Clinic management software that keeps patients on their treatment plan

What I’d build first, and what waits

The first release covers a patient’s journey through the clinic: their record and notes, the diary they book into, the treatment plan they’re on and the invoice at the end of each visit. Those four are ticked for you. Reminders, intake forms, insurer claims and VAT by treatment can join them in the first month if your clinic relies on them now. Packages, a waiting list, the patient portal, stock, a second site and reporting make up phase two, priced separately.

Treatment plans, the part off-the-shelf leaves to you

A chiropractor recommends twelve visits over eight weeks with a re-examination at visit six. A physio books a block of six sessions and a review. In most clinic software those are just appointments; Cliniko’s own guide suggests setting up a series of recalls and ticking them off by hand. In the system I’d build, the plan is a record of its own. Every visit counts towards it, re-assessments land in the diary on the right date, and outcome scores sit beside the notes. Anyone who has slipped off their plan appears on a list for reception to call.

How it differs by clinic

• Physio, chiropractic and osteopathy. Plans and outcome scores, insurer authorisations with a session limit, exercise programmes sent from the record.
• Aesthetics. Consent and photos before every treatment, product batch numbers on the record, packages, and VAT that changes with the purpose of the treatment.
• Private GP and consultant practices. Referral letters, results and prescriptions filed to the patient, with insured and self-pay patients billed differently.

What AI can do here

• Write up the visit. The clinician dictates, a draft SOAP note appears, and nothing is saved until they’ve read and signed it.
• Spot who’s likely to drop off. Gaps between visits and cancelled re-assessments put a patient on reception’s call list before the plan stalls.
• Draft the letter. A discharge summary to the GP or a progress report for an insurer, drafted from the notes for the clinician to edit.

Notes are sent only to AI providers your clinic has a data processing agreement with. I quote each AI feature on its own, between £1.5k and £5k, after the core system has bedded in.

Moving your patients across

What I bring over. Patients and contacts, clinical notes with their dates and authors, letters and attachments, appointments booked for the weeks ahead, unpaid invoices, package balances and the plans patients are partway through. It’s all included in the import price.

How it runs. Everything goes into a test copy of the new system first. A clinician checks a handful of patients they know well, including one mid-plan and one with an insurer claim open, against the old one, and each mismatch is corrected before launch. Go-live goes on a quiet afternoon, and the old account stays open until your last export is safely stored.

When off-the-shelf is enough

A clinic with a few clinicians, self-paying patients and standard appointments will spend less on Cliniko, WriteUpp or TM3 than on any build, and be running within days. Stay with a subscription also if:

• you’re opening a new clinic and don’t yet know which services will sell;
• your plans are short and patients rebook themselves without prompting;
• the software you have does everything on the list above and staff like it.

A build pays off when plans are long and patients drift off them unnoticed, when insurer, package and cosmetic billing sit side by side, or when per-user fees climb with every clinician you hire.