Chiropractic Office Billing Software And Patient Relationship Management - 9 Criteria For Best SaaS

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) pushes the limits of outsourcing and reduces the exorbitant costs of specialized practice management software. SaaS model is available for all aspects of chiropractic clinic management, including scheduling, billing, and SOAP note documentation, which are mission-critical for high quality health care, practice building, and regulatory compliance.

What is Software-as-a-Service?

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a logical step in the progression from build to buy to subscribe and a manifestation of a major software trend towards Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). SaaS is the software industry term for delivery of software product and services over a network (typically the Internet) under subscription business model.

The increasing reliability of the Internet coupled with availability of completely integrated practice management and billing software, create supportive conditions to pay-as-you-go business model. SaaS liberates the users in two significant ways:

 

1. SaaS requires no large upfront investment in hardware and software licenses on the part of the user
2. SaaS shifts the onus of systems management from the user to the SaaS vendor, including
   1. Internet connectivity, bandwidth, and routers
   2. Servers for Web server software, email, firewalls
   3. Capacity management
   4. Redundancy management
   5. Application upgrade management

       

       

    

    

 

In financial management terms, SaaS proposition is equivalent to turning capital expense into operating expense, which translates into

 

1. Better balance sheets
2. Lower risk, especially during the period of rapid technology innovation on one hand and practice-building stages on the other hand

    

    

 

SaaS differs from Applications Service Providers (ASP) in two ways, namely, domain expertise and software development skills. While ASP vendors developed primarily hardware and systems expertise and offered foreign business applications, SaaS vendors are experts in the specific application domain.

SaaS Vendor Selection

For the manager of chiropractic clinic, the main challenge could be the integration of newer applications with the subscribed SaaS application. SaaS Integration Platforms (SIP) is a popular way to handle the integration challenge. A SIP, such as Vericle, offers a suite of integrated applications, such as Patient Relationship Management, Patient Scheduling, SOAP notes, and Billing.

Chiropractic clinic in search of SaaS vendor must focus on the following topics:

 

1. Functionality: Does the application deliver required functionality?
2. Training: Will the vendor provide sufficient application training?
3. Third-Party Application Interface: Does the application work with existing applications already deployed in the office? What requirements must be satisfied if you decide to purchase another application later?
4. Performance: How do you measure application performance? Are formal performance metrics available continuously?
5. HIPAA Compliance: What controls are in place to enable access only on a "need to see" basis? Is every access instance logged using secure mechanism?
6. Service Level Agreement: What minimum service levels the vendor guarantees to the client? What are the penalties for violating SLA?
7. Data Ownership: Who owns the data?
8. Disaster Recovery: How long would it take to recover from a disaster? Is a secondary data center available 24 x 7?
9. Disengagement Procedures: How long is data available upon severing the relationship? Who is responsible for data transfer to the new vendor?

   Yuval Lirov, PhD, author of "Practicing Profitability - Network Effect for Revenue Cycle Control in Healthcare Clinic and Chiropractic Office: Scheduling, SOAP Notes, Care Plans, Coding, Billing, Collections, and Audit Risk" (Affinity Billing) and "Mission Critical Systems Management" (Prentice Hall), inventor of patents in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Security, and CEO of Vericle.net - Distributed Billing and Practice Management Technologies. Yuval invites you to register to the next webinar on audit risk at BillingPrecision.com