Physical Therapy Software:
A Comprehensive Resource Guide
Regardless of the care setting within which you work, the best physical therapy solution will help you efficiently manage all facets of your pt practice, therapy clinic or department.
Physical and occupational therapists are looking to save time while taking detailed notes, safely recording patient data with defensible documentation, and keeping medical records compliant, all while seeking to improve patient lives.
Using the right PT software is key to meeting these objectives, as this is extremely time consuming. This leads us to take a deeper dive into practice management can be optimized with the right physical therapy EMR.
How can the right software help physical and occupational therapists with practice management? Many ways!
From billing software providing front office the ability to quickly process payment with automated billing, patient scheduling, coding, medical billing, revenue cycle management, clinical physical therapy documentation, analytics, reporting, and even patient engagement and communication, physical therapy software exists to save time, protect financial health, and make your physical therapy practices job easier.
This is where having physical therapy software built with healthcare providers in mind is crucial. In this vein, physical therapy software should promote productivity, adapt to the way you work, grow and evolve to your future needs, improve revenue cycle management, and make a positive impact to your physical therapy clinics bottom line.
The ideal physical therapy EMR (electronic medical record solution) will be comprehensive, robust, intelligent, compliant, engaging, compatible, and ultimately focused on promoting optimal patient care, all while protecting patient data.
Physical therapy EMRs help healthcare provider numerous ways, so mentioning things such as helping to enhance patient care, improve medical billing processes, streamline administrative tasks or practice management would only be the tip of the iceberg.
Obviously providing a patient portal for access to patients medical records and monitoring patient progress are also key. So instead of continuing at a high level, lets dive into the details and what sets apart the right physical therapy electronic medical record software.
Below, we at Net Health® provide specific features to look for when considering a physical therapy EMR..
As there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution for practice management in physical therapy, we also take a closer look at physical therapy software features that are most beneficial to healthcare professionals within specific skilled treatment care settings, such as hospital, outpatient, acute, private practice and SNF.
Physical Therapy Software: What Should You Look For?
As a physical therapist or healthcare provider, you have a lot of choice when it comes to physical therapy software options. While this is typically a good thing, the diversity that exists throughout the market can sometimes make it difficult to thoroughly assess and compare solutions that boast different features while seemingly promising universal success. Obviously, physical therapy software cost is another consideration for physical therapist and occupational therapist clinics.
Focusing on just a few critical features can help you cut through the so-called “fluff” so you can better evaluate the solutions an EMR company offers for physical therapy, gauging effectiveness within your environment.
Regardless of care setting, an optimal physical therapy software solution will be proficient in the following:
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Net Health® offers unique physical therapy software solutions for each care setting, spanning the patients’ continuum of care, from hospital acute care and outpatient services to skilled nursing facilities (SNF), senior living (assisted living facilities, or ALF), and private practice rehab therapy.
Improved Physical Therapy Documentation Efficiency
When it comes to physical therapy documentation and defensible documentation, select an EHR that truly knows and understands not just the physical therapy profession, but also your physical therapy specific care setting. This may include hospital outpatient, private practice outpatient, inpatient, hospital acute, SNFs or ALFs.
The advantages of selecting a physical therapy software solution that is built specifically for your care setting are vast. Such Rehab Therapy software is most likely to fit the way your team of physical therapists or occupational therapists works by. For instance, offering specialized workflows that include physical therapy specific clinical content.
And, as requirements can often get in the way of such things as patient care and physical therapist job satisfaction, look for a physical therapy software solution that allows your PT practice to complete compliant, therapy-specific physical therapy documentation at the point of care – with no need for duplication.
Defensible documentation in physical therapy is not just a requirement; it’s a cornerstone of quality patient care and effective practice management. It encompasses a comprehensive approach where every session is meticulously documented to ensure compliance, accuracy, and justification of treatment.
This type of defensible documentation is crucial for safeguarding against audits and for demonstrating the necessity and effectiveness of therapy interventions. Implementing defensible documentation strategies can significantly enhance the credibility and reliability of physical therapy practices, ensuring that every aspect of patient care is accounted for and aligns with the highest professional standards.
Complete and Compliant Coding and Documentation
Physical therapy electronic medical record software built by those who truly understand the physical therapy profession and physical therapy care setting is pivotal. An ideal physical therapy software solution will continually receive updates that ensure it always meets all regulatory requirements while safely capturing the medical history a patient presents.
In addition, it will provide the features your physical therapists need to optimize coding accuracy and reduce claim delays and denials so your department or clinic is reimbursed appropriately. The best physical therapy software will provide your physical therapy practice alerts that draw users’ attention to potential claim errors before they are sent to payers.
Also, when seeking a practice management solution, look for options to customize and automate the billing process, ensuring specific payer requirements are applied whenever relevant. Physical therapy software built by physical therapists, for physical therapists, Net Health may be the perfect partner for your PT practice.
Efficient Patient Scheduling
The success of a physical therapy department or team often comes down to the productivity of its therapy staff and quality of its practice management system. The ideal physical therapy software and electronic medical records solution will empower physical therapy supervisors to continually manage, track and optimize the productivity of their providers through efficient scheduling, allowing for effective practice management.
Depending on your care setting, at-a-glance scheduling features can help physical therapy practices more seamlessly manage therapists’ time in the face of outpatient cancellations and no-shows, changes in acute-care patient status or location, and physician treatment order changes.
Such scheduling tools enable supervisors with practice management efficiency and allow them to keep up with ever-changing staffing needs while ensuring physical therapists can access real-time scheduling information that keeps them productive. In addition to the right billing software, PTs need physical therapy documentation software built to enhance productivity, not get in the way of efficiency.
Incorporating therapy practice software into a physical therapy clinic can substantially boost productivity and efficiency. Effective therapy practice software streamlines various administrative tasks, from scheduling appointments to managing patient records. It also facilitates easier communication between therapists and patients, enhancing engagement and adherence to treatment plans.
Moreover, therapy practice software often includes features for billing and claims management, which can greatly reduce the time spent on these complex processes. By automating and organizing key operational aspects, therapy practice software enables therapists to focus more on patient care and less on administrative burdens.
Analytics and Reporting Tools
Access to robust reporting via your physical therapy software helps you manage both the clinical and operational aspects of your physical therapy practice. Reporting and insights obtained are most effective when they can be seamlessly shared with those who most need it and who are better positioned to act on the data.
Drawing insights through data and reporting allows managers, owners and stakeholders to make the most informed decisions when it comes to both clinical and operational aspects of your department – issues like staffing, performance, productivity and revenue.
In addition, healthcare analytics with built-in treatment guidance – recommendations based on the industry’s most advanced outcomes management solutions and measures – enable rehab providers to improve patient outcomes through effective planning.
Web-Based and Device Agnostic Solution
Secure, HIPAA-compliant, cloud-based systems are currently the gold standard of modern physical therapy software solutions. Not only do they provide a higher level of flexibility, make it easy to document medical history and levels of patient pain or a recommended patient exercise, and keep data secure, but they also enable a greater ability to integrate with other systems and tools, including your hospital information system (HIS).
Also, the option of accessing your physical therapy software through a browser allows providers and other therapists on your team to access patient records and maximize therapy resources via any device in most any location.
Patient Engagement
Studies continually show that improving engagement not only helps get patients in your physical therapy practice; it can also help improve plan of care buy-in and ultimately lead to better patient outcomes. Therefore healthcare software that can also be an all in one software for your medical practitioners is the digital software your PTs (or occupational therapy and speech language pathology staff) are looking for to brighten their days.
Needless to say, a physical therapy software that provides a suite that improves the patient experience within your particular care setting can help boost success in both outcomes and your bottom line, not to mention helping improve your referral management process.
Engagement tools strive to improve the patient experience through greater online visibility and reputation, and better communication through appointment reminders and other communication tools that connect, inform and motivate. Nearly any effort that increases the likelihood prospective patients find and choose you over your competitors can be part of one’s efforts.
An EMR system that can engage patients while also allowing referring physicians to safely document patient health information and process payments is the sort of all in one software healthcare providers need to keep the patient experience optimized. EMR and practice management don’t need to be contradictory.
Improving patient intake and protecting patient information with a secure and easy documentation process that complies with healthcare regulations can also help improve patient engagement. While many EMR systems can be a detriment to proficiency, the right one will not be.
Supporting Continuity of Care Across Care Settings
Continuity of care is another important matter to consider when reviewing physical therapy software options for your department or clinic.
The ability of an EMR/EHR to securely support the flow of data from various facilities – say, a hospital acute care setting to a SNF or outpatient therapy team – can be advantageous for clients as well as providers.
Therefore, selecting an EHR solution from a specialized electronic medical record company like Net Health, which provides robust solutions specifically designed for a wide spectrum of physical therapy care settings, can ensure your PT department’s and your patients’ needs are most optimally met.
Physical Therapy Software Across Multiple Care Settings
Net Health understands that the goals and workflows of acute-care rehab therapists are not necessarily the same as those who work in private practice. Nor are they the same in other care settings like outpatient, SNF or ALF. Your physical therapy practice can all benefit from a practice management solution built around allowing physical therapists to do their job more efficiently. PT EMR software needn’t be a deterrent to treatment documentation, regardless of care setting.
Yes, the patient is always No. 1, and each of our products enables rehab therapists to boost productivity so they spend less time documenting and more time with patients.
Yet, we understand each setting operates and measures success based on key performance indicators and objectives that can be quite different from others.
Our line of Net Health physical therapy solutions reflects these differences, providing features that specifically address the continuously changing landscape of your department as well as your profession.
Net Health Therapy offers the following solutions that provide all of the above proficiencies and features, plus other value propositions that specifically address the needs of individual care settings.
Easily monitor patient demographics and capturing more revenue with billing software built to make medical billing efficient and straightforward are often top of mind for referring physicians, yet there are so many other areas to be cognizant of.
PT OT and speech therapy can all benefit from the use of software built with them in mind. Easy access to patient charts, optimized billing software processes, compliant and efficient documentation, engaging patients and increasing referrals; contact Net Health’s solution specialist to learn more about how Net Health can bring your practice management into the future of healthcare.
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