These case studies on EMR’s are meant to briefly showcase what I was able to accomplish with each unique service and how that translated into insights for the practice owner. Some EHR’s are better than others for data analysis but there isn’t a lot of clear information out there comparing them.
Therapy Partner is another dated looking EMR that includes, progress notes, scheduling/calendars, billing features, insurance ready statements, and more. It does everything a standard EMR can and should do in and is relatively cheaper than its other competitors.
Therapy Partner offers a fair amount of data options tailored to the needs of therapy practices. Users can record and access detailed patient information, including demographics, medical history, treatment plans, and progress notes. The software also supports scheduling data, allowing for efficient management of appointments and therapist availability. Additionally, Therapy Partner includes billing data, tracking payments, insurance claims, and financial reports.
There are quite a few well structured reports in Therapy Partner, although it is a bit slow to generate them. These range from the typical practice and billing statements, to more detailed items such as a report for direct deposits, unsigned notes, outstanding balances.
While there are many reports with great data, they each so specific that it’s very hard to look at two related things at the same time. Additionally, no matter how many reports they have available, the next point makes them almost worthless for analysis.
Therapy Partner simple does not allow you to export the data in a CSV/Excel file making data analysis simply impossible. I actually called the company about this since I needed the data in Excel format, and they told me due to HIPAA regulations they couldn’t export in that format, although they could export in an almost completely worthless PDF report which no dashboard software can use. Every other ERM allows this so I think there is a different reason they don’t allow this.
Did I tell my client I couldn’t get the data since their ERM couldn’t actually export data? No I did something much more complicated but was surprised when it actually worked. This is getting a bit in the weeds but I just want to explain how flexible I need to be sometimes in order to get the necessary data for my dashboards.
I right clicked the finished report on each page and saved it as a raw HTML file which had hundreds of lines that looked like this:
<div class="k-grid k-widget k-grid-display-block" style=""><div class="k-grid-header" style="padding-right: 0px;"><div class="k-grid-header-wrap k-auto-scrollable"><table role="grid"><colgroup><col><col style="width:150px"><col style="width:100px"><col style="width:135px"><col style="width:145px"><col style="width:145px"></colgroup><thead role="rowgroup"><tr role="row"> <th data-field="SessionType" class="k-header" data-role="columnsorter" data-index="0"><a class="k-link" href="#">Session Type</a></th> I wrote a few python script to extract the useful practice data from the HTML files and convert them into an Excel file that the dashboard could use. Examples of this script are listed on the right to show what a complete circus it was to get this data into a format I could use.
I was then able to create my normal dashboard, although with some extra steps for getting the data every time I wanted to refresh.
While Therapy Partner is a cheaper alternative to the other more popular EMR’s, for data analysis it is one of the absolute worst choices. This is due purely to the fact that you can’t export the data as an Excel file which is the cornerstone of any analysis. Hopefully they are able to fix this in the future but for now I’m stuck writing lines of python to get this seemingly available data into a format I can use.
This EMR did teach me how to be more resourceful and now I am confident that no matter how antiquated the software, I can get the data I need to make beautiful, insightful dashboards.
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Ben with Data Fluent is so knowledgeable and easy to work with. He created a dashboard for my practice that is easily accessible and makes the data easy to understand. Having the organized data without having to navigate multiple spreadsheets has made it possible for me to make some important changes in my systems and improve my business.
Ben has a real gift of being able to organize your practice’s data in an insightful and easy to use dashboard. Since hiring him, I have used the dashboard to track (and retrieve!) dropped clients, view my practice trends (for example, knowing when my slow months are coming so I can increase my networking and advertising to compensate). Let’s face it, we’d all like to be able to manually record and track our data, but it’s a boring, difficult and repetitive process, even though it would benefit us. With Ben’s help, you receive all of the data in a usable format monthly, with no need to manually input. Hire his company today, it will only help your practice grow!
