WebPT Software

WebPT® is a modern EMR system designed by therapists, for therapists. Using the SaaS (Software as a Service) model, it provides your clinics with an always-available, always-up-to-date Electronic Medical Records system. This system offers numerous advantages over older systems. It isn’t some rehashed tool from the days before high-security cloud storage or even widely-available Internet access.

The core competencies of this company are Documentation, Scheduling, and Compliance. WebPT. To provide you with a complete solution, they’ve partnered with some of the top RCM (Revenue Cycle Management) services in the industry. To round out their offering, they have added Practice Management and Outcomes measurement modules, resulting in a complete business system for Physical Therapists (PTs), Occupational Therapists (OTs), and Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs).

WebPT is designed to work on any Internet-connected device, and is accessible 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, so your team is never without the access it needs to get their jobs done. And because it is an SaaS product, all the hosting, maintenance, and upgrading are handled for you. That means no servers to maintain and IT staff to manage. If your people have Internet access, they can connect to WebPT.

Wondering about compliance? WebPT is fully HIPAA compliant, and is a CMS-certified PQRS registry. With their integrated compliance reporting and alerts, you’ll be able to stay compliant with the minimum possible amount of effort.

If this sounds like a service that could be of use to you, please continue reading for a more detailed look at what WebPT can do.

Documentation

Creating documentation that is correct, complete, and compliant is vital for outpatient PTs, OTs, and SLPs. If your documentation isn’t right you may not get paid for the work you do. Even worse, your patients may not get the treatments they need.

WebPT is built specifically to meet the EMR needs of outpatient PTs, OTs, and SLPs. Their therapy-specific documentation tool makes sure every reporting regulation is addressed. Even better, they’ve mapped out the best therapist reporting process. This ensures compliance with all rules and regulations and leads to maximal reimbursements for your business. This clearly isn’t some general purpose documentation package for healthcare professionals.

While WebPT is designed to do everything you would want it to, you can also create your own custom evaluation profiles. These include a selection of built-in, auto-scored outcome measurement tools you can choose from. And because your WebPT software is always current, you have access to the latest in evidence-based tests too.

Types of practice-specific documentation you can create include:

• Initial Examinations
• Progress Notes
• Daily Notes
• Flowsheets
• Discharge Summaries

Once you log in to the WebPT Dashboard you have instant access to your list of documentation to-dos. The service monitors and shows the status of all your documentation and patient, physician, or insurance records so you always know what you need to work on.

WebPT also monitors your Medicare compliance status and helps you get it right thanks to its integrated solutions for PQRS, Functional Limitation Reporting, the Therapy Cap, and the 8-Minute Rule.

Because this is a mobile-ready, HIPAA-compliant solution, you know all your information is secure. You can log in from anywhere, at any time of day or night, using any web-enabled device with complete confidence.

Don’t worry if your business is not yet 100% digital. With the eDoc feature, you can upload digital files from scanned patient records or diagnostic images. You can even fax or email unlimited numbers of patient and physician notes from within WebPT.

Scheduling

One of the keys to running a successful business is managing your schedule efficiently. WebPT Scheduling is integrated with the digital patient records you and your team create. This saves your team time and eliminates a source of potential errors. Along with Documentation and Compliance, Scheduling is one of the core competencies of the WebPT team.

With WebPT’s solution you can:

• View and edit patient, therapist, or treatment room schedules for one or more clinics with the click of a mouse
• Quickly schedule recurring appointments and meetings
• Drag and drop appointments to reschedule them
• Color-code calendars for multiple therapists

Beyond these points, WebPT says that you can use Scheduling’s automatic appointment reminders to reduce no-shows by up to 30%. The system can send phone and text messages as reminders. You can also have it send unlimited custom email reminders and track the results that they generate.

Information on no-shows, cancellations, and lost patients from this module feeds into the reportingPhysical Therapists (PTs), Occupational Therapists (OTs), and Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) system, allowing you to analyze your processes and fix problems.

Practice Management

WebPT aims to be your all-in-one rehab therapy business solution by combining their documentation platform, scheduling, and a suite of comprehensive practice management services. This includes real-time business intelligence and compliance reporting. In addition, they give you tools to track and audit staff productivity within the WebPT services.

Let’s look at each of theses areas in a bit more detail, starting with business reporting.

Business Reporting

WebPT’s collection of business reports can help you keep your clinics running productively and efficiently. Because Reporting is integrated into the rest of WebPT, you have access to all the key information you need in one place.

Some of the reports you can generate are the Referral Report, the Certification Status Report, and the Medicare Cap Report. And of course you can track cancellations and no-shows, along with claims status and units billed. You’ll even be able to analyze how regulations such as Medicare’s multiple procedure payment reduction (MPPR) affect the bottom line of your business.

With the Referral Report, you can keep track of all your clinic’s referral sources and see which ones are generating the most business for you. This information can help you determine how successful your marketing efforts are. It can also tell you which accounts may need a bit of extra attention.

The Certification Status Report helps you ensure that each patient’s plan of care is up to date. It identifies patients who need a recertification note. You’ll know which patients have Medicare certifications, how much time is left on every active certification, and how many days it has been since any certifications have expired. Note that the Certification Status Report is just one report under the comprehensive Plan of Care Report category.

Staff Reporting

Managing the productivity of your staff is easier with WebPT. You or your clinic administrators can manage user permissions, monitor the productivity of your people, and track and audit their activities within the WebPT service. Two key reports you can generate here are the Productivity Report and the Missed Notes Report.

Compliance Reporting

Keeping on top of the complexities of Medicare is a definite challenge. WebPT provides a set of compliance solutions and reports to ensure that your organization stays compliant. Among the reports you will find here are PQRS compliance and Functional Limitation Reporting.

Billing

You are in the business of treating patients (and making money). You are not in the business of doing manual labor to get the bills sent out. WebPT has billing solutions that free you from this kind of tedious and error-prone paperwork. Depending on your business needs, they offer billing software or connectivity to some of the top RCM services.

Both solutions automatically import billing information from your documentation. You’ll never again have to waste time reentering codes and other information that are already available in your documentation. Nor will you have to worry about errors caused by double data entry.

Want some help dealing with the hassles of submitting bills and fighting it out with payers? WebPT can provide you with access to a dedicated physical therapy billing professional. This expert will help your business by promptly (and correctly) submitting claims for you.
In addition, they will investigate, correct, and appeal any claims denied by insurance companies. And to make sure your business is always on top of its billings, WebPT experts can teach your staff the best practices in physical therapy billing, as well as conducting free quarterly reviews.

WebPT keeps the cost of handling your billings low. According to the company, most physical therapy billing providers charge from 6% to 12% of your monthly revenue collection for their services. WebPT charges only 6.5% of your monthly revenue collection, plus a one-time setup fee based on the size of your business.

What if your business already uses third-party billing software? There’s nothing to worry about. WebPT integrates with several of the leading billing programs. These include:

• Kareo
• AdvancedMD
• TheraBill
• CollaborateMD

Note: If your preferred billing solution isn’t included in this list, WebPT may still be the answer. As part of their Enterprise Package, they may be able to create a custom integration for you.

Outcomes

As a therapist, you strive to provide your patients with the best outcomes possible. And of course your compensation from payers depends in part upon those outcomes. So how can you gather the objective outcomes data you need to prove the results you deliver?

Outcomes is the answer for WebPT customers. It is an outcomes tracking solution integrated into WebPT. The company claims it is the only fully-integrated outcomes tracking software for physical and occupational therapists.

This solution contains a library of standardized, industry-accepted tests. You can use them to set concrete performance goals for your therapists and track therapist progress toward them. This is a win all around. You get the best performance from your therapists, your therapists become more an more proficient at their jobs, and patients get a faster road to recovery.

Specific outcomes tests that are part of WebPT Outcomes include:

• Quick DASH
• LEFS (Lower Extremity Functional Scale)
• Oswestry
• Neck Disability Index
• Dizziness Handicap Inventory

Outcomes allows your therapists to collect the objective data you need in order to prove the value of your service to payers. Your negotiating position with payers is much stronger when you have hard results to bring to the negotiating table. This objective information also enables you to enhance your patient care by tracking the outcomes you deliver in various circumstances.

With WebPT Outcomes, you will be able to:

• Collect and track patient information on a per-therapist, per-clinic, and per-company level
• Manage therapist performance using easy to read reports
• Identify patient care trends to improve the effectiveness of your therapists and the efficiency of your clinics
• Monitor clinic and company performance metrics
• Compare clinic and company performance metrics to national averages
• Generate outcomes data that highlights your clinic’s value for potential mergers or acquisition

Compliance

Staying in compliance with Medicare and other regulations has to be a top priority for your business. Noncompliance can lead to serious penalties assessed against you. In some cases you can be denied reimbursement completely. WebPT does everything possible to make compliance as simple as possible.

WebPT takes a two-pronged approach to helping you stay compliant:

1. They help ensure that your documentation and billing are compliant
2. They provide a mass of educational materials that help you understand and stay abreast of changing compliance requirements

To help ensure that your documentation and billing are compliant, WebPT has numerous built-in features. Here are just a few examples:

• An intelligent ICD-10 code selection tool helps you navigate the transition to this new coding system with a minimum of stress
• Therapy Cap tracking and alerts keep you out of trouble while the KX modifier application simplifies assigning these codes
• Integrated FLR reporting and alerts make sure you remain compliant with the Functional Limitation Reporting requirements
• Automated calculations for the 8-Minute Rule let you bill appropriately without having to do a lot of complex math

All these features are great, but it still helps if you have your own understanding of the rules and regulations, particularly of upcoming changes. Here’s where the educational materials provided by WebPT come in handy.

Medicare is the perfect example. The rules and regulations are constantly changing. WebPT continually updates their software to comply with the changes, but someone in your business needs to understand what’s going on and why things are changing in the software, at least at some level.

WebPT provides educational articles and interactive learning tools that addresses changes that are coming your way. They understand the changes in detail, and they provide you with material that breaks it all down so you and your staff can understand it. Likewise, they help you better understand other complex topics like PQRS, CPR codes, and so on. Let WebPT be the experts on arcane Medicare rules, while you and your staff concentrate on running your business and serving your patients.

The Enterprise Package

Now that you’ve seen everything that the basic WebPT services can do for you, you might be wondering what’s left to be done by the Enterprise Package. The Enterprise Package does offer a number of benefits. We’ll look at them each in turn, starting with your dedicated support team.

A Dedicated Support Team

Many EMRs leave you feeling like no one cares. WebPT thinks your business deserves better. To ensure that you get the support you deserve, the Enterprise Package includes a dedicated support team. This team will work with your people to answer their questions and ensure that your WebPT implementation works for you. They are like partners instead of some third-world call center.

During normal business hours this team is available to answer any questions you might have with a quick telephone call. In addition, your people have round-the-clock access to a variety of tools and resources, including:

• On-demand online training courses
• Dozens of recorded webinars
• Hundreds of articles
• User guides

Billing the Way You Want it

As you’ve already seen, WebPT is flexible when it comes to billing. You can use their software, or take advantage of their integration with some of the top third-party billing programs. But what if you want to use a billing package that WebPT isn’t integrated with?

As an Enterprise Package customer with a unique billing need, WebPT will attempt to create a custom integration between their product and your desired billing software. While it isn’t possible to guarantee that they will be able to integrate any billing software in existence with their product, they do make you this promise: “Basically, you name your billing requirements, and we’ll find a solution that exceeds them.”

You can’t ask for anything more than that from a company!

Maximum Compliance

WebPT offers a variety of compliance features to help your business stay in compliance with all the rules and regulations that govern the therapy industry. As an Enterprise Package customer you automatically receive all their compliance features.

An Integrated Front Office

WebPT ties your front office activities right into the Enterprise Package. With this combo, you can not only monitor your clinic schedules and view patient information, but manage staff calendars as well. Other advantages to this aspect of your Enterprise Package license include:

• Automated appointment reminders
• Unlimited faxing and emailing
• Secure uploading and storage of documents
• The ability to embed a customer intake form on your website that feeds right into WebPT

Comprehensive Transition Support

Deciding on a new EMR system is always hard. But once you decide on one, you have to make the switch. And that can be a real headache. WebPT understands how stressful this process can be, and how to make it as smooth as possible. As an Enterprise Package customer, you gain several significant benefits when it comes to making this transition.

WebPT will send people to every one of your locations during the transition. While there, they will hold in-person training and Q&A sessions with your staff. They will also provide you with an intuitive online training tool. This tool provides refresher information on the features and functions of WebPT that your staff learned about in training.

And of course you will have access to your dedicated support team to address anything else you might need during the transition period.

Other Useful Resources

As you can imagine with a product as comprehensive as WebPT, covering an industry as complex as therapy, there is always more to learn. The WebPT team has published a lot of information to help you. This information covers their product offerings of course. But it also provides a large amount of information about the industry in general. This makes sense, since to get the best out of WebPT, you need to understand what’s going on in the overall industry.

There are two particularly useful types of resources on the WebPT website that I urge you to investigate. These are the Guides and the Resources.

Guides

These are extensive, detailed guides that should be a good reference for anyone who needs to get up to speed on the important topics they cover. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of home page or central location for finding the individual guides.

To reach them, you will want to look at the very bottom of any web page in the WebPT site. There you will see the heading “Guides,” followed by clickable links on various topics. Each link takes you to the specific guide for that topics.

At the time of this review, there were eleven of these guides. The topics they cover are:

• HIPAA
• Medicare
• PQRS
• G-Codes
• Physical Therapy Marketing
• ICD-10
• CPR Codes
• 8-Minute Rule
• Functional Limitation Reporting
• How to Start a PT Clinic
• Physical Therapy Apps

When you look at one of these guides you’ll find that they would run to many printed pages, and contain a large amount of detailed information. In addition, they link out to relevant blog posts and other information, including the websites of other businesses when appropriate.

Resources

Like the Guides we just discussed, there does not seem to be any central location or home page for the large collection of resources WebPT provides. Again, you must scroll to the bottom of any page on the website and look for the heading, “Resources.” Under this heading you will find the following clickable links:

• Blog
• Articles
• Webinars
• Events
• Downloads
• GetPT

These are pretty self-explanatory, except for the GetPT link. That one takes you to an industry website that provides general Physical Therapy information. It can also provide a referral to a physical therapist in your area.

What About Data Security?

When you are planning to store patient information online, security is a natural concern. There are federal regulations governing the security of Protected Health Information (PHI) whether stored in physical form on on a computer somewhere. And you most definitely do not want to violate those regulations.

Your best bet could be to offload the responsibility to WebPT. When you use their product, they are the ones responsible for safeguarding this information. To ensure that your PHI is safe, WebPT stores it in a secure data center that features:

• SSAE 16 Type II certification
• Tier III Certification of Design Documents
• Highly Controlled Access
• 24-Hour Surveillance
• Full HIPAA compliance

In short, your patient information is a lot safer with WebPT than it is likely to be if stored onsite in your clinic.

Pricing

At first glance it appears that there are two tiers of pricing for WebPT: Standard and Enterprise. But the company has now added a third tier of pricing for educational institutions. As of the time of this review (March 2016) here is the pricing structure:

WebPT Standard

The Standard WebPT subscription starts at $49 per month. You can add in various modules that are relevant to your business for an additional fee.

WebPT EDU

The Educational version of WebPT costs $99 per year for your entire therapy program. This includes an unlimited number of students and instructors. At the time of this review, the company reports that more than 130 educational institutions across the USA are using WebPT EDU.

If you represent an educational institution, you can get more information on this specific version on the WebPT EDU page.

WebPT Enterprise

The WebPT Enterprise solution is custom priced to meet the needs of your organization. You will need to work with one of their sales people to get a price quote for this one.

Conclusion

As you have seen in this review, WebPT is a comprehensive solution created by Physical Therapists specifically for other Physical Therapists (PTs), Occupational Therapists (OTs), and Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs). From electronic Documentation, to online, integrated Scheduling, Compliance tracking, Practice Management assistance, Outcomes testing, and flexible Billing, WebPT has the potential to transform you business.

Thanks to the Internet-based SaaS design used in WebPT, this solution can free you from a lot of technology expenses and headaches that you might otherwise have. And thanks to its practice-specific design, WebPT can make life easier for you and your therapists, while increasing everyone’s productivity and boosting your business results.

All this is true, but there are a lot of products out there. Since you’ve read this far, I am going to assume that you think WebPT might be the solution you are looking for. Even so, you can only learn so much from reading about a product.

The only way you can truly determine if WebPT is right for your business is to see it in action. Ideally, you will want to test this solution in your own business, with your own people. While this is the ultimate goal, there are a couple of things you can do before committing to that level of effort.

You can check out the various resources available on the WebPT site, particularly the Guides and Resources we discussed earlier. If everything still looks good after this, it is time to get a demonstration of WebPT in action. There is no better way to get a feel for the product before actually running it in your own clinic.

Get started now with a free WebPT Demo.

Read more about WebPT on DiscoverCloud or our knowledge base.