Best Practice Management Software Solutions

When you’ve started your own practice, you soon realise that running a practice smoothly requires much more business admin and acumen than med school ever prepared you for.

Practice admin generally includes, but is not limited to, the following:

Booking patients

1. Scheduling appointments.
2. Calendar integration.
3. Data-capturing.
4. Indemnity and consent forms.
5. Privacy and security measures.

Billing and getting paid

1. Invoice generation.
2. Consultation coding.
3. ICD 10 coding.
4. Procedure and material coding.
5. Medical aid claims submission.
6. Switching (checking medical aid status in real-time).

The consultation

1. Clinical notes.
2. Electronic health records.
3. Investigations (pathology and radiology).
4. Keeping track of all results.
5. Referrals to and from other healthcare professionals.
6. Sick note generation.
7. Prescription generation.
8. Dispensing (where applicable).

Practice finances & accounting

1. Dispensary management (where applicable).
2. Transaction reconciliation/remittance.
3. Financial reports.
4. Accounting and auditing.
5. Oh, and don't forget business taxes...

Feel overwhelmed yet? We know…

That’s why we’ve endeavoured to provide you with helpful information about the best practice management software solutions in South Africa to assist you with starting and running your private practice.

What Is Practice Management Software?

Practice management software (PMS) refers to software solutions that function specifically to help medical professionals like doctors to streamline their practice processes.

Their functionality generally include running the day-to-day processes like scheduling appointments, booking new patients, capturing patient data including medical aid data, assisting with medical billing and payments, linking with medical aids for claim submissions, generating accounting reports for reconciliation and analysis, dispensary inventory and stock management, etc.

Some software solutions include patient clinical record keeping. Clinical notes enable you to type and save patient notes so that you can view your notes again at future consultations. Electronic health records (EHR), on the other hand, takes clinical notes to a whole new level by including commonly used phrases, consultation templates, and many other tools to help streamline the consultation time.

Certain software solutions also include prescription and sick note generation. These are particularly helpful when they save past medications prescribed. Some are even integrated with software that show you names of generics as you prescribe.

Tip

As you can see, different practice management software offer different solutions for different processes.
For example, investing in software that offers EHR is great if you like to keep electronic notes of every patient, but if you know you prefer paper-based note-keeping then investing in EHR would be pointless. The key is to find the right solution to suit your needs.

Why do I need Practice Management Software?

As we mentioned on our How To Start A Private Practice and How To Manage A Private Practice pages, there are a few important factors that help determine whether a private practice is managed successfully.

Ultimately, though, a practice is no different from any business in that it becomes successful as its income growingly exceeds its expenses. Besides maintaining a budget, then, the most important factors contributing to a successful practice are:

1. Consulting patients.

- Spending your time wisely – on clinical work and less on admin.
- Consulting patients at reasonable yet time-efficient intervals.
- Reducing missed appointments by sending reminders.

2. Getting paid for those consultations.

- Knowing which codes to use.
- Submitting claims correctly to the medical aids.
- Getting real-time feedback when submitting claims.
- Chasing payments where not paid – NB!
- (For more information on streamlining this process, check out our Best Practice Management Bureaus page).

Do you see why streamlining the practice management processes are so important? That’s why practice management software solutions (and practice management bureaus) exist to help doctors with practices free up your time from admin, so that you can focus on what you love and were trained to do – clinical patient management – while still maintaining a successful and growing practice.

So, if you’re still asking yourself whether it is wise to invest in a good practice management software solution, the answer is YES! But make sure that you get the practice management software solution that will suit you best.