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It can be overwhelming to be on the hunt for practice management software that suits the needs of your practice. In fact, a simple Google search will bring up dozens of results. Each of these will claim that they are different and unique.

But at the end of the day, you’re looking for software to manage all aspects of your private practice. In this article, we will be making a comparison between our IsoEvolve software and Navitas. These systems have great benefits and would help to ensure that you have the proper tools and processes in place.

Because we fundamentally believe that building trust is the highest currency for any business — we have no reservations about giving you a brief walkthrough of the main differences and distinguishing features between IsoEvolve and Navitas, so that you can make the best decision based on what you’re looking to achieve for your business.

Navitas Practice Management Software

This is practice management software designed for the South African market. Navitas should be accessible to any practitioner, whether established or starting up. Practice management solutions can cost a fortune to get up and running Navitas offers a free option to help practitioners get up and running with the basics before having to upgrade to their premium service.

Navitas Features

Appointment Scheduling:: Manage your patient schedule.
Patient Management:: Manage and secure your patient information.
Invoicing & Accounting:: Simple, clean, precise invoices and statements to send to your patients. Basic accounting with export features. Accounting package integration on request.
Reminders & Messaging:: SMS and Email reminders for patient appointments. Send custom SMS and Email to patients and practitioners.
Dashboard:: Monitor the progress of your practice daily.
ICD-10 Code Database:: Easily search the ICD-10 code database for your convenience.
Notifications:: Custom notifications of changes to appointments, patient information and invoicing.
Document Management:: Store and upload patient and practice documents to your custom space on Google Drive.

Navitas Pricing

Navitas practice management software has four pricing options to suit the needs of your private practice.

IsoEvolve Practice Management Software

Almost every healthcare practitioner or small business owner agrees that having some form of help will be amazing and will make a positive difference in their lives. But this assistance is never easy since it’s normally not cheap and it takes time to train and manage someone else in your private practice or small business.

Practice management software is designed to assist you with the daily operations of your practice. IsoEvolve believes that software should be available to all whether your practice is well established or you are just starting out.

IsoEvolve Features

• Appointment Scheduling:: Manage both your practice and personal appointments from our integrated calendar.
• Reminders & Messaging:: Send appointment or appointment adjustment reminders to clients via SMS and Email
• Electronic Forms:: Send your intake forms, questionnaires, client medical history forms etc to clients through a secure link, and remove the hassle of capturing handwritten forms
• Invoicing:: Simple, clean, precise invoices and statements to send to your patients.
• Electronic Claims Submission:: Submit claims directly to the medical aids using (Electronic Data Interface). And get an immediate response.
• Membership Validation & Benefit Checker:: Confirm the membership and check for available benefits before you submit the claims.
• Allocation of Payments
• Allocation of Medical Aid Remittances
• Patient Portal:: Activate a dedicated portal for each patient, where they can view their invoices, payments, appointments, notes, reports etc.
• Clinical Notes:: Simple easy to use functionality to draft and store your clinical and sessional notes. Ability to share notes and exercises etc. with your patients.
• Dashboards:: Track all key information for your private practice.
• Revenue Management:: Proactive management of all unpaid accounts, based on defined processes which you configure.
• Data Protection:: Store all your passwords and important documents in a secure vault that only you can access.

IsoEvolve Pricing

Conclusion

Practice management software helps you put all of the management tasks together. And manage all of the information involved with running a healthy private practice. It is designed to streamline and automate the common tasks of practice management.

While small. low-volume practices might be able to survive using manual, paper-based systems. The moment they get even slightly busy most practice owners find that they need a system to handle the day to admin of the practice. Many practice owners find that they are much more efficient and professional once they move to practice management software.

Instead of having a separate place for client contact records, treatment notes, appointment calendars, invoicing and more, all of this information is in one, integrated place. Plus, practice management software can make many tasks significantly more efficient – like appointment reminders, writing up treatment notes, and sending client referrals. The reporting functionality of the software can help you understand what’s happening in your practice so that you can make improvements.

At the end of the day, both IosEvolve and Navitas have their place in the market. The deciding factor comes down to what you are looking for. Of course, there are other practice management software options out there, and you as the consumer need to do your research and see which offer makes the most sense for your business.

The idea of a paperless office has been around for decades, but most offices still use a lot of paper. One of the biggest reasons for this is the fact that human beings resist change.  Moving to a digital platform means we have to learn new protocols. As humans, we have built habits around paper despite the fact that these habits cost time and money. The consumption of paper means lost hours on creating documents, printing, copying, faxing and even scanning. This is not even the tip of the iceberg though. 

People spend hours filing or locating paper documents, and businesses need space to keep large filing cabinets to store that paper. In some cases, these documents have sensitive or confidential information, which means that they can’t be discarded. This means that you have to pay to store or destroy them. Not to mention the costs of paper supplies and equipment. 

We have the technology to move to a paperless environment. But to make that change, you need to understand the benefits of going paperless and educate yourself and your staff on new protocols. 

 What is Paperless? 

So where did the idea of a paperless office come from? Strangely enough, it was first mentioned in a Business Week article called “The Office of The Future” in 1975.

The idea was certainly ahead of its time, brought on by the invention of computers. The thought that you could do business without using paper was one that was a prediction of the future. And although back then we did not have the technology to take actionable steps toward a paperless office, but we do now. 

Committing to a paperless office means that you will spend less of paper and printing supplies. You can get rid of the printers and bulky filing cabinets and save costs on storage or destruction of sensitive documents. You will also save time creating and organising files as well as increase the security of your documentation. There is better access to useful data and less time spent looking for files. 

Creating a paperless office will mean committing to change the processes you currently use. It might also be important to invest in new technologies to make your switch to digital more organised.

Different Ways to go Paperless

Breaking the process down into steps makes it easier to transition to a paperless solution. The challenge gets more manageable with each step your business makes. Going forward, you can choose new technologies that don’t involve paper. 

A Few Paperless Options For Your Business 

Online Forms::  Instead of gathering information with paper forms, you can move to an online form builder like Google Forms. Or a platform like IsoEvolve that allows for online intake forms, notes, memos etc.

Scanners::  If you deal with paper coming in from outside companies or need to transfer paper documents to a digital solution you can invest in a good scanner. In fact today there are even apps that allow you to scan documents and images and save them to the appropriate digital platform.

Cloud Storage::  This is the most popular option today, because it allows all of your staff to stay on the same page and have real time access to information. Cloud Storage means that you no longer need to have huge filing cabinets taking up space as your digital files are saved outside of your office. You can access them from anywhere in the world so long as you have an internet connection.

Electronic Billing::  There are many solutions out there that offer electronic billing. Invoices can be emailed to your clients, payments can be made online thus removing the clutter of mailed paper bills and printed payment notifications. Using electronic billing also allows you to send customers digital receipts instead of using a receipt book. Allowing your business and your customers an easy way to save all their records without wasting paper. 

If you are interested in going paperless in your business, please book an appointment with us to discuss your business and see a demo of how our IsoEvolve software could assist you with making the change. 

There is more to being a healthcare practitioner than providing patient care and treatment. Many practitioners have turned to software to help them with their practice management needs. While there are many options on the market it is crucial to look at the benefits of practice management software for your practice. Software is more than just a tool to manage the business aspects of your practice. It can also improve the experience that your patients have when they interact with your practice.

Regardless of whether you are having a software custom-built for your practice. If you have installed a software package, here are eight points to keep in mind to improve the patient experience.

1: Reduces Waiting Times

The use of practice management software, enables your administrative staff to be more efficient. This automatically translates into decreased waiting times for your patients. Which leads to greater well being on the part of your patients.

2: Easier to Set Appointments

Most practice management software includes a function to allow patients to make their own appointments. By automating this process, your patients save time using their computers instead of having to wait on the phone while someone checks the appointment options. This also allows the practitioner to set their available times and ensure that they have adequate gaps between sessions.

3: Less Paperwork

There is no argument that healthcare practices have a comedic amount of paperwork that patients need to fill out. The problem is, that this paperwork needs to be stored somewhere for record purposes. This usually means large filing cabinets and contracts with storage facilities to house the records. While this paperwork is important, repetitive requests for the same information can grow tedious for patients. Practice management software can help with these forms and ensures that you only have to enter patient data once.

4: Automating Follow-ups & Reminders

Software will enable you to automate appointment reminders, saving yourself and staff times and reducing the number for missed appointments or no shows. Management of accounts is also made easier with automatic payment reminders. Life happens and sometimes friendly reminder can nudge a make payment on an invoice that they may have overlooked.

5: Remote Access to Data

Whenever you can eliminate barriers to information, your patients benefit greatly. Practice management software lets you or your team check in on your diary for example while at home or on the road. This means that they can quickly assist a patient without having to take a message and call them back. Access to your medical billing information means that you or your staff are able to quickly submit a claim or update a patient file without having to be in front of your office computer.

6: Medical Aid Verification & Benefit Checks

You are about to see a new patient. Don’t make them wait at in reception while you or your staff is on hold with the medical aid to verify benefits. Instead your practice management software allows you to verify the membership and do a benefit check before the patient arrives for the appointment. This reduces patient frustration and wait times.

7: Access to The Latest Medical Aid Tariffs

Every year the rate that medical aids will pay for procedure codes changes, having software ensures that the latest tariff changes are automatically updated. This ensures that you are billing patients correctly and reduces any friction around updated or amended invoices. This also saves your self and your staff time as you do not have to spend hours pulling the latest tariffs from the various medical aids manually.

8: Ensure Patient Privacy

With the introduction of the POPI Act using practice management software helps yourself and your staff remain compliant with all POPIA requirements regarding patient confidentiality. Sofware is password protected and encrypted. Ensuring that should your computer be lost or stolen that the information on your practice management software is secure.

Conclusion

Focusing on both a patients health and their experience of the practice is key to the ongoing success of your practice. By taking advantage of the benefits of a well designed practice management software, you can help keep them happy. Happier patients typically refer their family and friends, which is vital for business growth in today’s highly competitive market.

As the healthcare panorama shifts from a fee-for-service model to a more value-based care-giving approach. The question is how do you improve the medical billing experience for your patients. Healthcare practitioners and their staff are continually progressing towards achieving the optimum value-based care approaches. However, the billing process still falls short and essentially is a domain that is still a work in progress. It’s no surprise then that more often that not, patients end up dissatisfied with the invoicing and patient billing.

If a patient calls asking for directions to your practice, either yourself or the receptionist can help them. If they have a concern about an exercise or show up with a pesky cough, the doctor can give them an answer.

But what happens if that patient calls to ask about a charge on his latest statement? In many practices, that call ends unresolved or with a promise that someone will call the patient back.

All to common medical billing issues.

If you take the time and ask your family and friends. It’s likely that more than one of them can tell a story about an unpleasant billing issue or experience. Ranging from spending months to get an incorrect charge removed from a bill. Or fighting an inappropriate medical aid claim rejection. And worst of all repeatedly being promised a return call that never comes.

Allowing patients to get caught in the red tape of your medical billing process, is a surefire way to sour their overall experience of your practice. No matter howmuch they love the treatment they receive from yourself or your staff. Patients who get the runaround when it comes to billing are certainly not likely to recommend your practice to a friend.

The source of the medical billing problem.

It is clear that billing issues, can impact patient experiences. So resolving them should be important to every employee in the practice. From the practitioner to the front desk. But the question remains, why is it so common for those calls to be dodged or passed off to someone else?

There are countless reasons but the most common is lack of training or understanding. There is a culture at the moment where employees are trained to take responsibility for their own work. This results in them not feeling comfortable answering questions about a bill processed by a coworker.

It also doesn’t help that your administrative staff are usually busy taking care of their own duties. So when they answer a patient billing issue call, they might be able to give the call the full attention it deserves. This results in a feeling from your patients that they are against your practice in a battle for a medical billing resolution.

Sometimes all a patient might need is an explanation on why something costs as much as it does. But patients won’t feel that their healthcare practitioner has their interests at heart, when it takes repeated requests to get a question answered.

How to put an ally on the patient’s side.

Some practices have a dedicated accounts person who is responsible for all billing related queries. This will ensure that rather than those calls being avoided they are directed to the go-to person. This results in faster turnaround times for billing queries and greater patient satisfaction with the medical billing experience.

However, it is not enough to have a designated person for those concerns. You need to make sure that the rest of your administrative team can cover the calls when your go-to person is unavailable. Educate your onsite staff to answer at least 80% of patient questions. Your receptionist should not look like a deer in the headlights when a patient inquires about their bill.

Conclusion.

Providing a good medical billing experience is as important to your practice, as providing good healthcare. Just as you would not let a patient’s question about their health go unanswered, you shouldn’t let their billing issues go untended. It is vital that the patient experience is consistent across all aspects of the practice.