The 7 Must Have Features of a Practice Management System

There's no shortage of practice management systems on the market. The difficulty becomes selecting the right system that makes sense for your practice and its future growth.

Heather McComas, AMA director, administrative simplification initiatives, says it all starts with creating a roadmap that will help you outline processes within your practice. Once those processes and touchpoints are defined, you can begin to identify those 'must-have' features for your practice.

In addition, CAQH, a non-profit alliance, created CAQH CORE, a multi-stakeholder effort that develops operating rules to streamline the most common business transactions in healthcare and drives market adoption.

According to Gwendolyn Lohse, managing director of CAQH CORE, a CORE Certification is available for practice management systems. This can help produce information about patient insurance eligibility, copay, deductibles, year-to-date patient financial status, etc. in 20 seconds or less and match payments to services rendered.

So, other than looking for certification of a system, what are some of the features needed?