Best Medical Practice Management Software of 2026

Here's what we'll cover:

What you need to know about practice management software

What is medical practice management software?

Essential features of practice management software

Benefits and competitive advantages of using medical practice management software

How to choose the best practice management software for your practice

Software related to medical practice management

More resources for your practice management journey

What you need to know about practice management software

Medical practice management software allows users to comprehensively manage every aspect of their practice from one single platform. These systems include modules for business management processes like billing, patient scheduling and communication, and patient record keeping. 

Among the 8,000+ calls our advisors have had with medical practitioners in the past year, the most requested features include electronic medical records, patient scheduling, e-prescribing, medical billing, and telemedicine. [1] Most practice management software platforms include all of these features.

To give you an idea of the market, we have over 350 different medical practice management products on our site and have published more than 3,000 verified practice management reviews in the past year alone. We’ve mined these data-intensive resources to craft insights that can aid you in making the right software purchasing decisions for your practice.

In terms of costs, practice management software tends to be priced on a subscription basis, with costs ranging from $8 for basic plans all the way up to $14,975 for the most advanced plans. [3] Costs may also vary depending on the number of users, the size of your practice, or the number of patients you serve. If you’re a new practice looking for your first practice management system, or if you’re interested in upgrading, here are a few questions you should be prepared to ask vendors when vetting their products: 

• What core features does the software offer, and can the platform be customized to fit our practice's specific needs?

• How does the software ensure data security and compliance with healthcare regulations such as HIPAA?

• What integration capabilities does the software have with existing systems, such as electronic health records (EHRs) or billing platforms?

• What kind of training, support, and ongoing updates do you provide?

What is medical practice management software?

Medical practice management systems allow physicians and their staff to do everything they need to run their practices, including recording patient demographics, performing billing procedures, generating reports, and scheduling appointments through patient scheduling applications. Sometimes referred to as physician's office management and medical information systems (POMIS), practice management solutions can dramatically improve a doctor's clinical workflow efficiency and often streamline reimbursements from health care insurance companies and other providers. 

Common features of medical practice management software include patient scheduling tools, EHR integrations, and automatic claims submissions.

Essential features of practice management software

When searching for the right practice management software, it’s important to know which features you should expect to see in every single product (often referred to as “core” features) and which features aren’t necessarily guaranteed to be included (we’ll call these “common” features). We analyzed thousands of verified user reviews in order to determine which features fall into each of these categories: 

Core practice management features

Common practice management features

Benefits and competitive advantages of using medical practice management software

Our medical software advisor Lexi Smith, who has been helping businesses choose software for six years, talks about the value of practice management systems for healthcare providers: “These programs are extremely helpful in automating provider and office staff workflows; they allow offices to see more patients rather than spending so much time keeping paper trails, managing schedules, or billing patients.”

We’ve leveraged thousands of reviews to determine the top benefits of medical practice management software, as rated by verified users:

• Efficient practice management: Reviewers highlight how much better their practices run after adopting a practice management software system. The biggest benefit is having every tool housed in one platform, so users can accomplish all business tasks quicker and easier. 

• Highly customizable features, forms, and templates: Users from a variety of specialties and general practices talk about the benefits of being able to customize so many of their processes. For example, users can customize intake forms to collect data they specifically require and then correlate that patient information with their charts. 

• Automated patient appointments: Providers are delighted to find that their practice management systems are capable of fully automating calendar management tasks like syncing patient scheduling and physician availability. Patients can request appointments online, and the system then auto-generates a patient profile and eliminates that manual task from scheduling workflows.

How to choose the best practice management software for your practice

Because practice management systems control so many different aspects of the business of running your practice, choosing the right one can make or break you. Our medical software advisor Rocco Mangione, who has been helping medical software buyers find the right products since 2020, points out the importance of establishing your specific requirements before you begin exploring products. He explains: “Some medical systems are specific to specialties, so it's important to figure out what applications the system will serve, and what specific functionality will be needed.”

Buyers who start with the product list and reverse engineer their requirements will often find that the practice management system they purchase is not actually a good fit. Instead, follow these steps to choose the ideal practice management software for your business. 

1. Define your requirements

This step includes collecting both hard data—like how many users you will have, what your monthly budget will be, which features you have to have, and what integrations you require—as well as softer information, like what level of customer support you expect, how involved you want the vendor to be in migrating your existing data, or what type of user experience you want from your practice management system. You’ll likely spend more time on this step than you expect, but it’s absolutely critical that you don’t rush through this process. You want to end up with a system that meets your needs, and this is the best way to do that. 

2. Make a shortlist of software vendors

Once you know what you want, start collecting names of products that you intend to engage with. Many providers come up with this list based on word-of-mouth or recommendations from peers, past experience, or even Google. An even easier option is to reach out to our advisors like Lexi or Rocco to discuss that list of requirements you came up with back in step one. Based on your conversation, our advisor will produce a list of around five vetted products that fit your specific needs. However you come up with this list, the next step is to reach out to these vendors. 

3. Pick your best option

The reason you want to keep this list relatively short is because you should expect to spend a good amount of time engaging with each vendor. This will include some back-and-forth with their sales team, at least one product demo session in which a sales associate walks you through all of the features of their product, and contract negotiations with whichever vendor you ultimately decide to go with. During all of this communication is when you want to ask about how their product meets your requirements, and then you’ll compare the answers from each of the vendors on your shortlist to help you settle on the right one. Besides your requirements, a few other things you want to make sure you ask about include: 

• Security and HIPAA compliance 

• Integrations with any existing software you may have, like EHRs or payment collection providers

• Availability of training materials and support to get your team up to speed with using the new product

Software related to medical practice management

While practice management software generally includes features to cover a variety of clinical and administrative tasks for medical practices, providers do have the option of purchasing specific tools or features as individual, standalone systems. Some software types related to practice management include: 

• Electronic health records (EHR) software: Allows users to create, edit, share, and store patient information securely. EHRs often integrate with practice management systems to create a fully comprehensive medical tech stack. 

• Patient scheduling software: Automates appointment booking, manages staff schedules, and sends reminders to reduce no-shows. It also optimizes resource allocation, improves patient flow, and enhances operational efficiency. 

• E-prescribing software: Allows practices to send prescriptions and refill requests directly online to pharmacies for faster prescription filling with fewer errors. 

• Medical billing software: Automates manual billing tasks like insurance verification, claims submission and processing, payment processing, and following up on denied claims. The software helps providers increase their collections by avoiding human error and automating repetitive and cumbersome administrative tasks.

• Hospital management software: For providers working in large healthcare organizations or hospitals, you may want something more robust than general practice management software. Hospital management systems are essentially practice management for significantly larger medical systems with more extensive operational needs.

More resources for your practice management journey

• What Is Practice Management Software?

• 5 Top-Rated Affordable Medical Practice Management Software

• Patients Value Convenience When Filling Prescriptions, But It’s Up to Providers to Optimize Experiences

• 8 Types of Medical Software To Streamline Your Practice

• 7 Top-Rated Healthcare Software

• Everything You Need To Know About Medical Practice Marketing

About our contributors

Author

Lisa Morris is an associate principal analyst at Software Advice, covering the healthcare and medical industry, with a focus on technologies impacting independent practices and mental healthcare, such as electronic medical records and practice management tools. 

Lisa’s research and analysis is informed by more than 15,000 authentic user reviews on Software Advice and over 20,000 interactions between Software Advicesoftware advisors and medical software buyers. Lisa also regularly analyzes market sentiment by conducting surveys of medical practitioners and administrators so she can provide the most up-to-date and helpful information to small and midsize businesses purchasing software or services. 

She presented her research on medical wearable devices at the 2022 Sensors Summit in La Jolla, California, and also appeared on the Health Innovation Matters podcast with Logan Plaster. Her work has been featured in multiple publications, including Becker’s Hospital Review, Healthcare IT News, and AP News.

Editor

Mehar Luthra is a team lead at Software Advice and specializes in editing reports that cover the latest trends affecting small businesses. With nearly a decade of experience, she has edited a multitude of research articles, top-rated software reports, and thought leadership articles for diverse markets such as Brazil, Japan, Canada, France, Australia, and India. She finds it particularly rewarding to produce content that provides small-business owners with practical tips and helpful advice on topics such as the digitalization of small businesses, eCommerce trends, and HR developments.

Armed with a double bachelor’s in law (LL.B.) and business economics from Delhi University, she won a full scholarship to study for a master’s in creative writing at the National University of Ireland, Galway. In addition, she has written blog articles spanning a variety of topics such as fiction and non-fiction books, mental health and anxiety, the latest restaurants, and more. Her articles have been featured in Ireland’s national magazine The Village, among other publications. A die-hard journaling fan, she enjoys watching psychological thrillers, reading fiction books, and drinking iced coffee (even in the winter).

Advisors

Lexi Smith is a software advisor at Software Advice. She joined the Software Advice advisor team in 2018, and she is based in Austin, Texas.

As a software advisor, Lexi works directly with small business leaders to connect them with best fit software providers. She assesses the technology needs of small businesses seeking medical, mental health, telehealth, and home health software through one-to-one conversations and provides a short list of potential matches. Her favorite part of being on the Software Advice advisor team is being an unbiased resource software buyers can rely on.

Lexi holds a bachelor’s degree in business marketing, and she has spent nearly three years helping members of the medical field identify the right technology for their practices.

Rocco Mangione is a senior software advisor. He joined Software Advice in 2020 as a software advisor. He is based in Austin, Texas.

As part of the software advisor team, Rocco helps medical professionals who are seeking electronic medical records, mental health, telehealth, or home health software. He provides a short list of personalized technology recommendations based on their budget, business goals, and other specific needs. Rocco’s favorite part of being a software advisor is helping people save time as they look for the right software tool for their medical practices.

Rocco holds a bachelor’s degree in business and sports management. He has spent nearly five years advising small businesses and medical practices through their software selection process.

Sources

1. Software Advice advisor call notes: Findings are based on data from telephonic conversations that Software Advice’s advisor team had with small-to-midsize businesses seeking medical tools. For this report, we analyzed phone interactions from the 12 months prior to publication. Read the complete methodology.

2. Software Advice reviews data: Software Advice reviews are collected from verified users for individual software products. For this report, we analyzed reviews from the past year as of the production date. Read the complete methodology.

3. Software Advice software pricing data: Only products with publicly available pricing information and qualified software products within the category, as of May 8, 2023, are included in the pricing analysis. Read the complete methodology.