NextGen® Practice Management Solutions vs. Tebra Billing & Payments

To start, Nextgen PM is NOT well-suited for companies who are looking for a could-based product—you will be required to house this software on your own server (this will force that company to maintain their own infrastructure). The solution is great for a company looking for a PM/EHR combo that communicates well with each other. The two modules are owned by the same company and does not require a costly API/bridge to be built between the two programs.

Incentivized

In my experience, problems with them adding incorrect fees to pad their bills coupled with their unethical business practices such as locking you out from accessing your EMR at the drop of a hat prevent me from recommending Kareo to any practice. Reliability is paramount. Kareo's use of unethical business practices (locking you out from your EMR or disabling your EMR all together) can result in a physician being sanctioned by the medical board (inappropriate medical record keeping) or financially destroy a small practice leaving them with NO ACCESS to their ERAs/patient billing accounts etc leads me to NOT reccomend their products or doing business with them.

• Ability to save favorite phrases and templates to make charting more efficient for providers.
• Ability to interface with Question Diagnostics for certain laboratory tests.
• Ability to send and receive tasks to other user(s) on the system as well as send future tasks and reminders to yourself.

Incentivized

• Kareo stays up to date on insurance changes which allow for smooth transitions.
• Kareo asks for feedback and has a place to go and request changes or additions that would make our job easier.
• I love that you can submit a help ticket or call, if you prefer, with any questions or problems that you may have. They are always very prompt with their follow up.

• More robust online scheduling solution
• Integrated solution for online payments
• More Robust AI solution for AI charting for providers

Incentivized

• Where to start...for one, during my start-up with a "success coach" and trust me, I use that term broadly, I had to f/u on every single issue that came up. I was told she was taking care of my electronic lab enrollment, after waiting 3 months and reaching out to my success coach, Kayli, countless times, I only was told when contacted by management that my Quest lab access had been denied after 2 weeks because I was never told to independently create my own account with Kareo- after asking/emailing/calling multiple times trying to figure out the process. So needless to say, I have NO electronic lab access 4 months after signing with Kareo and they are now just starting the process.
• Prescriptions- I had reached out to Kareo, no exaggeration, over 10 times to figure out why I wasn't receiving prescription refills. Spent countless hours on the phone with "support line" that could never give me an answer- to any question. And never f/u either until I directly insisted to my salesperson to have management contact me directly. I had a patient go to the hospital due to not having their medications because apparently their pharmacy had sent refill prescriptions over 3 times which I never received. Only after talking to management, did they look into further and then inform me that I had 3 locations in the system (?? I have ONE location). They were all prior addresses of offices, one from over 4 years ago. To date, again, 4 months after paying a year up front, I can't receive refill requests. And the solution proposed to me by management was to call my prior EHR and request they delete my prior addresses. And I cannot contact my prior EHR because I was in a large group that restricted the account to only 2 individuals in a group of 18 doctors to even have access to talk to them. So I can't resolve the issue, Kareo after 4 months instructs me to call them myself, and the prior EHR doesn't even recognize I had an account with them because it was under a group practice name.
• Online booking- I thought this would be an amazingly efficient add-on. What they don't tell you is you can only designate "increments" of appointment times. Kareo will tell you it syncs with your existing schedule so that online bookings are only in vacant time slots. I had new patients selecting a time increment of 15 minutes, existing patients selecting 45 minutes (with a deductible) and any increment over 15 minutes (which the patient can select at their own will, being if you choose 15 min increments, it will offer appointment length for 15 min, 30 min, 45 min, 60 min etc with no outline of the appropriate time length) will over-book your schedule. So if you have a 10-10:15 slot, the patient can select a 45 minute appointment that starts at 10 (Because that 15 minute slot is open). But then will overbook the patients at 10:15 and 10:30.
• It created utter chaos in my practice. My office manager spent more time calling patients to inform them they had booked an inappropriate time increment, they can't book a new appointment for 15 minutes, we don't accept their insurance...the list goes on.
• There is no way to restrict the increments or who can book an appointment.
• Messaging- I can't view what incoming messages from patients are sent to whom. And neither can my office manager. And the patient gets to select who to sent the message to, either the "provider" or "location." And 9 times out of 10 they send to the "provider." So as a physician, I am inundated with patient messages simply wanting to book a new appointment or reschedule. As a physician, obviously prioritizing my time is important and my office manager can't view these messages.
• The list goes on, unfortunately. "A/R" reports only allow them to calculate a theoretical A/R based on your self-pay rates to patients, not individual contracted rates with insurances. So my A/R has an inflated number, which I can't even quantify by how much, because the A/R is based as if every insurance patient paid as a self-pay patient. Seriously, no one thought this through?
• Can't send multiple controlled scripts at once electronically. Have to enter, go to separate site, enter code, be redirected back to KAreo then re-enter another med, be redirected to separate site, enter code, be redirected...Any other EHR I've ever used (and I've used around 6 between residency and private practice) you could enter multiple Rx, but then check the meds you wanted to send and then enter ONE code for, say, 2 controlled scripts. Kareo, you must enter separate codes one by one.
• I could go on but will choose to hope for all reading, you get the general point...

Overall, a very easy and robust system to use for small practices. It enables us to keep billing in house and connectivity with various databases keep the providers "in the know" about what's going on with their patients. Some solutions - such as the patient portal and online scheduling are cumbersome and we have difficulty getting patients to use them.

Incentivized

Kareo Medical Billing is very user friendly and the support they provide allows users to get their questions answered quickly and efficiently. The wait time to receive help is usually pretty good and most of the time we can ger our questions answered. We have found that is the tech help is unable to answer our question, they will attempt to find a colleague who is able to help!

Incentivized

We feel that Nextgen does not stack up very well against the cloud-based software on the market. Housing the underlying tables on your own hardware requires COSTLY man hours. We are in the business of providing health care services to patients, not database administration. Introducing cloud-based products has had a tremendously positive effect on our business.

Incentivized

We have used several Practice Management programs which our doctors have chosen. Kareo is far above those in ease of use, efficiency and reporting. Training takes very little time as the program is intuitive. Licensing cost is reasonable. Our doctors enjoy the integration with the Kareo EHR and our staff appreciates the integration from the EHR to the practice management. It makes their job easier.

Incentivized

• Nextgen did a good job of transitioning our practice away from paper health records.
• I believe that the Return on Investment would have been much higher had we gone straight to a cloud-based tool.
• By getting our feet wet with Nextgen, we have a pretty good understanding of Practice Management software. In other words, we could plug and play with most systems on the market.

Incentivized

• Kareo had an overall low return on investment.
• Despite the software being active at our company, we were forced to transition to a different solution within 6-months of implementation.
• The time spent attempting to reconcile the system to itself was rather wasteful.

Incentivized