Kareo Clinical

Vorteile

Relatively simple user interface, ease of navigation, ability to send lab orders electronically, responsive customer support, engaged customer support specialist during on-boarding, the note structure is great because you can see all the note sections all the time, which makes concurrent charting a breeze.

Apparently the billing side of things is nice to work with (I don't work with that side of the software, though), On the patient end, it does a great job with appointment reminders, and the telehealth platform has proven relatively user friendly (though it does seem to have some audio reliability issues).

Overall, Kareo generally seems open to feedback and does seem to strive to make improvements, which is perhaps the most important thing of all.

I will gladly modify this review in the future if the application efficiency and usability improves, because I really do like a lot about it. There are currently just too many problematic areas for me.

Nachteile

A little context: My work computer is a MacBook Air (M1, 2020) that is running up-to-date Monterey OS. I have used both Chrome and Firefox, both up to date (the recommended browsers) to work in Kareo and both have problems. My computer is also about 3 feet away from a high speed, very reliable wifi router.

Issues:
Until very recently, there was no auto-save feature for notes, and if something happened - your computer died, your internet disconnects for a second, or Kareo closes for any reason - note gone, unless signed or manually saved. This was made much worse by the fact that I was getting error messages (Code: 500 - internal server error) constantly. Clearing cookies/cache did not help. Re-booting the machine did not help. I think these are Kareo-end problems, but even if they are due to something on my end, support did not have solutions for me, and i spent hours on the phone/email/screen-sharing.

To Kareo's credit, at least now notes auto-save as I work, so I don't lose more notes in a week than i had previously lost in my entire career, but these error messages still happen, forcing me to re-load the site regularly.

Also, Chrome (normally my preferred browser) will not let me use templates in my notes. I can open them and click boxes, but when I close the template form, the things I select do not populate into my note, rendering this useless. Mind you, these are Kareo-developed templates, not ones that our practice has created, so they should work.

continued...

Vorteile

The software is user friendly. It has been easy for new hires to pick up and all staff in our facility including providers feel it is easy to use. They have made many daily features easily accessible such as ordering labs, sending referrals, sending msgs to patients, and scheduling. They give you updates on any new features added including links to videos on how to use new features. Issues have been minimal but when I do have issues customer support is always more than helpful, and the wait time to talk to a human on the phone is never that long. Overall best software I have had the opportunity to use in my career.

Nachteile

The referral loop system could use some upgrading in my opinion. Erx requests section has become a chore. For example, one patient will have 6 medications, and I have to click on each one and deny/approve each one individually, I would like to have the option to select multiple medications for one patient and select the response and submit. Especially when denying the medications, if I am denying one I am denying all, it is time consuming to go through each one. Also, the denial reason section is limited. I wish I could click "other" and have a section to type my response. It is almost always the scenario where the pharmacy is trying to refill and old Rx and a new escript was sent in that they are over looking. I would like to be able to leave a msg for them with the denial. Another minor issue is that when we are gathering patients history we have the option in the chart sections "social history, & medical history" to add "custom items" this section you can add but not delete items.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Warum Kareo Clinical gewählt wurde

Zuvor genutzte Software

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Kareo Clinical

Vorteile

Scheduling, Billing and ease of use with the EMR system (except for one issue).

Nachteile

Med Portal. Kareo uses a 3rd party at that controls how providers are allowed to send medications. We are a Pain Management Practice and at times need to be able to send pain medications outside the parameters that the Kareo 3rd party sets (1 pain med per 24 hours) this caused us set backs during clinic and we had to change to a different EMR system. We did not want to change but were forced to due to the parameters set by this 3rd party controlling the Medication Portal.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

Gründe für den Wechsel zu Kareo Clinical

Vorteile

Karen is a very easy platform to maneuver. I like how you can find you client data with one or two clicks.

Nachteile

I would like to see patients that are made inactive be placed in an archive. By looking at names that are no longer a client make it takes longer for me to maneuver through the platform.

Also the charge for telemedicine sessions is ridiculous. I have to pay $7.00 per session. Telemedicine is about 80% of my business so I never can budget for Karen it is always a surprise at the end of the month.

Also if you put something on a Company Karen account you should have the capability of talking it off. Whenever I log on to my account I have to look at a Doctor who is no longer with my company but for some reason you all cannot take it off.

Your company will lock us out of the system without notification, yet our bill never adjust and we have to stop out business. I cannot perform any telemedicine sessions. If we can get a notice so we can inform our patients that would be great especially when we are talking about mental health patient with anger management and PTSD issues.

When you turn off notification for a client no one should make contact with them. The telemedicine side say they have to send out three notifications however they sometimes goes out in crazy hours. So when a company turns off notification we should know best.

Vorteile

Documenting the H&P and progress note is pretty straightforward and easy. The superbill completion is also easy and seems to function well.

Nachteile

Where to start... first, it seems that Kareo expects that you and your practice should conform to their clunky set up. after the initial sales call (their sales guy is great), you're expected to schedule weekly phone visits with Kareo's on boarding coordinator. She made a point to say how busy she is and need to schedule far in advance so that she can fit you into her schedule. Really? The coordinator can't actually do anything for you but tells you how to work through the system and what training to do next. I stopped doing these calls after it was clear anything I needed help with, she was not actually able to do anything, so I had to contact the ones who could actually help me. The training is like 100 hours. Any program that needs 100 hours/ 1000 sections of training, is not user friendly. There are many many other issues (ICD10 coding while trying to order labs which have to be completely reentered in addition to the chart, my systems biller getting locked out of the system repeatedly due to issues with the web platform interfacing with the desktop program, significant issues of setting up e-scribe -hours on the phone), but probably the worst is that the patient portal is essentially non existent. I won't go into the details but if you want a functional patient portal, chose a different EMR.