Allied health practice management software: a buyer's guide

Choosing practice management software is one of the few decisions that touches every person in your practice every day. Get it right and nobody thinks about it. Get it wrong and you feel it in the front desk's workarounds, the invoices that bounce, the notes written at 9pm, and the switch you will eventually have to make again.

The trouble with most comparisons is that they compare feature lists, and every vendor's list is long. A better test is to start from the jobs your practice does each week and ask each vendor to show you, on screen, how their system does them. That includes us. Whether you are looking at AspireOS or anything else, these are the questions worth asking.

The calendar

• Can you see every practitioner side by side, filtered by site or person, and book, move or cancel in a click or two?
• Does it handle repeat bookings, joint sessions and group classes, with each attendee billed under their own funding?
• If you do home visits, does it know where each visit is, and can it tell you how much driving a new booking adds?
• When a visit is cancelled, does anyone get told there is a waitlist patient who could take the slot?
• If patients can book online, do they pick a time or send a request? Which suits the way your practice works?

Clinical notes

• Are there templates for initial, follow-up, review and discharge notes, and can you build your own?
• Can a note be locked once complete, with later changes kept as versions?
• Can clinicians write notes on a phone between visits?
• If AI is involved, does it draft for the clinician to review, or can it write to the record by itself? Our post on why software should draft, not decide sets out why that difference matters.

Funders and invoicing

• Which funding types are built in (NDIS, Medicare, DVA, WorkCover, TAC, Support at Home, private health), and what does each funding record hold?
• Can one service carry a different price and item code for each funder?
• Does each invoice go to the right payer: the plan manager, insurer, registered provider or patient?
• Can you invoice in batches by date range, and bill some patients weekly, fortnightly or monthly?
• Which claiming channels are live today, and which are on a roadmap? Ask for the status of each in writing.
• For NDIS, who keeps support item numbers and price limits up to date when they change: you or the software?

Payments and getting paid

• How can patients pay: card, bank transfer, PayID? Whose merchant account is used, and what does setting it up involve?
• Are overdue invoices chased automatically, and are funders chased instead of patients where that is right?
• Can you upload a remittance or bank statement and see what matched?
• How does it connect to your accounting software: automatically, by a button, or by a file you download?

Team, reporting and compliance

• Can you track credentials such as Ahpra registration, checks and insurance, with reminders before they expire?
• Can roles limit who sees the money and who sees clinical notes?
• Can the owner see revenue, unbilled visits, money owed and utilisation without exporting to a spreadsheet?
• If you employ staff, does it handle timesheets, leave and payroll preparation, and what exactly does it hand to your payroll software?

Data, hosting and support

• Where is the data hosted, and where else might it be processed, for example by payment or AI providers?
• Is there two-factor sign-in and an audit trail of who did what?
• Can you export everything, at any time, in a usable format, without having to ask?
• What does it take to bring your data in, and what will not come across?
• How do you get help, and how quickly?
• How is it priced, and does adding a colleague change the bill?

How AspireOS answers these

Since we are asking you to put these questions to every vendor, here are our own short answers. AspireOS is built for Australian allied health practices, mobile or clinic-based. The Calendar shows a column per practitioner, works out travel from the day's route and ranks free slots by the extra drive they add. Eight funding types are built in, each service carries its own price and item code per funder, and invoices are drafted when a visit is completed and emailed to the right payer once a person has checked them.

Card payments run through your own Stripe account. Xero is connected by button, sending invoices out and bringing payments back. Online Medicare claiming through Tyro Health is awaiting approval, and HICAPS and online DVA claiming are coming soon, so today AspireOS tracks those claims and reconciles what funders pay. For agency-managed NDIS participants it builds the bulk payment file for you to upload in the NDIS portal. The online booking page takes booking requests: patients ask for a call back rather than choosing a slot.

Practice data is hosted in Sydney, with two-factor sign-in, an audit trail and an export of every record at any time; the security page sets out the detail. The feature list covers everything else, and the pricing page shows one plan, priced per person, with AspireAi included.

The best way to judge any of this is against your own workflow. Book a demo and bring your busiest day with you.