Practice Fusion

Practice Fusion is so easy to use and I create my own templates that fits my Chiropractic Practice.

Comments: The streamline of my notes and the ease of using this program. I like customizing my notes based on my practice. The customer service is impeccable. I have already referred many friends to PF.

Pros:

The ease of using this software and I get to create my own templates which I love. I have been using this software for over two years and it keeps getting better. Plus it's complimentary with CMS.

Cons:

I understand that information are being updated daily and it's hard for the folks to update everything on the site. There are still clicks that don't have the required informations that is needed. I'm sure it's coming!

Solid Software

Comments: I like practice fusion for my smaller clients that are not looking to grow or expand their practice. I would not recommend for extremely high volume or high complexity specialties.

Pros:

Practice Fusion is a great software for smaller practices that don't need all the bells and whistles. It is very affordable and easy to set up.

Cons:

The customer service is terrible and it is very difficult to get a live person. They do have a lot of support videos but sometimes you need to speak with someone when you cannot find what you are looking for or none of the support videos are addressing your needs.

Frustrated with Customer Service

Pros:

e_prescribing is good and overall the EMR is not terribly annoying for me as a medical provider. It does not include good features for my therapist colleagues.

Cons:

It is now expensive and the support is minimal. The terms of subscription are inflexible and chat support is non responsive to requests for help including simply providing contact to advance a concern to decision makers in the company

Great Stand-Alone EMR

Comments: Overall Practice Fusion is a pretty great EMR. The connectivity to back end service (the billing aspect) is not great, but there are plenty of things that make the software worth it, including clinical decision making support, drug interaction reminders/warnings and the ability to e-prescribe.

Pros:

Practice Fusion was very easy to set up and very user friendly to utilize. The system has a built in system of shared templates that can be customized to fit your practice and save your healthcare providers a substantial amount of time. The connectivity associated with e-prescribing is also a great feature that allows providers and staff to save time by e-prescribing directly from patient charts. Overall, for the price, Practice Fusion is a great prodcut.

Cons:

Some of the things that I think Practice Fusion could improve upon are the interconnectability between Practice Fusion and billing third-party billing softwares. Unfortunately, when connecting with your billing software, we have a significant amount of billing "clean up," and "claim scrubbing," work to do which can be pretty frustrating. Also, Practice Fusion also is requiring individuals to pay for updates to ICD-10 for 2021. I would respectfully suggest that if you offer an EMR, a portion of your product should automatically include ICD-10 updates. The system also currently lacks the ability to verify insurance eligibility for Medicare and Medicaid patients. Lastly, Practice Fusion just underwent a price increase, which is disappointing to some extent but hopefully these increase will address some of the issues described above.

A great budget option if you don't need customization

Comments: I initially implemented the product when it was a standalone product offered for free. It was an ambitious but limited piece of software that was eventually sold to Allscripts. Very soon after, the business model shifted from selling aggregated data and in-product advertising to a subscription model, but still remains very inexpensive. The system is very rigid in that it does not offer a lot of options for customizing or the ability to develop workflows specific to a practice, but it has all of the basics as well as some features that other vendors charge extra for (lab integrations, patient portal, etc.). For a more robust feature set, you may need to use the limited number of third-part integrations that are offered, which will have additional costs associated. Overall, it's one of the quickest and easiest EHR systems I've setup (eCW/Nextgen/Aria) and it works well because of the universal design/limited options. If you can get it to fit most of your needs (and you get a free trial to figure that out), then you probably won't find many options that can compete with it on price. If you have a large office and complicated systems, you might find other systems provide a better value proposition.

Pros:

Easy implementation (up and running in a day). Reasonably good feature set (lab integration, call and text reminders, patient portal). Very competitive price. Free to try.

Cons:

Very little customization. Initial navigation is not very intuitive. Requires annual commitment. Additional features use third party integrations and have additional costs associated. Lack of device integration.

Beware of the limitations

Comments: Customer service is poor. Phone support is essentially non-existent. E-mail support is hit or miss. If you ask about how to do something that the program doesn't do they will just ignore your question. The documentation about how to set up the patient portal or even how to know what it looks like to the patient is lacking. Training videos overly simplistic. Pricing structure limits the number of staff per provider that can access the software. They lock you in to a contract period with no cancellation option until the time is up.

Pros:

Cloud based with straight forward and uncluttered user interface. Easy to set up key phrases and text shortcuts. Scheduling works about as expected. Integrated e-prescribing works better than some other ehr products.

Cons:

All scanned outside documents are stored in a separate database from the patient's chart - i.e. you can't access that scanned specialty report from the patient's chart, you have to look it up separately. No place to enter the results of in-office lab testing. No true charting templates.

Practical for Small Offices

Comments: It's a great product for a single or 1-2 provider group. Anything larger and you'll need a better EHR/EMR product.

Pros:

The ease of use. Practice fusion was very easy to learn and use. I set this product up for a single-provider practice in a quick transition from Athena. I didn't have to sit for hours training the provider on how to use PF as it's very easy to use on a daily basis.

Cons:

Lack of features. The ability or lack there of to manipulate templates, create documents, receive faxes, lab results, etc. You had to set it up with only the providers that integrate with PF.

Manage patient records

Comments: From the beginning, Practice Fusion allowed our practice to fully switch to government mandated electronic medical records. And with that switch it allowed us to earn rewards from the government. As practice fusion has grown, we have grown with it. Although no longer free, it does offer a free 2 week trial period with out having to even put in a credit card number. I highly recommend you give it a try!

Pros:

I was an early adopter when this software was offered free. For a small practice that was vital in getting us to switch to electronic medical records.

Cons:

As crazy as it sounds, that fact that it was originally offered free made it seem like it was just Cheap That could not be further from the truth!

Unprofessional, unethical, incompetent

Comments: I gave them a list of my complaints, not the least of which was that my trainer couldn't even explain the use of templates on their system. Also their knowledge base is completely unhelpful. Their response was to breach contract by shutting down my access to the EMR. I have a full schedule on the next business day and now have no EMR. These people are criminals! Stay far away!!!!

Pros:

It does some EMR like stuff. It looks nice. The price is right. That's about it.

Cons:

Too many to list. Their customer service is unprofessional and unethical. They have answers to nothing. They always refer me to the suggestion board when I ask about why a feature isn't present that is a standard part of medical practice since forever. The suggestion board is where suggestions go to die. Seriously, there are good suggestions on there from 5+ years ago that have been ignored. All of my suggestions, again part of medicine since forever, have sat there awaiting the moderator to clear them for over a month!

Practice fusion improving the experience in EHR

Pros:

Is user-friendly, has great accessibility, and cost-effective. But I can not leave without mentioning customizable templates and the time that you don’t waste.

Cons:

The only thing I would mention will be speed issues because affect workflow and efficiency.

Best EMR by a long shot

Pros:

I have used practice fusion for the last 5+ years at my office at love it. I especially like the ability to assign different colors to different appointment types in the calendar and the ability to e-prescribe prescriptions. Pinned notes are great and am happy they expended the ability to write longer profile notes. The overall look and ease of use it much better than other EMRs I have tried. I have recommended practice fusion to many colleagues.

Cons:

For the most part there are no issues but there have been several instances over the last few years when the entire system is down and we can not log on for almost a full day which is devastating to our practice. Would be nice if there was an offline emergency backup option for the calendar system. The mobile version is also really terrible, but very rarely used so not a big deal. I also HATE that they are not integrated with anyone other than Updox for a patient communication platform. They need to expand their partnerships in this arena!

Progressively declining and currently abysmal customer support

Comments: I used Practice Fusion since 2009 for my solo psychiatry practice, and became a paid subscriber to continue to use its e-prescribing and EPCS. The EMR support has always been spotty, and it only got worse since it became a paid EMR. It took 5 months to fix an authentication bug which affected e-prescribing significantly, occasionally EPCS would go down completely with no warning and any information from tech support (and no ETA when it would be fixed). The worst is there is no phone support of any kind (PF lists a phone number which essentially leads to a voicemail of your PR "rep" - but said rep has no technical ability of any kind and will not escalate your issue to the tech team). Problem tickets are completely ignored - not responded to at all. There are a number of problems than I was hoping PF would address that lingered for YEARS, and I just learned to live with them. PF used to have a blog where providers would provide advice, requests and complaints - was shut down. It would be very difficult to impossible to export your practice records if you would like to switch EMR's - I tried.

Pros:

Ease of use, can create your templates, EPCS easy (when it works), relatively affordable, runs on multiple platforms (when it is up). I don't use the billing and scheduling features.

Cons:

Nonexistent customer support (of any kind - Tech tickets ignored, phone support not available, your PF rep will just tell you they have no ETA when an issue will be resolved). Horrible is an understatement - you are completely on your own. Problematic issues with eprescribing (primarily, EPCS), will pop up repeatedly, impossible to establish lab connection, poor rendering on mobile devices, too many screens to click through. Often slows down during peak hours (I have a FIOS 50/50 connection so not on my end).

Benefits do NOT outweigh the risks

Comments: Once your new user status is up, and the likelihood of you switching EHR's is very low, there will be no support, and no accountability. With ever changing regulations, payer policies, clinical guidelines, drugs and technologies on market, certification requirements and on and on, do you really need to worry about how your EMR is going to force another change on your practice and livelihood.

Pros:

simplistic design, customizable templates, integrated calendar that answering service can use for scheduling, used to be free

Cons:

Labs do not get attached to referrals. As a Nephrologist immersed in lab results, this is a key function for me! When remedy ticket is created, the representative talks in circles, sometimes taking a week to reply. One rep finally acknowledged this was a known issue. One year later, I contacted cust service to request a full data extraction to migrate to another EHR. Same run around. Tried the live chat, no one came to chat, not even a chatbot. Tried the service phone line. Following prompts for "patients and providers with accounts", the recording directs patients to their providers, then disconnects without even addressing provider issues. Tried a different prompt on customer service line, placed on hold by recording, then a live person comes on just to put me on hold for another 5 minutes before I get disconnected. The direct messaging function for other PF users stings. The messages or attachments cannot be recognized as a consult or lab result etc, only as message. lab or imaging orders that are still outstanding do not produce alerts. No shows do not produce alerts. Billing issues do not produce alerts. These factors make PF a glorified blog with minimal extra functions rather than a true EHR. Their attempts at assisting in clinical decision making fails. It is geared mostly for primary care physicians. ex: If the patients last BP was suboptimal, there will be an annoying banner to tell you the last BP was suboptimal. I'm a Nephrologist, patients with easy to control BP do not get referred to me, I don't need a distracting banner for this, or to remind me to ask patients if they have urinary incontinence, or screen them for HCV. You can bank on a reminder to screen for lipids when they get an advertising account from a statin maker. The fact that their previous CEO advertised that "PF is free and will always be free for providers", and now they are charging a monthly fee or will hold your charts indefinitely should tell you that PF is not a company to be trusted. There is a high likelihood of future drastic changes in cost or service since many clients are captive by the difficulties of changing EHR's.

False promises. Poor customer service.

Comments: The worst part is that they claimed to always be free but then once the company sold, they started to charge. And not only that, when I asked whether I should sign up for a longer term contract, my representative told me (documented in a long email exchange) that I shouldn't and he would know when prices would go up and I would be notified beforehand so I could lock in the current rate. He talked me out of the longer term contract. I have this documented. Now, I received a notice that prices are going up. I have been in communication with a rep at PF [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] and sent her copies of the email exchange and she said "I apologize but there is nothing we can do". I asked to speak to a supervisor twice and she has not responded. I just sent my third email. What they could do is honor what was promised to me. I have this exchange in writing! And what horrible customer service-ignoring a request to speak to a supervisor not once but three times.
When you sign up with an EMR, it's not an easy proposition to switch. BEWARE OF PF.

Pros:

Easy to start and use. It was free and I chose it specifically because they advertised that it would "always be free" but that turned out to not be true.

Cons:

Unable to put in an automatic reminder to patients to book a follow up appointment one year later. Unable to easily download medical records when patients or other physicians request them-you have to download one document at a time. It can take 30 minutes plus to download a chart. Reports are not reliable. Specifically in generating patient lists. Horrible customer service. Do not stand by their word. Refusal to connect me with a supervisor. I have been a customer since 2013 and the customer service has continued to decline despite the cost going up.

EMR that is easy to learn and works well for small offices

Pros:

This software is a breeze to teach to new and existing employees alike. New features are few and far between but seem to be easy enough to implement. Software use to be free which was a real pro but the cost is not outrageous now. We are hoping that with the cost per provider, we will be seeing some feature upgrades that will make it more of a time-saver.

Cons:

The cell phone 2 step login seemed like a great idea until I watch my employees waste time, potentially violate HIPAA/privacy policies because of the cameras on every phone now and because they have to re-sterilize after using their phones to log back in. You can't bill insurance companies directly, which is a con if you have a dedicated billing person that is capable of billing for less that what you pay the clearing house (Gateway). Lastly, the customer service is pretty bad. Another thing I'm hoping will turn around after having to pay for the service is the commitment to resolving issues and responding to feature requests. CRM is lacking as there is not electronic appointment confirmation in the scheduling so my staff has to still make appointment confirmation calls. Most softwares have this built in or allow a third party to integrate. Practice Fusion does neither

Not a Good Choice for Mental Health Professionals

Comments: This software often felt way too busy and clunky for my needs. I started shopping for software specifically made for mental health. I test drove a bunch of new software programs. Simple Practice was my choice. It does everything I need at a price I can afford. It is also very simple and intuitive by design. I can accept credit cards and conduct HIPPA-secure tele-sessions through the site. They offered an easy way to do mental status exams and treatment plans. Not so in Practice Fusion.

Pros:

It allowed me to use it at no charge for many years. This was helpful for me as a solo practitioner with high overhead costs.

Cons:

This software is not built with mental health in mind. There is no way to customize the interface for the specific needs of my occupation. There were a lot of annoying pop-ups that I had to deal with that did not apply to mental health providers. The most frustrating thing was attempting to work with the calendar. It was impossible to review my schedule on my mobile phone because the calendar was not optimized for mobile. Another feature that did not work well was the client search feature. No matter how many times I would type in certain clients' names, the search box would not recognize or find the client. Also, there was no quick way to add a client unless I had all of the pertinent client data on hand. Most solo MH providers are wearing all of the "hats" in the practice and are trying to schedule new clients during the one or two minutes they have between sessions. Sometimes all we have to go by during that time is a name and contact number. My biggest complaint is that client data cannot be exported via CSV or Excel format. This is a big issue when you have to change software.

Acceptable product while it was free but now.....

Pros:

It used to be free. Ability to make your own templates. The E prescribing was simple to use. Easy to enter lab orders and lab result integration was good.

Cons:

From free to the whole amout annually paid in advance. The price increase has shut out many small solo practices. The cost is for one physician license +3 additional licensed employees. Wouldn't cost be much fairer if the cost was truly per user. I don't want to subsidize larger offices. Horrible customer service since late last year. The templates that are provided are a very low-quality including lots of misspelled words. New spaces for LGBTQ data but nothing for advance care planning and limited space to provide emergency contacts. Not very user-friendly for documenting geriatric patients. No structured section for preventative care with reminders when overdue. Immunization section was not updated routinely: new herpes zoster guidelines. Making a lab result flowsheet was terrible. Everything was à la cart: needed a separate clearinghouse for billing, needed to purchase up docs, etc. Hopefully they'll come up with a different pricing structure. Gone elsewhere for now. Might return if cheaper, charge people for using MIPS separately. Why should I have to pay for all the tech development of features that I don't use when basic items are missing?

I like it

Comments: Very positive.

Pros:

It was free in the beginning which was cool, but I still find value in it. Once the templaters were done, things are simple and easy to dictate.

Cons:

Would like a little easier way to chart and dictate and change things. I saw a mutate button on a competitor to change the order of the note.

Great software when it was free...not so good if you have to pay for it!!

Comments: Not a bad software package, but it has its limitations.
Customer service has deteriorated over the 7 years that I have used the program. You generally never can get a live person to discuss the issue. Everything is by email. If I have to pay for software, I will find one that does everything I want.

Pros:

The software is easy to navigate and has the basic features of an EMR. Being cloud based, it was easily accessible from any internet based pc. It was practice specific in many ways, with certain shortfalls. Vaccine inventory was very good.

Cons:

As a pediatrician, I must record a patient weight in pounds and ounces, which you can't do with practice fusion. The basic templates can not be modified and you had to be careful when composing notes (I don't come across too many 2 month old infants with teeth!) either not to pick those elements or go back and really proof read the notes. Log in from a machine that you didn't use previously is a nuisance, in that you have to be verified with a security code.

Beggers Can't Be Choosey

Comments: So far, so good.

Pros:

Practice Fusion is a free EHR program. You do have to pay for doctor licenses obviously but for a generic EHR, you can't beat it. I like the visual view of the schedule when placed on "WEEK VIEW" and the fact that we have the option to log on when we are not in the office for emergencies.

Cons:

Practice Fusion is not very user-friendly. It has gotten much better within the last year but it still has a long way to go. My least favorite thing about Practice Fusion is the process of scanning and uploading documents in to a patient's chart. You must scan, name and upload each individual file SEPARATELY. There are times when we have 10+ documents to scan in for a single patient and because of PF's process, we tend to get a little behind on our scanning. I wish there was a way to mass upload or mass name documents.

OD

Comments: I think of it this way. It has been free for so many years. I have participate Meaningful Use before and got incentive payments. That means I even made money without investment. In general, I don't blame the previous owner. I guess when it was difficult to continue the business as is, there has to be a change.

Pros:

I customized templates myself to optimize the charting workflow in the past. It was much more efficient and accurate than the new EHR I just started to use (1/4 of time). I only need charting and billing for exam payment before. Now I need dispensary and manage inventory, I have to use a full EHR for OD. It was just about the timing PF stopped offering free version. So I didn't use the paid version. I can still view my previous charting and appointment records through PF. That is good. But I was a little bit frustrated with new way of maneuvering through charting. I even debate keeping both EHR to give myself peaceful mind.

Cons:

Obviously not free anymore. Free forever? I didn't even believe it from the very beginning. It sounds right to get paid by advertisement. But, it is not something that is sufficient and guaranteed forever.

I have been using the free version of PracticeFusion for over 3 years now and am generally happy

Comments: It serves as a nice EHR for our Physician's practice. Also i got valuable help from the PF technical support team when i was trying to integrate this EHR with our billing software Kareo.

Pros:

The software has been easy to use. Until now most of my questions were answered in a timely fashion.

Cons:

Since introducing the subscription model this company has changed a lot. I have two locations with two separate instances of PF for historical reason. Since we have one Dr at both those locations i would like to combine them into one. I have already signed up for the subscription at our main location. However it is almost impossible to get someone from Technical Support to talk to. I am an IT person myself and am convinced that my problem will be solved within 5 minutes if only i could talk to the right person. The customer rep that called to collect my subscription has a phone number that just hangs up when called and she NEVER responds to emails. This is not customer service that I am used to in the USA - even third-world countries have better customer service.....

Adequate Free Electronic Health Record

Comments: Happy with the EMR up to 2017. I don't feel it will meet our needs for QPP reporting.

Pros:

This is a free platform for medical offices. There are no hidden charges and it is easy to use. Cloud based, so you don't have to invest in servers. Easily link lab facilities to send and receive orders/results electronically.

Cons:

I don't feel they are ready for CMS's quality payment program. We are already in June and don't have a dashboard for the Advancing care information (old meaningful use) yet. We need to gauge how we are meeting each measure before the start of the last available reporting period. The Quality measures (eCQM) are only geared towards primary care and we are a specialty with a specialty measure set. I have to connect with a Specialized registry to be able to report quality measure, and the data files are not adequate to download a CCDA file, so I may need to input ALL the data manually to be able to report and to get credit for the bonus points. We may need to switch EMRs if things stay the same.

Bare Bones

Comments: eh. It gets the job done, but it's not a joy to use or to work with their customer service. There are lots of features that could be easily added/fixed/adapted, but they won't do it. They roll out new versions without extensive beta testing, so there are always new bugs for features that used to work.

Pros:

It gets the job done... It covers the basics and is available online. It ports to billing software, and labs can send results, for a price.

Cons:

1) Customer service is hardly available - phone call takes 1 hour hold. Tickets and emails don't result in solutions, just lots of back and forth. 2) Restrictive license agreement is not flexible for adding/removing providers from your practice 3) It's very bare bones - gets the basics, but not eloquently or intuitively. 4) Did I mention customer support for a paid product should be supportive? and it is not.

Practice Fusion Customer Service and Use Issues

Comments: We do use practice fusion for multiple providers who find that it works well to integrate with the billing software

Pros:

Practice Fusion does allow practices to pretty easily link up with multiple billing softwares, and it allows for simple tracking of patient records and note keeping. It is pretty simple to run a report and see why a claim is not populating into the billing software from PF.

Cons:

The option to keep documents in a patient file is not entirely user friendly, as you have to scroll through all of them to find what you are looking for. I often run into glitches in the bridge built between PF and the billing software we use. I also have trouble with customer service at PF every time there is an issue, as you are not allowed to call any more (the automated message will hang up on you) and the online support ticket is slow and cumbersome. I would expect kinder and more efficient customer service now that practice fusion is a paid service