5 Top-Rated Affordable Medical Practice Management Software
If running a small private clinic means running all over the place for appointments, document searches, and medical equipment, sacrificing precious time with your patients, hold on.
Medical practice management software takes away the chaos so that you can focus on patients with a centralized electronic medical record system, automated tasks, and improved communication. Fortunately, plenty of affordable medical software options are available in the market to fit the budget for small practices.
This article lists five top-rated affordable medical practice management software solutions based on verified user reviews and pricing found on vendor websites. Per our research, we’ve considered products with base plans priced less than $34 per month as affordable software and arranged them in ascending order of their prices. Read more.
The software tools listed in this article focus on practice management with features, including patient records, patient scheduling, and physician scheduling.
What is a base software plan?
A base plan is the most affordable pricing tier offered by a software provider. Besides having the lowest price, base plans provide access to all core software features. However, they may have limitations compared to higher-tier plans in terms of the available functionality, storage capacity, number of user seats, support options, etc.
We selected products for this article based on their average ratings between April 2022 - April 2024, which may differ from their current overall average ratings.
1. Power Diary
The practice management software assists in managing appointments with online booking for patients to schedule appointments directly through a secure online patient portal. Users can leverage the waitlisting feature to manage rescheduling and cancellations, filling the open slots. The calendar view can be customized based on practitioner availability and appointment types for optimal medical scheduling. Patients receive automated text messages or email alerts for upcoming appointments.
Power Diary’s base plan offers single-user access to up to 1000 appointments, unlimited clients, and 100GB storage for one practitioner. Switching to a higher-price plan offers unlimited appointments, users, and file storage, along with practitioner scheduling, waitlist, room, and resource management.
Base plan features*:
Client booking portal: Allow clients to book appointments 24/7 from any device with internet access. The patient portal displays real-time appointment availability for practitioners, allowing patients to select the most convenient time.
Availability finder: Facilitate a time finder for patients to locate empty slots in the synced calendar for scheduling appointments. The feature allows setting filters to narrow down the search based on specific time slots, locations, or practitioners.
Recurring appointments: Set recurring appointments based on frequency (daily, weekly, or monthly), and start/end date. The feature allows changing these appointments based on the practitioner’s or the client’s needs.
Starting price: $19 per month
Cost to upgrade: $49 per month
Billing cycle: Monthly
Customer support options: Knowledge base, video tutorials, call, chat, email, online ticket, and FAQs
Who should consider Power Diary?
Medical practices looking to simplify online booking for patients and reduce administrative work can benefit from Power Diary. The tool’s online booking system reduces phone calls and simplifies patient appointment scheduling. The waitlist management system helps fill open slots due to cancellations, minimizing wasted time. Both patients and practitioners can set recurring appointments to ensure consistency in the regular checkups and treatment plans, maximizing efficiency.
2. Medesk
Medesk medical practice management system combines all patient information into a single electronic health record to access data from any device such as a laptop, smartphone, or tablet. Doctors and administrative staff can use these devices to check the medical history, including lab results and patient consultation notes. They can also take video consultations and communicate with patients via chat when on the move for telemedicine services.
The base price plan for Medesk offers access to three users for up to 50 appointments. The base plan also includes access to form templates, health records, referral letters, and reporting and analytics capabilities. Upgrading to a higher price plan offers additional features, such as task scheduling, automation rules, and video consultations, along with unlimited users and appointments.
Base plan features*:
Lab integration: Receive test results from integrated labs and share reports with the patients from within the system. The tool feature supports multiple service providers to select for testing based on the availability of the required lab tests.
Consultation form templates: Access pre-built form templates catering to different treatments. The feature allows modifying these templates using the drag-and-drop editor to fit specific specialty needs for doctors and patients.
Referral letters and prescriptions: Generate electronic referral letters and prescriptions to share with pharmacies or other healthcare centers. The feature allows direct sharing within the tool’s system and receives responses for further action.
Starting price: $20 per month
Cost to upgrade: $28 per month
Billing cycle: Monthly
Customer support options: Knowledge base, email, and call support
Who should consider Medesk?
Practices looking for an integrated system, with lab reports, electronic referral letters, prescriptions, and consultation forms can benefit from Medesk. This helps simplify communication between healthcare providers and the administrative staff with accessible and standardized patient healthcare documents. The ability to access Medesk from anywhere and any device enhances on-the-go accessibility to patient records and appointments via telemedicine services.
Pro tip
Consider a built-in or integrated patient record management system to store and manage all patient reports, contact details, treatment plans, billing, and insurance data within a single system. This reduces the time, effort, and errors of switching between systems and manual data entry.
3. Noterro
As a practice management system, Noterro enables payment processing, invoices, patient documents, and practice performance reports. It also assists in coordinating with insurance companies for patient claims management with the insurance add-on. Users can generate a superbill with the patient’s contact details, availed treatment, and insurance details. The diagnosis and procurement codes are assigned to the bill based on the medical classification system. Finally, an insurance claim is created electronically and shared with the patient’s service provider for approval.
Noterro’s base plan includes single-user access to charting, scheduling, billing, insurance, and practice management features. The plan offers unlimited assistant accounts, unlimited practice locations, and a mobile application with customizable branding. Users can connect with the vendor’s support team to get a customized plan, which may be priced higher than its base plan.
Base plan features*:
Custom forms: Create customizable claim or consent forms tailored to the patient or practice needs. The form includes patient contact and insurance information, treatment plan, and the total billing amount.
eSignatures: Share consent forms electronically with the patients to eSign and approve the recommended treatment plan for claim approval.
Mobile application: Allow secure communication between patients and the practice for appointments, reminders, and billing inquiries.
Starting price: $25 per month
Cost to upgrade: Available on request from the vendor
Billing cycle: Monthly
Customer support options: Knowledge base, chat, call, and FAQs
Who should consider Noterro?
Medical practices looking to speed up the electronic claim creation and submission process with the insurance providers can benefit from Noterro. The tool assists with tasks, such as e-billing claim filing, and approvals. The tool’s mobile application facilitates smooth communication for patients to check on their treatment plan, billing history, claim status, and other treatment-related details, anytime and from anywhere.
4. Practice Better
Practice Better offers an AI charting assistant that records and transcribes the conversations during telehealth or in-person sessions. The captured conversations are summarized for key takeaways discussed during the session, such as medication changes, follow-up appointments, or referrals. Besides, the AI assistant can prepare notes based on the recording and the summary to provide a starting point for the final notes or the treatment plan.
The tool’s base subscription plan offers all workflow automation features along with integration capabilities. Upgrading to a premium subscription plan additionally offers automated payment reminders, recurring invoices, batch entries, and calendar rules.
Base plan features*:
Food journaling: Allow patients to log their dietary data throughout the day. They can scan food items using the mobile application.
Custom notes: Customize the standard AI-generated notes to add specific details to each patient’s treatment plan. These include detailed observations, progress notes, or personalized treatment goals.
Workflow automation: Set up automation rules to email new patients, send reminders for due payments or upcoming appointments, and generate pre-appointment forms for patients to fill out electronically.
Starting price: $25 per month
Cost to upgrade: $59 per month
Billing cycle: Monthly
Customer support options: Help center, community, knowledge base, chat, and email
Who should consider Practice Better?
Medical practices looking to eliminate the errors of manual note-taking and focus on providing better patient care can benefit from Practice Better’s AI assistant and automation capabilities. These features free up time for doctors to interact with patients and better diagnose their health conditions. The AI notes allow doctors to quickly scan through the essential information without wading through lengthy transcripts. This helps create an effective treatment plan for enhanced patient care.
Pro tip
Look for granular role-based access control to ensure that staff members only have access to the data they need to get their jobs done. Additionally, check for audit trails that track user activity. This can be crucial for regulatory compliance and identifying potential security breaches.
5. Pabau
Pabau medical practice management system handles the entire practice management process from administration to marketing. Users can manage appointments, patient records, billing, and marketing campaigns within a single system. With the stock management feature, users can track and manage the medical inventory and add or remove items based on their availability.
Pabau’s base subscription plan offers single-user access with up to 50 client profiles and all its features. Switching to a higher plan allows up to 15 users and unlimited client profiles.
Base plan features*:
Automated charges: Charge the pre-set deposit amount automatically to the patient’s saved payment information if they miss an appointment without proper cancellation.
Schedules and rotas: Organize and view team schedules in an integrated calendar. The feature offers drag-and-drop capabilities to move, edit, or add appointments for staff members at any time.
Product and service reports: Categorize performance reports based on factors, such as revenue generated by each product or service, number of appointments booked for each service, most popular and least popular procedures, or product sales trends.
Starting price: $28 per month
Cost to upgrade: Available upon request from the vendor
Billing cycle: Monthly
Customer support options: Online guides, knowledge base, user community, and chat
Who should consider Pabau?
Medical practices looking for a single system to centralize clinic management activities and eliminate the need for juggling multiple tools can benefit from Pabau. The tool capabilities, including operations, communication, and marketing can reduce time and energy spent on administrative tasks and make it easier for practitioners to focus on patient care. Category-specific reports with a customizable dashboard further enhance practice management with detailed and service-specific insights. This adds to improving patients’ experience and satisfaction.
Top 3 medical practice management software features users rate as highly critical
The products listed in this article include the features mentioned below. To identify these, we asked users to rate, on a scale of “low importance” to “critical,” how important different features are for clinic management software. The features showcased are those that the highest percentage of reviewers rated as “highly important” or “critical” over the past two years (as of April 18, 2024).
Feature name | Criticality rating (%) | Description |
|---|---|---|
HIPAA compliance | 92% | Compliant with HIPAA - Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which sets standards for sensitive patient data protection while storing and sharing. |
Patient records management | 89% | Consolidate all patient clinical records, such as reports, treatment plans, insurance, and billing information in one centralized storage. |
Patient scheduling | 86% | Book and manage patient appointments and follow-ups or allow patients to book themselves using the online portal or mobile application. |
How much does medical practice management software cost?
A medical practice management solution can cost as low as $19 per month or up to $149+ per user per month, depending on various factors—features, number of users, form and letter templates, AI capabilities, training availability, deployment options, and storage. Most practice management solutions typically include the following pricing plans:
Free trial: No-cost plans ranging from a week to a month, giving users access to all or limited software features. These are ideal for medical practices that wish to try out a tool before purchasing it.
Free version: Free software plans offer access to basic features and limited premium features. These are ideal for small practices with a limited budget.
Entry-level: Starts at $19 per month and offers essential practice management features, such as scheduling, billing, and documentation. These are ideal for small practices with basic operations and management needs.
Mid-tier: Ranges from $28 to $109 per month and offers features such as waitlisting, multi-location management, custom portal branding, and customer relationship management. These are ideal for practices that have outgrown basic management solutions and don’t require the full range of functionality offered by enterprise-level tools.
High-end: Advanced software plans are priced higher than $109 and offer unlimited entry-level and mid-tier features with cloud storage and priority support. These advanced features are ideal for larger practices spread across the globe.
Hidden costs associated with affordable medical practice management software
Besides the software license, additional costs may be associated with practice management software systems, including:
Implementation and training: Include data migration, customization, and employee training. These can be substantial, especially for complex systems or large organizations.
Cloud storage: The additional digital storage costs that can add up quickly, particularly for large volumes of patient data.
Add-ons: Additional costs may be incurred for accessing add-on features of the tool, such as integration, AI, or accounting.
Frequently asked questions when selecting medical practice management software
Here are some questions to ask software providers before making a final purchase of the best practice management software:
What are the limitations of the base plan?
As previously discussed, base plans often have a reduced set of features compared to other higher-priced plans. For example, a limited number of practitioners, appointments, or patient profiles might be available with the base or the lowest price plan. Understand these limitations to make an informed decision and ensure that the practitioners and administrative staff are able to effectively work with the base plan features.
Does the base plan allow integration with other practice management tools?
Integration is yet another essential feature that allows smooth data flow between systems. However, certain base software plans limit the number or type of software tools that can be integrated with the practice management software. Check if the available integration options align with the practice’s integration requirements, such as EMR software, CRM software, medical billing software, or database software, before purchase. This is based on the features offered by the software and what additional features are required by the team.
Is the base plan scalable?
As the practice grows, it may require additional user access, data storage, client profiles, and so on, outgrowing the limitations of these plans. Check if the base plan of the selected software allows scaling to accommodate additional requirements and performance enhancements. This ensures that the software remains responsive to the changing business needs.
Methodology
To be considered for this list, products had to:
Have at least 20 unique product reviews published on Software Advice within the past two years, with an average rating of 3.0 or higher (as of April 18, 2024).
Include the core features of practice management software: patient record, patient scheduling, and physician scheduling
Must meet our market definition for practice management software: “Medical practice management software automates activities such as patient care, scheduling, billing, claims processing and other related operations for medical practices.”
For products that met the first three criteria, we assessed the monthly subscription price of the base plans and found the average price to be $34—we considered only products with publicly available pricing information. We then shortlisted products with a monthly base price lower than $34 for this article.
*Our research team identified these features from vendor websites (as of April 18, 2024) based on their analysis of what users find valuable in or expect from practice management software. This list is not exhaustive. For additional features, refer to the vendor's website.
Products evaluated for the pricing calculation were taken from Software Advice’s practice management software directory. The pricing ranges exclude freemium versions of the products. The features highlighted were identified based on their relevance and the percentage of products in the SoftwareAdvice’s directory that offer them.
Editorial independence
We select and rank products based on an objective methodology developed by our research team. While some vendors may pay us when they receive web traffic or leads, this has no influence on our methodology.