Top 5 EMR/EHR Features for Physical Therapy Clinics

With too many options in the market today, it can be next to impossible to understand which features are necessary for your PT practice.

A correctly selected EMR or EHR system is the cornerstone of any physical therapy clinic: streamlining workflows to enhance practice efficiency and, ultimately, providing better patient care.

Every physical therapy clinic has more or less unique—different needs based on sizes, types of patients, and specializations. More importantly, it urges a keen look at the several systems to decide on the features that will help you run your clinic at maximum efficiency and effectiveness.

Let’s look at the top 5 EMR/EHR features every physical therapy clinic needs to take their practice to the next level.

1. Intuitive Scheduling

An intuitive scheduling feature is the most sensitive feature that your EMR/EHR system should have for physical therapy clinics. Your system should make it easy for you to manage the appointments, track the visitations of the patient, and optimize your therapist's schedules. An effective scheduling system forms the backbone of a clinic that is well-run; it ensures maximal time for the therapists and patients to get timely care.

2. Comprehensive Documentation Tools

Because the real foundation upon which any successful physical therapy practice is based is accurate and efficient documentation, your EMR/EHR system needs to offer comprehensive documentation tools specifically designed to fit PT workflows. Streamlining the documentation process, such tools should enable therapists to quickly and accurately make records of information regarding the patient and treatment plans, as well as progress notes on his or her health condition.

3. Integrated Billing

Invoicing for physical therapy clinics can be quite complicated and time-consuming. An EMR/EHR platform with built-in billing can afford you the opportunity to streamline all these inefficiencies, correct inaccuracies, and generally enhance your overall service and financial performance. More precisely, connecting your details directly to your billing process will make sure that more is precise and more rapid.

4. Robust Reporting Capabilities

Make data and analytics the center of informed decisions in physical therapy clinics. Robust reporting is essential in the EMR/EHR platform to provide comprehensive analytics that leads to data-driven decisions for optimal clinic performance, clinically and operationally.

What you want is a solution that will support customized reporting, real-time data dashboards, and be able to easily export data for further analysis.

5. Interoperability and Data Exchange

An EMR/EHR system should enable a PT clinic to easily interface with other systems in today's connected healthcare environment. "Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system, whose interfaces are completely understood, to work readily with other products or systems, at present or in the future, in either implementation or access, without any restrictions." In physical therapy clinics, this would mean ease of sharing patient information with other healthcare providers and receiving information back, ensuring that continuity of care exists for an overall look into the patient's health.

Such integration should be with such other healthcare technologies as practice management software, patient engagement platforms, and medical devices. Said integration could thus allow combining workflows, reducing errors in data entry, and providing an integrated view of every patient's care.

Advanced Features to Consider

While the above features listed are quite essential, there are some very advanced "bells and whistles" that can add a lot of value to your practice using a physical therapy EMR/EHR system. These additional features can also help you really stand out, and increase patient engagement while streamlining your work. So you'll want to be sure to shop for EMR/EHR systems with your practice in mind and choose one that will differentiate itself in these ways.

1. Mobile Accessibility

A mobile access capability available within an EMR/EHR program stated that the program enabled therapists to retrieve patient records and specify and plan for therapies right from their tablets. This could offer an upper hand to the clinic or clinician because of the flexibility, location, and home care space of the therapist. Mobile access sets you free from the console, minimizes paperwork, and places information in your hands.

2. Tools for Patient Engagement

Patient engagement is one of the key drivers behind positive outcomes and one of the main determiners of patient satisfaction. Look for an EMR/EHR system that provides built-in patient engagement tools for secure messaging, online appointment scheduling, and patient education. Patient engagement will empower the patient to play an active role in the journey of care, hence increasing adherence to treatment plans, improving communication, and ultimately driving better outcomes.

How to Select the Right EMR/EHR Solution for Your Physical Therapy Clinic

Selecting an electronic medical/health record program for a physical therapy clinic should be focused on how well it is designed to your needs:

- If and when your practice grows and scales up

- Your clinical niche and whom you provide health care services to.

- Your budget and expected ROI.

- The vendor's technical support and training level provided to the users

Phoenix Go PT comes with all these features described in the article: user-friendly scheduling, feature-rich documentation tools, integrated billing, and brilliant reporting capabilities. The platform offers many advanced features, including mobile accessibility and tools for improving patient engagement, to ensure you stay competitive in the marketplace.

You’re Next Steps…

As you review EMR/EHR Solutions for your Physical Therapy clinic, make sure you consider adding Phoenix Go PT in the mix. With an all-in-one suite of features for the special requirements of physical therapy service providers, Phoenix Go PT is the best choice for clinics looking to take their operational and patient care engagements to the next level.

The right EMR/EHR system empowers your clinic to offer quality care, run your operation efficiently, and succeed in a high-tech, competitive healthcare market. Contact us here to get started.