CareCloud Review

• CareCloud offers comprehensive features in an easy-to-use, intuitive healthcare IT platform.
• It is competitively priced at $628 per provider, per month for a fully integrated system.
• CareCloud recently eliminated prohibitively expensive implementation fees, reducing the upfront cost.
• This review is for healthcare organizations considering implementing CareCloud's medical software.

After conducting research and analysis of EMR/PMS systems, we recommend CareCloud as the best EMR/PMS system for small practices. We chose CareCloud because of its intuitive architecture and user-friendly interface. CareCloud succeeds in creating an easy-to-follow suite of software that makes a typical patient visit a step-by-step process for all members of a medical practice. Not only is the user interface uncluttered and easy to navigate, but CareCloud's tools are organized in a way that they are easy to locate and follow the logical progression of a routine visit. Further, the CareCloud team can adjust most features during the implementation period to suit each practice's unique approach to delivering high-quality healthcare to patients.

Editor's note: Are you looking for medical practice management software that can help your office run more efficiently? Fill out the form below for more information from our vendor partners.

Pricing

CareCloud charges per provider, per month, which is common in the industry. Its practice management software is available as a stand-alone system, or it can be integrated with its EMR system. For the stand-alone practice management software, CareCloud starts at $349 per month, per provider. For the integrated practice management and EMR software, pricing starts at $628 per month, per provider.

In addition to the integrated practice management and EMR system, CareCloud offers a patient engagement application called Breeze. Breeze enables useful aspects of the practice management software, such as the patient portal, automated appointment reminders, digital check-in and payment processing at the point of sale. Pricing for Breeze starts at $199 per provider, per month. The total cost of the practice management software, EMR system and Breeze application is $827 per provider, per month, which is relatively competitive among the vendors we reviewed.

Alternatively, medical practices that sign up for CareCloud's revenue cycle management package receive access to the company's entire healthcare IT suite in exchange for a percentage of their monthly collections. The medical billing services, included in the Concierge package, starts at 3% of medical practice collections, which is a low rate compared to other services we reviewed. However, pricing for revenue cycle management depends on your claims volume, claims value and the complexity of your billing requirements.

Key takeaway: CareCloud costs $628 per provider, per month for a unified EMR/PMS system. The addition of Breeze, its patient engagement platform, costs an additional $199 per provider, per month, bringing the total to $827 per provider, per month.

Ease of Use

CareCloud is one of the easiest practice management platforms to learn and use that we encountered in our research. It features an organized and uncluttered interface, which makes it easy to find the tools you need. The major modules, organized in a series of icons along the top of the page, follow the steps of a typical patient's appointment, from registration to the submission of claims related to the clinical encounter. Its seamless connection to the CareCloud EMR system automatically populates relevant data, eliminating the need for double entry and reducing the likelihood of human error.

Key icons appear from left to right on the screen, including the scheduling tool, patient information, clinical module, billing module and document storage. The practice management software is responsible for patient information and registration, scheduling, medical billing, and secure communications through the built-in messenger tool. The software integrates with the EMR system to facilitate the flow of data between the front office, providers and back office almost instantaneously. This means that as soon as a patient is checked in and their insurance verified, a provider can enter information on the clinical encounter. After the encounter, the medical coders and billers have access to all the information necessary to create and submit claims.

CareCloud is cloud-based software hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), so it doesn't require medical practices to host their own servers. This makes it easy for small practices to maintain the software. CareCloud updates automatically during off-peak hours to minimize disruption of service.

CareCloud's ease of use, seamless integration and low maintenance are major reasons it's our best pick for small practices.

Key takeaway: CareCloud is one of the most intuitive software we reviewed, offering a natural flow through a patient's visit in a neatly organized and flexible user interface.

EMR Features

All of CareCloud's features are nested into individual applications, which include the scheduling tool, patient charting/exam notes, advanced insurance eligibility check and documents. However, additional applications include the billing module and reporting analytics. Here's are some of the key features of CareCloud's EMR module.

Charting

The charting application displays a queue of patients with upcoming appointments, patients that have been checked-in and placed in an exam room, and those who have completed patient visits. Similar to the scheduling tool, the charting tool can be customized to display patients by provider, location or both. To move patients from one queue to another is as easy as dragging and dropping a tile from one column to another.

To view a patient's chart in detail, double-click on their tile. There is also a recently viewed Patients tab that allows you to pull up charts that you've recently accessed. Multiple charts can be opened at the same time; each patient chart you open creates a new tab on top of the screen. Charts open to display a summary of patient information, vitals, previous lab results and any attached documents. Abnormalities are highlighted in red.

In Exam Notes, you can leverage preset templates or custom templates to quickly add information to a patient's chart. If you're using CareCloud's Breeze application, existing patient information, such as medical history, automatically populate in the chart as well. All fields can be filled out using free typing, quick-text hotkeys or dictation using software integrations like Dragon or MModal.

One useful tool in CareCloud's charting application is the wand feature, which marks everything about a patient as normal. You can then individually select abnormalities from the list to highlight those aspects of the patient's condition in red. This makes it easy to identify problem areas if there is a specific set of symptoms a patient is complaining about.

Patient Encounter

CareCloud includes a full diagnosis and prescription library, which makes it easy to look up ICD-10 codes or medications you might want to prescribe. To further expedite ordering labs and prescribing medications, the system remembers your approach to commonly encountered patient issues. For example, if a patient has bronchitis, CareCloud can automatically enact your preferred treatment plan for bronchitis, including ordering the appropriate labs and prescribing favorited medication. It also checks prescription medications against current medications and allergies to screen for harmful interactions.

Key takeaway: CareCloud includes all the major charting tools we looked for in EMR/PMS solutions, as well as a full library of diagnosis codes and prescription medications.

Medical Practice Management Features

CareCloud offers all the core features we looked for in practice management software and then some. The tools are easy to access and use regardless of your role within the medical practice. You can also customize many features to suit your daily workflow. Here are the key features of CareCloud.

Dashboard

CareCloud's dashboard includes a customizable overview of metrics, such as the length of time claims have spent in accounts receivable, upcoming appointments and outstanding patient balances. Each widget on the dashboard has a dropdown menu that can filter data along with specific criteria, such as by provider, location or range of time. Each widget includes a color-coded bar graph for a quick visualization of your practice's performance.

It's easy to customize the dashboard by adding or removing widgets. In this way, each user can personalize the dashboard to display only the information relevant to their role within the medical practice. You can do this by clicking on the "gadget store" or "edit layout" buttons. You can reorganize existing widgets by dragging and dropping them into place.

Appointment Scheduling

CareCloud's scheduling tool offers a sleek color-coded calendar. You can view the calendar by day, week, or month, and sort it by appointment type and status. The columns on the calendar are customizable to show appointments by location, provider or another element that can be configured during implementation. You can view these columns by selecting from a series of check boxes, or you can cycle through the day, week, or month with the mini calendar.

Viewing the calendar by appointment status separates scheduled appointments into five categories. Upcoming appointments appear as light blue, while checked-in appointments are light green. Checked-out patients with appointments pending billing are dark blue, while billed appointments are dark green. Canceled appointments appear in red on the calendar.

For a more detailed view of the calendar, you can switch to list view. This displays information such as the patient's name, date and time of appointment, location of the appointment, and the provider seeing the patient. It also displays the appointment type, the status of the appointment and the patient's insurance eligibility if a verification check has been run. Insurance verification checks can be run on individuals or as a batch that covers all scheduled appointments for a given period. A green check mark indicates eligible insurance coverage, while a red X indicates ineligibility. If there are outstanding issues with a patient's insurance, a yellow exclamation mark appears.

Billing

CareCloud's billing tool communicates with its EMR system to import clinical data necessary to post charges and create claims. Once a clinical note is signed, the billing team can check the pregenerated codes and add their own from the built-in ICD-10 and CPT coding libraries. E&M codes should pregenerated, but billers can double-check and revise them in the billing module.

The billing tool also displays unbilled encounters, saved encounters and posted bills ready for submission to payers. The tab for unfulfilled encounters displays the list of patients who have been checked out and whose encounters are ready for billing. This list includes the patient's name, date of service, appointment type, insurance information, provider, location and the outstanding value of the encounter. This view makes it easy to prioritize unfulfilled encounters and quickly post the most valuable claims.

Once charges are posted and claims submitted, the unfulfilled encounters move into the saved encounters tab, where the billing team can review their status in real time. This tab includes information about the provider who saw the patient, the ICD-10 and CPT codes applied to the encounter, the E&M code, and the value of claims related to the encounter. Claims are scrubbed by CareCloud's CollectiveIQ rules engine, which flags any errors that could lead to denial or rejection from the payers. Flagged errors transfer the problematic claims to the errors tab, where they can be reworked before submission.

Denied claims are monitored through the billing module as well. These come with reports that identify the most common reasons for denial. If you purchase the Concierge package with CareCloud's medical billing services, CareCloud billers work through the billing process in this same practice management software. You can monitor their progress in real time directly through the billing module.

Patient Portal

The patient portal is part of CareCloud's Breeze application. Breeze offers patients the ability to fill out intake forms before submission and update key information, such as medications, allergies, family history and insurance details. You can also set up kiosks in the office that run the Breeze application, allowing patients to update their information while they wait for their appointment. The patient portal is secure and compliant with HIPAA standards. It can also capture outstanding balances or patient copayments.

Reporting

CareCloud provides detailed reports on virtually every aspect of practice performance and clinical data. Individual report dashboards cover key aspects of your practice, such as accounts receivable, in more detail than the homepage dashboard widgets. All reports can be filtered by payer, provider, or staff responsible for handling the relevant tasks, and you can view them in a daily, weekly, or monthly format. They can all be exported as PDF, XLS or CSV files. Any report can be customized accordingly and set to recur automatically.

In addition to these standard reports, CareCloud offers a MIPS/MACRA dashboard that tracks your progress toward government standards for Meaningful Use. MIPS/MACRA tracking can help you avoid any reductions in Medicare and Medicaid payments, as well as capture incentive payments offered by the government for improving healthcare IT usage within your medical practice.

Key takeaway: CareCloud's medical practice management software offers all the tools needed to streamline the administrative tasks of a healthcare organization's front and back office.

Implementation and Training

CareCloud has a tiered implementation system. It includes three options for implementation and training:

• Essentials: The Essentials tier is the cheapest plan, running around $1,000. It includes a standard, off-the-shelf configuration of the software, with no customization of templates or other features. The Essentials tier also includes a discovery call, EDI enrollment and building of interfaces between labs and pharmacies, enough to get a practice up and running. There is no direct  training included in this tier. Instead, practices can use CareCloud University to access self-guided training materials for staff to review. The Essentials tier also allows for a check-in with an account manager five days after the go-live date to ensure the system is running smoothly. Data import from previous systems is the responsibility of the medical practice at this tier.
• Enhanced: The Enhanced implementation tier, which costs a percentage of collections based on the volume and value of claims, offers greater customization in configuration, as well as additional guidance and training from CareCloud. It also avails practices to a managed data import from previous systems, helping to bring existing patient demographics, insurance information and charts over from legacy systems.
• Enterprise: The Enterprise implementation package requires a custom quote and includes a comprehensive consultative approach to implementation and training, as well as complete customized configuration based on your practice's needs.

CareCloud also offers a list of implementation and training options to practices that choose the Essentials tier but want to incorporate additional implementation and training elements. CareCloud's medical billing service clients receive a full implementation and training package included in the monthly percentage of collections agreed upon with CareCloud.

Key takeaway: CareCloud recently reduced implementation costs and created three tiers of various services, the most inexpensive of which starts at $1,000.

Editor's note: Are you looking for medical practice management software that can help your office run more efficiently? Fill out the form below for more information from our vendor partners.

Limitations

CareCloud eliminated its biggest limitation – excessive startup costs – by establishing a tiered pricing plan for implementation packages. This plan avails smaller practices to an off-the-shelf implementation that costs significantly less than the most expensive implementation package, which runs about $5,000 in startup costs alone.

However, CareCloud recommends clients sign three-year contracts, which could be too long term for some small or new medical practices. However, the company states its reason for promoting a longer-term contract is that it takes a consultative approach designed to help medical practices grow over time.

CareCloud is willing to accept one-year contract commitments in certain cases, so discuss your options with a sales representative if you want a shorter contract term.