or pharmacy. They can also make requests for prescription refills or to schedule an upcoming appointment directly in a patient portal. This can help reduce the amount of time your staff spends on the phone or collecting patient information at the point of care, improving your front office’s workflow and boosting patient satisfaction.
• Useful medical billing tools and reports: Medical software also includes medical billing tools and accounting reports, which help medical practice’s run a profitable business. Medical billing is complex and requires a team to generate claims and monitor them until insurance companies make payments. Medical billing tools make it easier to create claims, scrub them for errors, and submit them to payers through the appropriate clearinghouse. Financial reports help billers keep tabs on how long it takes to pay and whether a practice is collecting everything it is owed.

In addition, medical practices that adopt medical software that meets government requirements will avoid incurring financial penalties that could ultimately impact the business’s bottom line. The Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) ties Medicare reimbursements for care to a practice’s quality of care, including the interoperability of their medical software with those of other providers. To avoid reduction of Medicare reimbursements, practices must demonstrate “meaningful use” of a medical software platform that meets the guidelines set out by the federal government.

Medical software is typically priced on a “per provider, per month” basis, meaning you’ll pay a monthly fee multiplied by each medical provider in your practice that requires access. Our picks for best medical software range in cost from $140 per provider, per month to $729 per provider, per month for access to a full software suite that includes the practice management software and the EMR system.

Some medical software providers may offer multiple pricing tiers with access to different levels of features. DrChrono, for example, offers three pricing tiers for its medical software platforms: Prometheus, Hippocrates and Apollo. Others, like CareCloud, simply offer a subscription to either the practice management software alone or bundled with the EMR system as a full medical software — there are no pricing tiers or restricted features.

In addition to the monthly subscription price, most medical software vendors charge a setup or implementation fee. The implementation process of these systems is often lengthy and complex, lasting several weeks. In our review of our best picks, we found that one-time implementation costs could easily eclipse $3,000, which typically covers data migration, system setup and configuration, payer enrollment, provider credentialing and training.

In some cases, you won’t be required to pay an implementation fee, and some vendors will even include limited training at no cost. But just because implementation is free doesn’t make it comprehensive, so be sure to ask what the implementation process includes and what level of training is included.

There is another wrinkle to consider: revenue cycle management. We found that if practices opt for outsourced medical billing services, vendors generally provide full access to their medical software suite in exchange for an agreed-upon percentage of the practice’s monthly collections instead of predetermined fees. Learn more in our overview of the best medical billing services, which includes some of these providers.

When reviewing medical software, we looked for features we considered central to the purpose of the platform. We considered these features absolute requirements for medical software platforms and paid close attention to how well each solution performed in our testing when it came to them. Below are some of the key features you should look for when choosing medical software.

Appointment Scheduling

On the practice management side of medical software, appointment scheduling tools are fundamental to streamlining your front-office staff’s calendar-related tasks. Appointment scheduling features can also expedite intake and registration in ways not possible with traditional paperwork.

Although appointment scheduling is primarily a practice management software tool, you’ll also see it on the EMR side of most medical software platforms. Your medical software’s appointment scheduling tool should let you see your daily appointment schedule and appointment types. It should also display a patient’s status and location within your facility (or which facility they’re scheduled to visit). Some medical software allows you to track patients right down to the specific exam room or piece of medical equipment, as well as to check them out when their visit is complete.

AdvancedMD allows customization of the appointment calendar, including color-coding appointment types so it’s easy to prepare for them at a glance. Source: AdvancedMD

Billing and Claims

The practice management software portion of your medical software tool should be able to post charges and create claims based on your EMR data. It should also have built-in ICD-10 and CPT coding libraries, alongside automatically generated E&M codes, that your billers can use.

The best medical software platforms should clearly indicate the patient and care provider tied to the claim, as well as the total claim value. Your software should also include claim-scrubbing tools, and many platforms have tools for handling rejected or denied claims too. Another critical function we looked for in our reviews is insurance eligibility verification. This allows you to check whether a patient’s insurance policy on file is active and up to date as soon as the appointment is scheduled. High-quality medical software enables you to check this information en masse.

Charting and Notetaking

EMR software should make it easy to take notes during encounters and add information to patients’ charts, whether typing or using hotkeys or voice-to-text. Your patient charts should clearly show the patient’s vitals, current medications, recent appointment history, medical history and other basic information. They should also let you easily jump to other tools, such as your e-prescribing suite.

Medical software includes clinical tools such as patient charts. In the example above, a CareCloud patient chart displays basic patient information alongside a toolbar that can drill down further into their details. Source: CareCloud

Customization

In your EMR system, you should have access to numerous templates you can use to take notes during patient encounters or add important information to patient charts. Most importantly, these templates should be extensively customizable. You should be able to modify them based on the appointment type or your preferred notetaking method.

Your chosen template should give you a quick view of the most critical information for your encounter and fill in chart fields as needed. If a template isn’t working for you at the moment, some medical software platforms will let you tweak it as you take notes.

Medical software customization also extends to practice management software reporting. Many practice management software providers offer hundreds of customizable, filterable financial reports; in fact, we suggest not choosing platforms that offer little to no customization on the reporting side.

E-Prescribing and Labs

Your medical software should make electronically prescribing medications a breeze. It should also give you the option to review a patient’s entire medication history. Most EMR platforms even flag potential drug interactions or medicines that could trigger a patient’s allergies.

Several medical software solutions also include tools for electronically ordering labs and bloodwork. These platforms typically integrate with leading lab providers such as Labcorp and Quest Diagnostics, though some of our best picks lack this capability. These standout products make up for this gap with the vast majority of their other features.

Interoperability

No two medical practices use precisely the same software suite, but practitioners often need to communicate with one another. Interoperability features ensure no information gets lost or misinterpreted in transmission between disparate systems. They also allow instant provider access to a patient’s medical data.

Interoperability is also fundamental to getting your practice’s vaccine and immunization data into the CDC’s immunization information systems. The Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs also have several meaningful use standards that practices can and should achieve through interoperability measures.

Patient Portal

Many medical software companies include a patient portal with their practice management software offerings to expedite patients’ ability to book and modify appointments. Through these portals, patients can also request medication refills or message your front-office staff for assistance. Similarly, your front-office staff can use this portal to send patients their registration and intake forms, billing statements and payment requests.

Performance Management and Reporting

The best medical software includes customizable reports that can help you view and analyze all kinds of performance data tied to your practice’s operations. You can filter your reports based on numerous categories, such as provider, payer or location. With most platforms, you can also modify the period over which the information is collected and export your reports in several file formats.

Telehealth

As telehealth becomes increasingly important in modern healthcare, the best medical software includes plenty of telemedicine tools. Ideally, your chosen telehealth platform will fully integrate with your EMR system and practice management software for easy note taking and scheduling. In some cases, patients won’t have to download separate apps to start telehealth calls from their phones. This convenience may be useful to keep in mind as you browse medical software options.

At Business News Daily, our team of small business technology experts have been researching and testing medical software for years, comparing some of the leading solutions across more than 30 key metrics.

We considered 46 medical software platforms in our initial pool of candidates. To determine which to test further, we examined pricing plans, core features, reporting tools and the availability of customer support. We also considered each vendors’ familiarity with various specialties and looked for those that had applicable expertise to a wide range of medical practices. We also looked for vendors that offered meaningful implementation and training support, which we considered essential to getting a medical software platform up and running without interrupting a medical practice’s workflow.

After narrowing down our initial list of medical software platforms, we closely reviewed and tested eight of them before selecting our six best picks above. This testing started with scheduling live demonstrations to get an overview of the software and ask questions of company representatives. We also accessed free trial software to get a firsthand sense of how each platform worked, and we looked for tutorial videos and guides to see how easy it is to get up to speed with self-guided resources.

During our testing, we considered the following factors when selecting our best picks. Each is weighted according to how much the criteria typically influences business owners’ buying decisions.

• Pricing (30%): We considered not just the base cost of the software but also implementation costs, the number of pricing plans, per provider fees, and add-on costs to determine which provide the most value per dollar.
• Features (25%): We particularly evaluated the dashboard and tested both practice management and clinical features. These included patient scheduling, insurance eligibility verification, demographics tools, patient portals, patient charts, lab and pharmacy integrations, billing tools and reporting tools.
• Usability (20%): We paid close attention to the ease with which the software could be set up, how intuitive we found the navigation and use of key features, and the training and informational resources available to new users. We also considered whether the software offered a responsive mobile app or mobile browser.
• Customer Support (15%): We examined the ease with which customers can contact the team in need of help. We reviewed customer feedback to determine how well the customer service team meets the needs of existing customers.
• Implementation and Training (10%): Medical software is complex and involves lengthy setup and configuration with the support of the vendor. Additionally, medical practices can benefit from extensive training to ensure staff are up to speed with the system and how it works. We factored in the level of implementation and training support each vendor offers when selecting our best picks.

In addition to scoring each medical software we reviewed based on this criteria, we also determined the best use case scenarios for each. No two businesses are exactly alike, so we put ourselves in the shoes of different types of small business owners and identify the best medical software for a variety of needs.

To learn more about how we review and test tech products and services for small businesses, read about our editorial process here.