Free EMR Software Buyers Guide
Last updated: December 04, 2023
A Guide to Help You Make the Right Decision
Free EMR software is a cost-effective method of going paperless for medical practice. Although it doesn’t offer specialization-related help, it offers a variety of services like decision support, charting, and coding assistance.
While a Free EMR software doesn’t mean that it lacks functionality due to it being free, it does have a few limitations. Firstly, the Free EHR Solution can only be used by a number of users. Secondly, it requires a lot of time and manpower to implement.
What to Expect from Your EHR Solution?
When you decide to begin your search for a Free EHR Software, you might come across some average ones and some good ones as well. If you’ve selected an EMR software for purchase, make sure it offers these basic services.
User-Friendly Experience: A user-friendly interface can simplify tasks for your staff and help them be more productive.
Integration: The EMR solution you choose should easily be able to integrate with your existing system, regardless of the device you’re using. In the US, Apple devices are quite popular, but there are people with other systems as well, such as Android, Windows, Linux. So your EHR solution should offer compatibility with most of these platforms.
Always Available for Support: When implementing a new solution, you might run into problems, which is completely normal. With the right support from your EMR solution vendor, you can overcome any problem you face during implementation and even afterward.
You can also ask your vendor to provide you with a Free EHR/EMR Software Demo to make sure you’re making the right choice.
What to Look For in Free EMR Software
Here are some features you must make sure are offered by the Free EMR solution you choose.
Medical Billing: Medical billing automates your entire billing process to help you process payments faster. You can also verify a patient’s insurance data in real-time.
Scheduling Appointments: The software allows physicians to automate scheduling appointments. This makes it easy on both ends, physicians and patients, to make regular appointments without worrying about delays or misses.
Charting Tools: Although Free EMR systems don’t offer a wide range of built-in templates, they do include some of the basic ones. They also come equipped with Google Voice Recognition to help simplify the charting process.
Integrated Fax: One of the more out-dated features is that it provides a set of faxing software to practitioners. The modem-based faxing services can be used to send and receive files.
The Free EMR software should also include e-prescribing tools which offer:
Prescription Generator: Practitioners can write prescriptions directly from the EHR system in a few minutes. You can send these prescriptions directly to the pharmacy and to the patients as well.
Refills: Patients can send a refill request to the practitioner, who can approve and send the prescription to the pharmacy in a few minutes.
Guide for Choosing a Free EHR Vendor?
Features are one part of the play when implementing your Free EHR software. You also have to choose the right vendor. Why does that matter? A vendor that provides EHR solutions to small scale practices, would never be able to serve a large scale practice and vice versa.
Now that you know what kind of features you need to look for, it’s time to discuss what type of Free EHR software vendor you should select for your medical practice.
Vendor and Practice Size – Firstly, you need to understand which size of companies your vendor typically aims for. After that, you need to analyze the scope of your practice as well. If you have a large facility, you wouldn’t want to select an EHR vendor that only deals with small practices. Typically, the vendors that cater to more extensive facilities have a high-cost Free EMR software.
Vendor Certification – This is probably the most important aspect before selecting an EMR vendor for your practice. You need to make sure your vendor is ONC-authorized testing and certification body (ONC-ATCB). Selecting a non-certified vendor will only bring you trouble and a nuisance to your practice.
System Design – This will probably depend on whether you want to install Free EMR software on-site in your server, or use a cloud-based one. Although you’ll get more advantages with a cloud-based solution, it probably boils down to your personal preference. Whatever you choose, you’ll need to find an EMR vendor that provides the service you are looking for.
What’s the Final Step?
At this point, you should’ve understood all the features and decided on a few potential vendors, whether on-site or web-based EHR Free Software. When you reach a vendor that’s providing you with all the services, features, support and the Free EMR software’s cost is also to your liking, you can take the final step and move towards implementation.
Before making your decision, it is essential to understand how every provider and practice workflow is unique. For this reason, a provider that may work for one may not exactly suit the other. Therefore, software experts and industry specialists are an ideal source of information, advice, and ultimately ensuring that the right decision is made.
I wouldn’t tell you which Free EMR System is best, that’s for you to decide based upon your practice’s needs. But I hope now you have enough information to make the right decision.
