If the search for the right EHR software for your small practice appears challenging, you’re not alone. Let’s explore some EHRs for small practices to discover the top performers and understand what sets them apart.

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Best EHRs for Small Practices

Finding the right EHR can be challenging for small practices, as practitioners need to navigate through plenty of options. The buying journey demands in-depth understanding of business requirements and facilities to remain adaptable to the evolving industry needs.

The quest for the right solution isn’t just about features for small practices. It’s also about finding an application tailored to specific needs and constraints of smaller setups.

Small practices operate on tight budgets, making the initial application investment a financial hurdle. The implementation, training and ongoing maintenance costs can strain limited resources.

Some EHR solutions may also lack the scalability required to grow with a practice. Small practices aiming for expansion might find themselves outgrowing their initial software, leading to additional costs and disruptions.

For this reason, understanding top products is essential so you know what they’re capable of and how they align with your needs for making a data-driven decision.

Here’s a quick look at some top EHR applications for small practices:

NextGen Office

NextGen Office is a cloud-based solution that helps independent practitioners and small health care facilities enhance operational efficiency and care coordination.

It streamlines admin and clinical duties with an intuitive interface and automation tools. Core features include reporting, a patient portal, clinical notes and appointment scheduling.

View detailed patient summaries, including demographics, medical history and more, using Nextgen Office’s patient portal. Source

Highest Rated Modules According to Our Data

• Medical Billing — 100
• Notes and Templates — 99
• Analytics, Dashboards and Reports — 98
• Clinical Charts — 96
• Clinical Workflows Management — 92

Top Benefits

• Streamline Clinical Duties: Use flowsheets to enter and store longitudinal patient health information in a unified space. View lab results, medications, vital signs, treatment progress notes and other crucial data in a single screen for swift and seamless decision-making.
• Minimize Errors: Reduce manual input errors using electronic invoicing tools. Link billing information directly to patient appointments, reducing discrepancies, saving time and improving overall data accuracy.
• Enhance Care Quality: Customize health plans using clinical decision support (CDS) and parameter-based triggers. Create treatment plan goals with deadlines and link them to patient health statuses for seamless monitoring. Intervene or follow up as necessary to ensure patient health progress aligns with the objectives.
• Customize Templates: Use the template editor to customize specialty workflow templates for ADHD, depression, asthma, diabetes and hypertension. Tailor them to physician preferences, priorities and facility protocols, boosting physician adoption.
• Improve Patient Satisfaction: Elsevier and Lexicomp enable patients to view and read lab test results, prescriptions and educational materials. Use these platforms for seamless patient-physician communication on medicines, treatment plans, conditions or symptoms.

Primary Features

• Appointment Scheduling: Let patients book appointments 24/7 and receive prompt confirmation emails and messages. Enable them to cancel or modify bookings using the online portal. Send personalized appointment reminders in their preferred language and communication mode.
• Referral Management: Automatically populate outbound forms with treatment authorization, prescriptions and patient/physician details. Transmit referrals securely through direct text messages, emails, eFax or files.
• Patient Portal: Enable patients to access educational info, engage with providers on crucial health topics, book appointments, receive session reminders, make online payments and request medication refills.
• E-Prescribing: Generate detailed lists of patient medications, including drug names, intake instructions, dosages, effective dates and physician-prescribed notes. Enable pharmacies to submit online medication refill requests for physician approvals.
• Document Management: Organize patient information by file type. Digitally save incoming e-faxes in a centralized folder. Scan and submit other patient health documents to the same folder for efficient searchability and seamless data management.

Limitations

• No native mobile application.
• Inactive customer support.
• No integration with other office productivity suites, including Microsoft Office or Google Workplace.

Features Not Fully Supported According to Our Data

• Diet Management — Not Supported
• Annotations/Notes — Not Supported
• Screen Sharing — Not Supported
• Price Estimator — Not Supported
• Barcode/QR Code Scanning — Not Supported

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eClinicalWorks

eClinicalWorks is a cloud-based solution designed to alleviate front desk staff’s manual data-entry burdens through electronic documentation modules. It accelerates and streamlines various facility tasks, including patient scheduling, medical billing, inventory management, reporting and revenue management.

eClinicalWorks lets you view patients appointments along with health details in a unified space. Source

Highest Rated Modules According to Our Data

• Clinical Workflows Management — 100
• Collaboration — 100
• Medical Billing — 96
• Patient Engagement — 94
• Mobile EHR — 90

Top Benefits

• Enhance Patient Engagement: Send patients alerts for their medication regimens. Enable them to request refills and communicate with providers about dosage, adherence routines and drug interactions through a secure texting platform.
• Improve Employee Productivity: Set reminder systems for patient appointments to reduce no-shows and cancellations. Prevent scheduling gaps to use provider time and staff productivity effectively.
• Boost Revenue: Enable charge capture capabilities to identify billable services instantly, minimizing missed opportunities for revenue generation. Use telehealth technology to expand facility services, establishing additional revenue streams through remote consultations.
• Save Time: Use sticky notes on dashboards and patient charts to highlight individual treatment, appointment scheduling and billing information. Automatically attach patient prescriptions and lab test results into patient files, reducing redundant manual entries and saving staff time.
• Streamline Data Management: Store and organize vast amounts of health care data in a standardized way. Use keyword searches and criteria-based filters to quickly locate relevant patient files.

Primary Features

• Patient Chart Management: Record, update and view patient psychological and behavioral data, family health history, and demographic data, including date of birth, language preference, gender and more. Organize data into tables and fields for swift retrieval and information exchange.
• Appointment Scheduling: Establish distinct calendars for various specialties and departments within your facility. Automatically update these calendars in response to changes from patients and providers. Eliminate manual adjustments needs, thereby enhancing precision and efficiency.
• Clinical Notes: Personalize and tie clinical templates to each diagnosis and assessment report. Make notes on patient treatment plans, medication, lab orders, referrals and more. Use progress notes to document treatment analysis and consultation sessions.
• Reporting: Store, update and evaluate clinical and financial data using financial reporting dashboards, business intelligence tools, analytical functionalities and more. Use standard and canned reports, including clinical quality, PCMH, NFQ and ACO reports, for continuous performance tracking and analysis.
• Image Editing: Draw, mark and highlight crucial areas in patients’ diagnostic images, including X-rays, CT scans, MRIs, positron emission tomography (PET) and more.

Limitations

• Infrequent platform upgrades.
• No eFax functionality.
• No integration with third-party calendar and scheduling applications.

Features Not Fully Supported According to Our Data

• Chronograph — Not Supported
• Auto Save — Not Supported
• Day Notes — Not Supported
• Electronic Prior Authorization (ePA) — Supported With Integrations
• Mobile Push Notifications — Not Supported

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Tebra

Tebra, formerly known as Kareo Clinical, is a digital tool designed to help health care facilities of all sizes enhance their operational and clinical efficiency. It enables physicians to automate routine tasks, helping them redirect their focus towards core care delivery tasks.

Tebra lets you swiftly view patients’ broadcast history, intake forms and other vital details. Source

Highest Rated Modules According to Our Data

• Electronic Prescriptions — 100
• Medical Billing — 99
• Clinical Workflows Management — 94
• Mobile EHR — 90
• Clinical Charts — 86

Top Benefits

• Enhance Provider Efficiency: Use performance analytics and provider reporting tools to identify bottlenecks and improvement areas. Use data-driven and evidence-based insights to guide, supervise and update clinical and care delivery workflows.
• Save Time: Use text shortcut functionalities to convert any piece of text into a shortcut for future notes. These provider-specific shortcuts are applicable to all note sections. Customize them according to your preference for easy and personalized use.
• Facilitate Patient Education: Grant patients access to essential educational materials covering health conditions, treatment plans, diagnoses, lab results and more. Keep them up to date and aligned with their treatment journey through easily accessible reading resources.
• Manage Medical Data: Create specialty-specific templates for acne, anemia, iron deficiency and more. Use the template editor to customize existing templates and create new ones, enabling physicians to easily document notes as per their needs.
• Minimize Errors: Develop smart lab order sets to help providers seamlessly select and order common health tests and treatment procedures. These help save time on manual entries and also boost accuracy and precision.

Primary Features

• In-App Dictionary: Use the in-app dictionary to access built-in dimensions and charts for standard reports. Drag and drop these dimensions and measures into reports for efficient integration and quick report generation.
• E-Prescribing: Automatically check for and alert providers about potential drug interactions or individual patient allergies. Generate printed prescriptions for patients or send digital copies to pharmacies.
• Patient Reviews: Create surveys and instruct patients to visit their physician profiles to assign star ratings. Send real-time notifications of reviews, feedback, ratings and survey responses directly to providers’ mobile phones, inbox and other electronic devices.
• Appointment Scheduling: View calendars, print schedules and personalize schedulers as per your specialty requirements. Enable patients to look for physicians based on location and appointment availability. Let them fill out intake forms and receive reminders for upcoming consultation and follow-up sessions.
• Document Management: Upload, edit and store patient files in various formats like JPEG, Microsoft Word, PDF and more. Scan and fax documents, attach them directly to patient files and print as needed.

Limitations

• Unresponsive support team.
• Complex billing functionality.
• No Android application.

Features Not Fully Supported According to Our Data

• Ad-Hoc Reporting — Not Supported
• Auto Save — Not Supported
• Day Notes — Not Supported
• Clinical Order — Not Supported
• Note Assist Shortcuts — Not Supported

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athenahealth

athenahealth is a cloud-based application that equips health care organizations with electronic tools to alleviate burdens across front-desk, clinical and financial roles.

It helps facilities monitor employee productivity and patient health outcomes for data driven decision-making.

View patient details, including encounter notes, imaging results, texts, orders and appointments, using athenahealth’s dashboard. Source

Highest Rated Modules According to Our Data

• Electronic Prescriptions — 97
• Medical Billing — 97
• Mobile EHR — 93
• Clinical Workflows Management — 92
• Notes and Templates — 92

Top Benefits

• Facilitate Patient-Physician Communication: Use athenaText to seamlessly connect patients with physicians. Use message encryption, user identification, two-factor authentication and app autolock to ensure HIPAA compliance.
• Improve Provider Decision-Making: Customize your reports and add columns and filters using the report builder. Use the insight dashboard for details on your practice’s performance and patient health outcomes.
• Enhance Profitability: View revenue reports, including bad debt adjustments, A/R, FCC deposit and more. Gain deeper insights into revenue streams, income drivers, daily patient volumes and weekly profitability to improve workflows and devise strategies for revenue enhancement.
• Boost Interoperability: Exchange data from trusted sources to seamlessly integrate into clinical workflows across organizational boundaries. Automate patient record sharing to instantly locate and present patients’ data directly within the provider’s workflow.
• Store Patient Medication History: Record and share patients’ signed consent forms for medication history. Ensure accurate swift retrieval of all patient information with up-to-date record keeping.

Primary Features

• Immunization Reporting: Use registries to track immunizations capturing both scheduled shots and those already administered from multiple physicians in a consolidated database.
• Clinical Templates: Customize patient registration forms, appointment booking documents, assessment and discussion templates, and more. View and manage electronic paperwork for clinical and non-clinical duties with a single click.
• Patient Portal: Access lab results, patient medical histories, imaging reports and more in a common platform. Let patients review their test outcomes and gain insights into their current conditions, care plans, prescriptions and progress reports.
• Appointment Scheduling: Let patients check provider availability to choose slots aligning with their schedule. Minimize scheduling conflicts and optimize resource allocation and usage with real-time visibility into provider calendars.
• Patient Cases: Add and update patient cases with details of patient-physician conversations outside office encounters. Enable practices to document calls with patients in real-time during the call.

Limitations

• No patient cost estimate functionality.
• Challenging patient inbox feature.
• Inactive customer support.

Features Not Fully Supported According to Our Data

• Curate Data Stories — Not Supported
• Duplication of Notes — Not Supported
• Multiple Appointment Books — Not Supported
• QR Code Login — Not Supported
• Screen Sharing — Supported With Integrations

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Practice Fusion

Practice fusion is an ambulatory tool for small and specialty-specific facilities to enhance clinical operations. It provides practices with robust reporting and revenue management tools to optimize revenue and enhance overall organization profitability.

This platform aims to elevate clinic efficiency, streamline admin workflows and contribute to revenue growth.

Practice fusion lets you connect with patients using a secure messaging platform. Source

Highest Rated Modules According to Our Data

• Clinical Charts — 100
• Electronic Prescriptions — 100
• Notes and Templates — 99
• Clinical Workflows Management — 90
• Mobile EHR — 82

Top Benefits

• Enhance Documentation Accuracy: Use decision support tools to get help following best practices and avoiding common errors. Maintain accuracy throughout the documentation procedure with reduced transcription errors.
• Save Costs: Automate basic front-desk duties, including appointment scheduling, prescription refills, reminders and more, to reduce manual intervention, saving time and office supply costs associated with admin overhead.
• Improve Staff Management: Define staff duties clearly, allocate resources and assign daily goals to enable staff members to concentrate on core responsibilities without waiting for approvals.
• Boost Care Results: Enable CDS alerts to receive suggestions for tests, prescriptions and potential complications, enhancing patient health outcomes.
• Facilitate Information Privacy: Store, download and share patient health information, including appointments, prescriptions, lab test results, vitals and more. Exchange HIPAA-compliant texts with patients, keeping their email and contact information confidential.

Primary Features

• Labs and Imaging: Refer and exchange patient lab test results, imaging reports, physician notes and other crucial clinical data with any U.S. provider.
• Clinical Notes: Use SOAP note templates to seamlessly add patients’ past medical histories (PMH), past surgical histories (PSI), visit notes and prescriptions. Document nursing activities, including diagnoses, patient care, delivery, health assessment and intervention evaluations.
• E-Prescribing: Use advanced features, including electronic prescribing for controlled substances (EPCS), allergy alerts, drug interaction notifications and prior authorization management, to streamline e-prescribing workflows, save time and minimize errors.
• Patient Portal: Let patients fill out intake forms directly using the portal. Seamlessly transfer patient information to treatment notes, patient charts and treatment plans. Use a HIPAA-compliant messaging platform to facilitate patient-physician conversation.
• Flowsheets: Customize patient health information, including vitals, treatment progress notes, pain assessments and more. Add special notes, highlight abnormal values and input dates to track patient data effectively.

Limitations

• Inadequate customer support.
• No interoperability.
• Unintuitive messaging feature.

Features Not Fully Supported According to Our Data

• Curate Data Stories — Not Supported
• Chronograph — Not Supported
• Claim Batch Import — Not Supported
• In-Clinic Patient Tracking — Not Supported
• Waiting List — Supported With Integrations

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How We Choose Products

Our team of writers and analysts at SelectHub is committed to giving you the best recommendations based on our data. To make our list, products had to meet two criteria:

1. Closely match the topic
2. Earn a top-5 analyst score in our selection platform

Our analyst scores are based on an in-depth research process using primary and secondary sources. This includes SelectHub Analyst Briefings, direct communication with vendors, and reviewing materials such as user reviews, product brochures, specification sheets, case studies, user manuals, and technical documentation.

Our platform’s Scoring Engine processes the research and computes the analyst score. The score also factors in platform settings such as industry and company size.

Learn more about our research methodology and editorial standards

Primary Benefits

Running a small clinic involves juggling clinical responsibilities, like consultations, prescribing and treatment planning, alongside crucial administrative tasks, such as appointment scheduling, billing and patient registration.

The workload can be overwhelming, leading to exhaustion and potentially causing oversights.

Effectively overseeing your small practice and easing the workload on your staff necessitates EHR tools.

These tools not only streamline routine administrative tasks but also enable you to fulfill your clinical duties with precision and data-driven insights, using accurate and readily available patient records.

Mentioned below are the top benefits of using EHR systems for your small practice needs:

Remote Patient Data Access

Picture a scenario where a patient urgently calls you for help during an emergency while you’re out of the office. Despite understanding their situation, you find yourself unable to prescribe medication promptly due to the lack of access to their medical files, which contain crucial treatment details and allergies.

Sounds like a significant challenge, right?

EHRs enable you to access patient files from anywhere across the globe, enabling you to promptly respond to your patients and review their files whenever necessary.

They can also equip you with telehealth capabilities, extending your facility’s services to help patients at a distance.

Seamless Outcome Monitoring and Follow-Up

EHRs eliminate the constant need for a nurse by your patient’s bedside or daily messaging to check on their well-being.

These electronic tools facilitate automation to monitor patient progress. It helps you track their health trajectory and assists you with interventions when the tracker indicates deviation from the standard path.

Efficient Appointment Scheduling

Imagine expanding your facility and facing a scenario where your hospital staff, instead of engaging in clinical activities, dedicates their time to front-desk responsibilities, predominantly handling patient calls and managing appointment schedules.

Implementing patient scheduling software helps patients independently check provider availability online or via waiting room kiosks to book appointments at their convenience.

This not only saves valuable staff time, minimizes schedule conflicts and alleviates various other booking hassles but also enables staff to focus better on core care delivery duties.

Swift Medication Prescribing

Physically visiting a provider office in need of new prescriptions or when medications run out can be difficult for patients.

With e-prescribing, providers can efficiently approve refills and prescribe medications online.

Additionally, it enables providers to quickly handle prescription tasks, avoiding the need for extensive patient visits solely for prescription-related matters.

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Lean Selection

Even after learning about the top EHR solutions for smaller practices, the buying process can feel challenging and complex. In such a situation, you need to pinpoint what your purchase requirements are and then navigate this procedure effectively.

Mentioned below is our Lean Selection methodology to help you on your buying journey:

• Establish: To solve any problem, including the need for new software, experts emphasize the importance of first acknowledging the issue at hand. Hence, look for problems in your current system so you know what you require in your new application.
• Collaborate: Navigate the software buying process by collaborating with department leaders to understand crucial employee requirements.
• Define: Shortlist software vendors and prepare RFx documents, including an RFP and RFQ.
• Distribute and Validate: Once you’ve created requirements and RFx documents, begin assessing vendors based on their ability to meet these requirements, typically on a scale from zero to 100. A higher vendor score indicates a greater chance of engaging in further discussions and requesting demonstrations.
• Justify: Craft an in-depth report for your executive team, outlining why you need a new solution and providing insights into additional expenses for adding supplementary features.
• Prove: Assess vendors with a focus on the highest scores, then proceed to explore demos and establish proof-of-concept (POC) for a thorough evaluation.
• Rank: List out all the best solutions to begin vendor negotiations and contract-based activities.
• Negotiate: Thoroughly review the contract and consult legal support if necessary. Read the documents carefully and ensure that they align with your requirements before closing the deal with the product merchant.
• Sign: Wrap up the contract work, verify payment details and plan the software implementation procedure.

Select the Right Software with the Free Lean Selection Book

FAQs

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Next Steps

Today’s market has various EHR solutions catering to organizations of diverse facility sizes. Yet, when seeking an EHR for small practices with specific specialty needs, a thoughtful selection process is essential. A comprehensive research process and evidence-based decision-making approach can guide you in choosing an ideal product.

Need help navigating the selection process? Use our free, intuitive comparison report to compare top products and learn about their functional and technical requirements in detail.

How do you see an ideal EHR system addressing your workflow challenges? What problems are you facing in your current solution? What features do you consider absolutely essential when evaluating an EHR solution? Let us know in the comments.