CarePaths EHR

Pros

Ease of finding appropriate templates for charting and the ease of prescribing. I prescribe daily and the program is excellent.

Cons

Would like to have the ability to do prior auths when I am in the patient's chart. Currently I have to go to another site to do that. Also, would like to be able to fax more notes than 5 at each time. Many of my records are lengthly and numerous. It takes a lot of extra time to have to fax 5 charts at a time.

Pros

It's very easy to fill out clinical notes and file insurance claim forms. I also can get EOBs online and have them posted to clients' accounts. There is the ability to use video therapy which I have done a couple times. I can't really compare this to other EHRs

Cons

I started out paying as a part time therapist. Carepaths has now stopped having a part time fee and so I now pay high amount. That's a huge jump for someone seeing around 8 clients per week. I know I could stop using them, but now that all my clients are listed there, it's difficult to stop.
Other cons: when I see a couple, I have to set up two accounts for them to fill out paperwork as there isn't a way to have two signatures on Carepath's consent forms. Also, the clinical forms have a space to put in the client's next appointment but then that appointment time doesn't automatically transfer to the scheduling page. Carepaths doesn't ask for user feedback about usability. There have been several major software changes, but never did they ask users what we think might be useful.

Pros

The main feature is the low price, considering all of the advertised features. The simple interface appealed to us as well. I think this EMR would be fine for any clinician who is NOT sending claims to insurance or paying other clinicians on a fee split.

Cons

- They are not open about the reports not working. If you need to pay clinicians on a fee split, they will tell you that you can run reports to do it, but the reports they tell you to run do not accurately calculate pay. I have told them repeatedly they need to let any other group practices know that they are NOT paying clinicians correctly, but they act like it's not a big deal. Obviously they do not have a lot of money budgeted for programming and the poor customer service people have to cover for this.
- ERAs will very regularly NOT come in, despite us getting paid by insurance. We spend countless hours monthly calling BCBS manually to sort this out. When we identify what ERAs are missing, we then need to MANUALLY post those ERAs into the system. I am paying for double the clerical staff that other practices my size utlilize.
- There are issues with ERAs double allocating or over allocating, though accounting won't reflect this. So if you took too much copay, and then apply an insurance payment, it will let you apply an excess to the charge and the balance will show as $0. Now your accounting is off
- There are basic features you'd expect which are not there. For instance, you can't turn off the messaging feature in the portal.
- Their invoicing does not do a good job of separating people with real balances from people for whom you are waiting for insurance payment.

Alternatives Considered

Pros

ease of use for billing and note taking. Availability of video. Access to eob's from medicare. The customer support is always helpful and responsive.

Cons

Sometimes hard to get assistance (other times I barely wait an hour). When regulations change, for example icd 10, updates were not timely. I find accounting section to be too burdensome and use an excel spreadsheet instead. Not happy with that either. Would like to see something that is more user friendly for accounting. Would also like to have calendar synced with google calendar or have the carepath one on my telephone. The calendar is another feature I do not use as I need to have access to it all the time. Wish I could dictate my notes, I hear another program has this feature.

Pros

Ease of use, easy to train people on, straight-forward

Cons

Not very pretty, needs more design, boring interface