Practice Fusion Reviews

Pros

What I like most about this software is the navigation. Out of all the other EHR softwares, I grasp quickly to the ease of use. I like how the schedule, charts, task, messages etc. are layed out. It's a great EHR for first time Medical staff such as Medical Receptionist and Medical Assistants.

Cons

Well no EHR software is perfect but I can honestly say that the only thing I wish could be better is how to search for patients by previous encounters.

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.

Pros

Practice Fusion is easy to use and a great way to keep electronic records. I love that it's web-based so I can get to it from anywhere.

Cons

There is not really anything I don't like about it.

Alternatives Considered

AdvancedMD EHR

Reasons for Switching to Practice Fusion

Easier to use and implement across the practice.

Pros

Easy to use for anyone at every level in the office.

Cons

Customer support, functionality and frequent breakdowns. Mostly NOT supportive staff, burning ( wasting) your time and not providing answers. I've used this platform for over 10 years now, and it's going from bad to worse. I'm already shopping for an alternative.

Alternatives Considered

PhraseExpander

Reasons for Choosing Practice Fusion

for better or worst in this case and will not do it again

Switched From

N-sight

Reasons for Switching to Practice Fusion

not applicable at this point and time so...

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.

Alternatives Considered

EpicCare, Intergy and athenaOne

Reasons for Choosing Practice Fusion

We switched products because we were transitioning away from the hospital setting and we were also looking for a more budget friendly software.

Switched From

EpicCare

Reasons for Switching to Practice Fusion

We chose Practice Fusion because of the value associated with the product as well as the budget friendly aspect of the software.

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.

Alternatives Considered

eClinicalWorks

Reasons for Choosing Practice Fusion

Went from multi-provider group to a single provider and the cost of Athena did not justify continuing with them.

Switched From

athenaOne

Reasons for Switching to Practice Fusion

The price. At least at that time, it was free to use.

Pros

The software is user friendly. The support help people are fantastic at walking you through while you try to trouble shoot! The program is tied to Updox which is another amazing program.

Cons

There are a few gliches with the system and we are unable to add all attachments to referrals. If you send a document to the chart you are unable to attached it when faxing out a referral.

Alternatives Considered

EpicCare

Reasons for Switching to Practice Fusion

This program seemed to be more efficient and more user friendly.

Pros

The affordability! When starting the practice, it was most affordable to get practice up and running

Cons

It was not simple to use; with a lot of various steps to get things done. Not enough templates

Pros

It was a decent program, inexpensive and easy to use

Cons

There were some features that were not very intuitive

Pros

The program is low cost. The program is intuitive to use.

Cons

Redundancy- to many places for one thing to reside depending on who entered it or practice patterns.

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

Alternatives Considered

athenaOne

Reasons for Switching to Practice Fusion

The product was initially free, which was necessary for my small practice startup.

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!

Alternatives Considered

NextGen Office and PracticeSuite

Reasons for Switching to Practice Fusion

They seemed like they were going to be good, and a few colleagues I know use it. Their price is right. There really is no reason for all of the EMR price gouging by other companies out there.

Pros

When we were opening our practice almost a year ago, there were 3 main EHR platforms we were considering. After the demos and in-depth trials, we ended up choosing Practice Fusion because of the clean interface, ease of use, add-on features, and integration options. We felt that Practice Fusion would allow us to customize our EHR system over time, building and adding only what we want. Having used Practice Fusion since beginning our business, we have been really pleased overall. It serves all of our current needs and has helped our practice run smoothly and efficiently. Practice Fusion is convenient to access online, has useful templates for charting, is intuitively navigable, and produces documents/reports that are clear and professional in appearance. Practice Fusion has been a great fit for us so far.

Cons

I would say that the main issue we run into with Practice Fusion is subpar customer support. While there is an option to chat with a live representative, the wait time can be excessive. When I finally connect with an agent (if I haven't moved onto something else and forgotten about waiting), the quality of the help that I receive is hit-or-miss. Also, there are a couple of minor things that I am hoping will be addressed (being able to search for patients by nickname/preferred name, documenting meds that have been called in vs. sent electronically, etc.), but no EHR platform is perfect and Practice Fusion is definitely the best system I have used thus far.

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.

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?

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.

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.....

Pros

cloud based
reasonable monthly cost for small practice
Soap Note templating allows variable options within a templated diagnosis
searching dx codes is made easy

Cons

customer service and technical help is pretty much non-existent with this company.
rigid parameters / fields that do not adjust - such as creation and templating of procedure notes and operative notes have to be in SOAP format which I would prefer these encounters appear as a separate note type
unable to save frequent prescribing habits so each time a medicine is given it takes significant time for electronic prescribing
significant clutter on the notes, however fields that are required for standard medical billing such as Review of Systems and standard fields such as past surgical history not
unable to include dx codes into templates (only words) so templating speeds up workflow but then slows down if using electronic billing because each diagnosis has to be re-entered
Rigid parameters for meaningful use reporting. So the options don't apply to specialists

Pros

Practice Fusion integrates with a handful of billing softwares and generally works fine for EHR functions for a small practice. There are a few buggy things that have not been worked out as they went from a free software to a per provider subscription, but they do seem to continue to add features that help with efficiency and seamless processing of medical transactions.

Cons

Little bugs, ie, a date range filter that will not respond to the calendar and so must always be manually typed. To get these annoyances addressed technical support first requires checking internet speed and other hardware factors that are already verified sufficient and have nothing to do with the simple coding issue at hand. Also, superbilling is missing some automation from the chart note to the bill that is found in many other EHRs.

Pros

It was free initially and simple, it was the 1 st EMR I used even their customer service was not great

Cons

Bad features, the notes look very plain
customer service no great
The contracts that you sign are not for 1 year or monthly , I would never use it again

Pros

The COST and the way Practice Fusion is continually responding to our suggestions and constantly
improving itself. We also started using other vendors we learned about from Practice Fusion like Updox which is an electronic fax program.

Cons

most of our large labs and all of our radiology do not interface with Practice Fusion so the paper copy needs to be scanned and put in chart.

Pros

It was free and user friendly. Very basic and simple EHR for a start up or small practice. Best features are cloud based, online scheduler, email reminders, and pinned notes that was just recently added.

Cons

Not customizable, poor response time on fixing IT issues. Sometimes issues never get fixed at all. Cannot modify online booking time slots. If a new patient books online it will automatically default to 30 minutes. We need an hour for new patients and this created many overbooking issues. Cannot print multiple medical records or super bills at once. I have to go to each visit and print them out individually rather then choose a date range of visits. Very time consuming. Cannot search patients by phone number. The appointment reminders do not interface with google calendars, therefore when patients received email reminders from practice fusion, the time would be off one hour confusing the patient.

Pros

Super user friendly in writing notes -
wonderful prescriber friendly e-prescribe services
Easy to use without a lot of need for support services
Easy to use scheduling

Cons

No button for Social work
the way things are printed out is limiting
If a note is populated you can not always delete it - even thought you did not see the patient - if you check them in by accident and go back and fix it - it still generates a note that you can not delete.

Pros

It is user-friendly. I loved the customizable templates. ECPS was awesome. The software is great; getting locked out on a regular basis negated every positive experience.

Cons

I like the software. The problem was that every couple of weeks they would lock me out and instead of seeing patients, I would have to get on the phone with them to have the let me back into the system. I was spending more time on the phone trying to get them to let me in than I was able to see patients.

Cons

It does not keep a current list of pts. If you havent gone into the chart after 3 weeks you have to search for patient by DOB. If you need customer support forget it.