User Review
( votes)Practice management software solutions have been helping the physical therapy industry to evolve for decades: to organize, segment, forecast, plan, and optimize physical therapy practices world over.
Nimble, a cloud-based CRM, is affirming itself as an adroit alternative solution to the medical practice management software. This networking-centered customer relationship management system won the hearts of hundreds of PTs & PTAs due to its intuitive interface, highly customizable data points, and comprehensive segmentation.
What is a CRM system?
CRM, or customer relationship management, is a software that enables teams to organize their client data management with the help of the cloud-based solution. It’s provided to customers as a ready-made product for a monthly subscription fee. It is customary that CRM solutions will have such modules as dashboard, tasks, reminders, calendars, contacts – that can be organized per individual company’s needs.
Why physical therapist need CRM
Does a physical therapist practice need CRM? The simple answer is yes. Any business or service that has clients and suppliers and a team needs one, specifically the one where scheduling is important and working routines are repetitive.
How can a CRM make the work of the physical therapy clinic or independent PTs and PTAs more efficient?
The ways are multiple:
- To market physical therapist services
- To organize a patient database and patient record management
- To systemize appointment management
- To perform inventory management
- To streamline invoicing and billing
- To keep track of progress notes available for all stakeholders
- To use advanced reporting and analytical tools to patients’ benefits
Practice management software & CRMs for the physical therapy clinics
Multiple solutions are created specifically with PTs and PTAs in mind. They are usually geared towards the scheduling and note-taking features as well as having a database of exercises for different conditions.
Some of the popular practice management software solutions for the PT industry are:
Nimble CRM for physical therapy
Nimble CRM has been gaining a lot of traction with physical therapy clinics and practices in the US due to its multi-industry universal set up. While the CRM has no embedded exercises as part of the solution, its flexible fully customizable features allow adopting the system for the needs of any business – having the client-business relation at its core.
Customer Journey with CRM & medical practice management software
Nimble CRM was designed with the mission to facilitate and streamline the overcrowded world of social media communication and endless messengers so that to focus all data in one comprehensive format.
This is why Nimble CRM is a perfect solution for physical therapy clinics and doctors. It provides a step by step overview of all the communications and attaches it to a client’s profile – so that all people with controlled access can get an overview of the status quo: be it an insurance clerk, a PTA or another therapist.
Customer journey – or shall we say – the patient journey can be seen as granular or as globally as it is needed for the specific purpose.
Adding a Lead to physical therapy CRM
If you got a new client call to your physical therapy practice or an ad form got clicked and filed out – adding a lead is just a few lines matter. Your potential patient profile can be as detailed or as general as it is required by the stage of the customer acquisition funnel.
Follow-up with patient & PTA
Set reminders, tag your customers, and assign tasks in relation to specific customers to yourself or your team members. The follow-up has never been easier. Program your PT-client interactions in stages as per the regular flow, create the system once, and let it help you manage all your future patients.
Upselling physical therapy services & interventions
Upselling in physical therapy clinic hugely depends on the 2 factors:
- physical conditions of a patient
- method of payment for physical therapy [PT] services: cash or medical insurance
Provided both are favorable for the extension of initially assigned physical therapy evaluation and treatment plans, CRM can help organize upsell marketing endeavors through features like tagging, task-assignment, and customizable pipelines.
Scheduling patient visits in PT practice
Scheduling the patient visit and PTA’s interventions are a few clicks away. Once the patient visit has been registered in a calendar, a templated reminder can be set for all parties involved at a preprogrammed time intervals.
10 best practices for Medical practice management software use & CRMs for physical therapy clinic
Begin tracking patients immediately
Patient record management is a big part of the paperwork for both PT and PTAs. Patient records must be in order for so many reasons, inclusive of potential colleagues taking over the patient, medical insurance purposes, and even legal purposes.
Patient record management is an intuitive process that is full of customizable fields in every step of the process. You can create custom pipelines, tasks, reminders, deals. Tagging every data point is a way to extract granular reports for further enhancement of the clinic’s operational routine & analysis of medical achievements.
Segment patients granularly
Living in the world of big data has the advantages every business has made attempts to harness. With Nimble CRM for physical therapists, all data can be segmented and tagged for hassle-free reporting.
Move your clients along the pipelines as they progress with the PT treatment plans. Segment patients according to their conditions with customizable data functionalities. Tag tasks, contacts, and deals to the needs of your business – so that to include specific to your business fields into reporting for further analytics.
Communicate with PT patience with ease
Nimble CRM can be used as physical therapy software for several reasons, but the ease of communication with patients, colleagues, and suppliers is a hugely elaborate module that professionals across all industries love.
Integrations with major social networks and multiple messengers, as well as a seamless connection to Office 365 suite guarantee all patient data is gathered in one profile. No more last-minute check of all the messengers to find the needed piece of communication. Nimble CRM collects all of the exchanged conversations in one place.
Importance of Set-Up Time and Ease of Use of the CRM
Have you switched from manual transmission to automatic one as a driver? This was the image on the Nimble vision board when we created this savvy CRM. We tasked our UX and UI designers to create a CRM that feels like an automatic car to a driver with dozens of years of driving manual.
The CRM virtually builds itself for you. The level of intuitiveness is such that even digital immigrants praise our system as highly user-friendly.
We have created a ton of useful video webinars on how to best use Nimble CRM – so you and your PT clinic team can deep-dive into the best practices from the comfort of your home any time.
Choose a CRM Vendor with Efficient Support
While the intuitiveness of the interface helps to navigate CRM systems, support is still a vital customer satisfaction factor for any supplier.
Make sure your patient relationship management system offers 24/7 support. Even though these solutions are often cloud-based and offer extensive video training materials, having a customer support team is essential for that one time you need to address issues urgently.
Consider a Mobile App version
In physical therapy clinics and hospitals, the patient notes and records are mostly done on the desktop still. So the design and customizability of the desktop version of the physical therapy CRM are of paramount importance.
But life is life and having a mobile version of the patient relationship management solution is still pretty significant for both PTs and PTAs. Specifically for those who are working with patients in-home care and have to be in the loop all the time.
When choosing a vendor for physical therapy CRM and management software, consider their mobile version too.
Create compliant patient documentation
Patient documentation flow is of importance for 3 major reasons:
- a properly documented PT treatment plan with all the interventions helps to understand the development and progress of the treatment for medical professionals.
- a well-documented patient history allows medical insurance companies to manage their respective workflow and pay the bills accordingly.
- PT clinic documentation and notes have to be taken in detail and as per protocol to provide legal grounds and testimony in case of legal issues.
Patient record management module and properly documented notes functionality of both PT and PTA are an integral part of the software solution for therapy practice.
Track referrals, productivity, and no-shows
Data is important in any industry. When it comes to PT clinics, outpatient departments and inpatient hospitals tracking of all the visits and interventions can be vital to the health of a patient.
A proper medical practice management software should be able to track cancellations, no-shows, frequency of visits, PT & PTA’s productivity, and hundreds of other data points. Such nuanced data will help clinic management to better understand how to increase efficiencies and even which interventions work best for which conditions.
Tagging functionality, segmentation, and pipeline module all help to keep the track of litany of data for further reporting and analysis.
Automation features: spend more time with patients, not paper
Writing up notes is not as exciting as doing interventions or working with a patient, but just as important. Written evaluations and progress notes are a somewhat boring but vital part of the PT & PTA work routine.
The written documentation may come handy if a PT had to step away for personal reasons or health reasons from the patient for a day or two and a substitute therapist needs to take over. In such a case a patient evaluation and progress notes will help a colleague to understand where the things were left off and pick up the physical therapy treatment easily without detriment to the healing process.
Physical therapist documentation flow is also an important means of information sharing with such key stakeholders as insurance companies. They need a full package of documentation depending on the medical insurance and state they are in, to be able to remunerate the PT clinic for the services provided to their client.
Legal issues and potential inquiries are a rarer but still valid reason why documentation is such a significant part of the Physical Therapists’ and Physical Therapist Assistants’ lives.
Many of the papers, forms, and processes are repetitive in nature and can be templated. Many conditions, physical therapy treatment plans, and interventions are also repetitive. Be it back pain or a neck injury – many of the notes, evals, and intervention write-ups are similar from patient to patient.
This is when the templates, attached to a certain condition and a certain step of your patient’s journey can come handy. Such documents can be available in CRM on multiple levels for easy access. A PT clinic can compile their exercise library in a CRM available for PTs in a click with easy search functions.
Zoom in on Collaboration: the prerequisite of CRM for physical therapy
CRM for a physical therapy clinic has to have multiple functionalities to ease the job of the therapist and PTA, but one of the fundamental functions is to keep the communication flowing. A significant part of each patient’s physical therapy treatment plan success is in the tight collaboration between the PT and PTA.
A CRM, that is accessible for both a PT and a PTA at any time from the office, hospital, or on the go enables such a collaboration, that benefits the patient and eases the working routine of the PT clinic team.
Emails, reminders, and messengers are a click away from a client’s profile, so reaching out to a patient with basic information and last-minute schedule updates is a hassle-free and well-documented no-brainer.
Choosing the best CRM for physical therapy
There are multiple criteria for choosing a medical practice management software for a physical therapy clinic or practice. The only way to approach it is to choose the top 3-4, that suits your budget and seem fitting your needs and giving them all a try.
We recommend taking advantage of such generous offers and giving a try to a couple of your top theoretical favorites before finalizing your choice.
Nimble CRM offers 2 week’s free trial so that every PT or PTA can pass their own judgment as to this comprehensive practice management software. Our extensive webinar library, as well as devoted customer support, are there to guide you in building just the CRM to fit your business needs.
