Simple Practice Review: Pros and Cons
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As you build your practice, having the right electronic health record (EHR) and practice management platform is essential. Have you been considering using Simple Practice to run your private mental health practice or clinic after seeing positive reviews? Thousands of practices managing more than 16 million clients collectively are already using Simple Practice to unify admin work, clinical care, and other aspects of running a behavioral health business under one system. Here's a glance at what you need to know about Simple Practice as you make your decision!
The Rundown on Simple Practice: Pros and Cons
Who is Simple Practice for? Simple Practice can be an ideal fit for a newer or smaller behavioral health practice that's looking for a platform that can scale up with them as they grow. The platform's strength is that it's easy to use while still offering a lot. Highlights include:
Scheduling
Digital organization
Documentation
Customizable templates
Billing
Paperless payments
Client portal
Telehealth and video appointments
e-Prescribe feature
Prescribe medication
Insurance billing
Simple claim filing
Mobile features and on-the-go access
Website builder
Simple Practice Pros and Cons
Here are the pros and cons of this platform.
Pros:
HIPAA compliance
Reasonable pricing for the technology
Great customer service behind the scenes
Easy-to-use interface
Great color-coded calendar feature helps to unify dates across the practice
Terrific mobile app (iOS and Android) with a practitioner-facing side and client-facing side
Ability to create therapy notes and appointment cards within the calendar
Waiting list feature helps to eliminate empty slots
You don't have to share your credit card information when signing up for a 30-day trial
Cons:
Larger practices may feel limited by lack of customization
No features for tracking leads that turn into appointments
While the e-Prescribe is built in, you'll need to pay an extra $6.95 per month for Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) integration to get PDMP data into your EHR and clinical workflow
How Does Simple Practice Work?
Let's start with talking about the user experience for behavioral health service providers when they sign on with Simple Practice. This platform makes it easy to manage all aspects of a practice using a single suite. That means that you and your staff aren't signing in and out of programs to manage appointment scheduling, billing, and other core tasks. Here's a look at how Simple Practice's main features stack up.
Client/Patient Management
Simple Practice lets you create profiles for clients and contacts easily. Once entered, entries can be sorted by first or last name. These profiles are then used for quick scheduling on the Simple Practice calendar. One dynamic feature of the platform is that creation of a client profile will trigger prompts for essential forms that need to be completed prior to treatment. This includes privacy forms, consent forms, credit card authorization, information release, and pre-screening questionnaires for appointments.
Scheduling
Simple Practice's scheduling system is the feature that wins users over the most. The platform uses a color-coded calendar that allows you to toggle between daily, weekly, and monthly views. Scheduling an appointment is as simple as clicking on an empty slot to select existing patient information or create a new patient profile to reserve the spot. You can also specify appointment duration, add billing type, add services included, and set up recurring appointments. If you upgrade to the $69 monthly version, clients can actually book their own appointments via the app using rules that your practice sets in place.
Treatment Notes
Simple Practice comes backed with preset templates that are easy to generate and use for diagnosis codes, treatment plans, mental health exams, scores, price estimates, and other forms of documentation. The platform offers a true one-stop-shop for documents related to intake forms, treatment plans, and assessments. Notes are easily referenced. Practitioners are able to view and filter through each client's clinical history using a documentation panel without the need to exit from the current note they're working on. Additionally, Simple Practice integrates data-driven tools that can track client progress. As a user, you'll be able to choose options from Wiley Treatment Planners® that offer more than 1,000 prewritten treatment goals, objectives, and interventions organized problem type.
Billing
How does Simple Practice perform for billing? If your practice is on the smaller side, the platform's billing features will go a long way. There's a dedicated dashboard for billing and finance that acts like your own in-house accounts receivable department. Functions include:
Processing claims
Generating bills
Tracking bill status
Reviewing incoming insurance payments
Insurance billing is one of the features with some catches. You'll need to upgrade from the $29 basic tier to the middle tier at $69 to access insurance billing on Simple Practice. However, you'll only get 10 claims per month with this tier. You'll need to jump up to the $99 plan to expand the number of free insurance claims per month to 35. After that, each claim costs 25 cents or more to process. While the pricing is reasonable for the sophistication of Simple Practice's insurance-billing feature, it's still something to consider if you weren't planning on upgrading beyond the basic tier.
Pricing
Simple Practice offers a 7-day free trial. Then, the pricing ranges from $14.50 a month to $99 a month depending on which discount and plan you choose. There was a Simple Practice 2 months free promotion but it has been replaced by a new offer that includes 50 percent off your monthly bill for three months.
Are There Any Downsides to Choosing Simple Practice Software?
Overall, Simple Practice is a convenient choice that offers the scalability and affordability you'll need as you build your practice. While Simple Practice pricing is pretty straightforward, there are little add-on costs that can make a monthly bill higher than your package price. We already covered the extra costs for putting claims through insurance billing and the extra $6.95 per month for PDMP integration. In addition, there's a 2.95% transaction fee when clients use credit, debt, FSA, and HSA cards.
Final Thoughts: Is Simple Practice Good?
Let's recap what practice owners can expect when they try Simple Practice. This is a dynamic EHR practice management platform that office staff can navigate pretty easily without much guidance. However, the Simple Practice customer service team is highly responsive to queries. By integrating scheduling, billing, and patient notes into one platform, Simple Practice can shave hours from your administrative tasks each week. The main downside is that the platform may not offer the flexibility and customization you need if your practice expands significantly. Ultimately, it's worth doing a Simple Practice demo to see if this platform feels like a good fit.
