Practice software for mobile and NDIS-heavy practices

If you are weighing up other practice software, the problem is probably not your calendar. More likely, the way your practice works has drifted away from the way it worked when you chose your software. Perhaps you have gone mobile and the route for each day is planned on a map app and a notepad. Perhaps half your caseload is now NDIS or Support at Home, and invoicing has become a weekly reconciliation exercise with plan managers on the other end.

This post will not tell you what any other product does or does not do. Products change, and the only reliable answer is the one you get by testing your own workflows. What it will do is help you decide whether your current setup still fits your practice, and give you a list of things to test in any alternative, including ours.

When your current system is still the right fit

Switching software costs time and attention, and it is not always the answer. Staying put may make sense if:

• Most visits happen in rooms you control, and travel is the exception
• Most patients are private or health fund, paid on the day
• Funded work such as NDIS, DVA, WorkCover or TAC is a small share of revenue, and one person handles it well
• Your team is small and works from one site
• The pain is in one area you could fix with a process change or different settings

If that describes you, a better process may beat a migration. Write down the three tasks that cost your team the most time each week, and check properly whether your current system can already do them before you shop around.

Signs your practice has outgrown its setup

The picture is different for practices built around the car and the funder. Look for these signs in your own week:

• Travel lives outside the system. Kilometres and drive time are estimated by the clinician, typed in later, or not billed at all.
• Booking ignores geography. Reception books the first free slot, and someone fixes the route afterwards.
• Funded episodes live in spreadsheets. Plan dates, referral expiry, sessions remaining and approval status are tracked in a separate file.
• Invoices reach the wrong payer. Plan-managed, self-managed and agency-managed participants each need different handling, and the mistakes are caught by plan managers rather than by you.
• Agreements are on paper. Service agreements are signed, scanned and filed by hand, and nobody can say quickly who has not signed.
• The team is spread out. Credentials, leave and timesheets for clinicians you rarely see in person are managed by email.

Two or three of these is normal friction. Five or six suggests your practice has changed shape since you last chose software, and it is worth testing alternatives properly.

What to test in any alternative

Whether your shortlist includes AspireOS or any other system, every demo looks good on the vendor's own data. Ask for a trial or a sandbox and put your own week through it. These are the questions to ask every vendor, including us:

1. Travel. Can it work out kilometres and minutes between visits, rank free slots by the extra drive, and bill travel under each funder's rules?
2. Funding. Does each patient carry the fields their funder needs, with expiry warnings? Can a funded episode be tracked by sessions, hours or dollars?
3. NDIS invoicing. Do plan-managed invoices go to the plan manager and self-managed ones to the participant without someone choosing each time? What does it do for agency-managed participants?
4. Agreements. Can a participant or nominee sign a service agreement online, and can you see at a glance who has not?
5. The phone. What does a clinician see on the road? Can they finish a visit, write the note and raise the invoice on one screen?
6. Data in. What can it import from your current system, and what will not come across? Get that list in writing before you commit.
7. Data out. Can you export everything, at any time, without asking anyone?
8. Price. What does it cost for your headcount, and what is charged on top?

Our guide to switching practice management software covers the move itself: what to export first, running two systems side by side and choosing a go-live date.

Where AspireOS fits

AspireOS was built alongside a Melbourne mobile physiotherapy practice, so travel and funders sit in the core of it. The Calendar works out kilometres and minutes from the day's route and ranks free slots by the extra drive they add. Eight funding types are built in, each with its own fields on the patient's funding card, and cases track funded sessions, hours or dollars with a meter of what is left. NDIS plan- and self-managed invoices go to the right payer. For agency-managed participants, Finances builds the NDIS bulk payment file, flagging problems first, for you to upload in the NDIS portal yourself. Service agreements are signed online, with a register of who has signed.

The practitioner phone app installs from the browser, with no app store needed, and lets a clinician finish a visit, write the note and raise the invoice on one screen. There is more on the mobile side on our mobile allied health page.

Moving in, AspireOS imports team, services, patients, contacts, cases, notes, appointments and invoices from your current practice software or any spreadsheet, with columns matched and duplicates skipped, and Testing mode holds every patient message while you set up so nobody hears from two systems at once. Ask us, as you would ask any vendor, exactly what will and will not come across from your current setup. AspireOS is one plan priced per person, set out on the pricing page.

If you would like to put that messy week through AspireOS, start a free trial.