Running a mental healthcare practice can get busy. And there’s plenty of room for error, miscommunications, and more between therapy sessions, paperwork, and treatment planning.
Practice management software (PMS) can keep things ticking over smoothly for therapists, e-counselors, and other mental health specialists. In this article, we’ll look at the different functions of Practice Management Software and review the best options for therapists.
What Is Practice Management Software?
Practice management software (PMS) describes digital solutions designed to help medical providers with everyday tasks.
PMS can be used by organizations such as hospitals, e-clinics, private practices, and other healthcare organizations. It is typically used to streamline routine administrative, care management, and client relationship management tasks.
When it comes to general and mental health sectors, practice management software often includes specially developed tools designed to help practitioners deliver blended or virtual care services.
In the next few sections, we’ll look at these telehealth functions, which might include videoconferencing technology, client portals, and more.
In general and mental health sectors, practice management software includes tools to help practitioners deliver blended or virtual care services.
Applications and Features of Practice Management Software
The various features of PMS systems fall into two broad categories, each covering a scope of applications.
- Practice Management: these functions perform primarily administrative operations, such as appointment scheduling, billing, and file-sharing.
- Therapy Notes: these features make documentation more efficient and secure, which is especially important in mental healthcare sectors.
- Telehealth or Telemental health: a range of features enabling providers to deliver their services online, including care pathway design tools, videoconferencing, and more.
Practice Management
Through different practice management tools and features, PMS software can be used by therapists, e-health specialists, and coaches to organize administrative processes and core functions.
These processes might include:
- Calendar Management: Such as appointment scheduling, session requests, and notifications
- Invoicing and billing: Invoicing clients, insurance providers, and other stakeholders
- EHR Management: Securely storing and centralizing patient medical records and progress notes
- Reporting: Generating financial and patient reports, such as income by provider or patient visit history, and
- Client Relationship Management: Communicating with clients, building customer relationships, increasing sales, and providing customer service.
Practice management software can help deliver e-mental health services online while supporting practitioners such as telepsychiatrists and online therapists with back-end tasks.
Telehealth and Telemental health
Practice management software can also deliver e-mental health services online while supporting practitioners such as telepsychiatrists and online therapists with back-end tasks.
These features might cover:
- Documentation and Note-taking: Including therapy notes tools for clinical Progress Note templates (e.g., SOAP or BIRP templates), ICD-10 or DSM5 codes, and HIPAA-compliant secure note storage
- Treatment Planning: Streamlining plan creation with frameworks and facilitating multi-provider communication with templates, e-signatures, and more
- Telehealth Sessions: With live two-way video calls, audio calls, or instant messaging, and
- Client Portals: Allowing patients to book sessions or complete documents online, such as Therapy Intake or Informed Consent forms.
A great example of PMS features for private practices is shown below in this overview from Power Diary, an online provider of clinical management solutions.[1]
Another example is Quenza, shown below. Quenza’s practice management features include a HIPAA-compliant therapy notes system, file-sharing, and Pathway tools for designing treatment plans.
It also includes a unique custom Activity Builder for creating bespoke therapy templates such as the Wheel of Life (pictured).
The platform’s group therapy tools make it easy to deliver virtual group therapy, and the free client app can be used to engage clients with notifications, updates, and chat messages. Click here to try Quenza for $1.
5 Best Practice Management Software For Therapists
Clearly, Practice Management Software varies in its capabilities and, thus, its value. Fortunately, many systems can be customized to suit the clinical and administrative needs of different providers.
For example, this way, a psychotherapist and telecounselor might both opt-in for HIPAA-compliant video calls. In contrast, a smaller practice might choose not to pay extra for a certain billing function.
Here, we’ve consolidated our insights on the most useful apps and tools available to therapists today.
Software | Details |
|---|---|
 | Smaller and medium-sized practices looking for admin and mental healthcare functionality will find MyClientsPlus affordable and easy to navigate.MCP offers almost all the essentials for telehealth and blended care services, including sector-specific note templates, online billing and payments, video-conferencing technology, and a private patient portal for appointment scheduling. One downside is that its Portal and Telehealth sessions must be accessed from a separate tab, which means juggling different screens. |
| Name | MyClientsPlus |
| Price | $29+ monthly |
| Good For | Psychologists, Mental Health Coaches, e-Counselors |
| More info | MyClientsPlus |
Software | Details |
|---|---|
 | ICANotes has great treatment planning features and Progress Notes functionality, making it ideal for prescribing clinicians and larger healthcare organizations such as hospitals and e-clinics. While it suffers from a dated and sometimes slow interface, ICANotes is a great HIPAA-compliant EHR containing discipline-specific codes, templates, and e-signatures. Telepsychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health specialists in smaller organizations may find the wealth of features unnecessary, and this system does not support live telehealth sessions. Nonetheless, it’s a powerful and affordably-priced solution for multi-provider telemedical practices. |
| Name | ICANotes |
| Price | $46.30+ monthly |
| Good For | Psychologists, Psychiatrists, Telemedical Providers |
| More info | ICANotes |
Software | Details |
|---|---|
 | TherapyNotes combines native telehealth videoconferencing and a client portal with essential practice management capacities for a monthly fee. It’s synchronizable with existing calendars, allowing appointment scheduling on the go, and has a very user-friendly interface. The system covers billing, reports, insurance claims, and custom forms on the PMS side of things. TherapyNotes is white-label, and correspondence such as bills can be branded with the user’s corporate imagery. |
| Name | TherapyNotes |
| Price | $49+ monthly |
| Good For | Psychologists, Mental Health Coaches, e-Counselors |
| More info | TherapyNotes |
Software | Details |
|---|---|
 | This system offers a vast wealth of note templates for Psychologists and Counselors and Speech, Occupational, and Physical Therapists. But it’s how ClinicSource integrates everything into a comprehensive patient record that is a real advantage. After creating progress notes with BIRP templates or similar, the software then syncs the clinical patient information with practice data on their visits, such as their payment or invoice history and visit summaries. It does not offer telehealth sessions or a Patient Portal, but ClinicSource is HIPAA-compliant. |
| Name | ClinicSource |
| Price | $72.95+ monthly |
| Good For | Psychologists, Mental Health Coaches, e-Counselors, Physical Therapy, Speech Therapy, Occupational Therapy |
| More info | ClinicSource |
Software | Details |
|---|---|
 | TheraNest is HIPAA-compliant and full of treatment planning and telehealth functions for blended care practitioners. These include video-conferencing tech, secure note storage, and tools such as templates, autofill ICD-10, DSM5 codes, and a private Client Portal. Available for both solo and multi-provider practices, both the browser and smartphone applications are easy to use. TheraNest also has many custom mental healthcare forms for uploading to a patient’s portal, such as the GAD-7 Scale, PHQ-9 Questionnaire, and Telehealth Treatment Consent. It syncs with the most commonly used online calendars and supports imports from CRM software. |
| Name | TheraNest |
| Price | $39+ monthly |
| Good For | Psychologists, Mental Health Coaches, e-Counselors, Physical Therapy, Speech Therapy, Occupational Therapy |
| More info | TheraNest |
Are There Free Options?
PMS systems typically offer HIPAA-compliant data storage, essential functionality, and systems maintenance in helping professions, all as standard. To host these services, coupled with customer support and feature updates, they tend to charge fees.
However, some free apps are designed to take over isolated elements of your mental health practice by making therapeutic exercises available online for clients or collecting patient data for treatment plans.
Here are some free apps that can perform some mental health tasks for your therapy.
App | Details |
|---|---|
 | Free app MoodTools is designed by students and clinically assessed as a therapy app to help treat depression and negative moods. From their smartphones, users can journal their activities and thoughts and take psychological assessments such as the PHQ-9 depression questionnaire. They’re also directed to psychoeducational self-help resources such as YouTube videos and more, making MoodTools a great help in mental health treatment planning. |
| Name | MoodTools |
| Price | Free |
| Good For | Mental Health Coaching, Applied Behavior Analysis, Therapy, Mental Health Coaching |
| More info | MoodTools |
App | Details |
|---|---|
 | CBT app Sanvello is covered by a range of different insurance providers and used as a between-session resource in a lot of blended care treatments. Users can use the app to access psychological assessments and tools on the go, including clinical scales, exercises, lessons, and an ESM-based mood tracker. Additionally, Sanvello offers mindfulness and other low-intensity treatment techniques at the initial tiers of Stepped Care Models. |
| Name | Sanvello |
| Price | Free |
| Good For | Therapy, Mental Health Coaching, Experience Sampling, Data Collection |
| More info | Sanvello |
| App | Details |
|---|---|
 | Resilience researcher Jane McGonigal developed SuperBetter to help patients tackle common symptoms of mood and other mental health challenges. Gamified for maximum engagement, SuperBetter is full of coping skills exercises, tasks, and daily challenges that clients can work through independently. The whole program is based on McGonigal’s clinical research into a resilience-building framework and uses scientifically-developed content. |
| Name | SuperBetter |
| Price | Free |
| Good For | Stress, Anxiety, Depression, Pain Management |
| More info | SuperBetter |
A Look At 3 Useful Apps and Tools
For many providers, a full software suite can offer too many bells and whistles to be cost-effective. As an e-counselor, psychologist, or mental health coach, it’s often where standalone therapy tools and apps come in useful.
They might perform one or two more basic functions but go a long way for solo practitioners or smaller businesses.
With this in mind, these apps and tools don’t quite qualify as management systems, but they may still play a valuable role in your mental health practice.
App | Details |
|---|---|
 | For simple appointment scheduling and other basic management tasks, Coach Accountable is a great option. Designed for life, business, mental health, and wellness coaches, this app can be used to track patient progress, assign tasks, and capture important data. Because this solution is designed to promote goal achievement, it’s also useful for therapists and other mental health specialties. Clients can use CoachAccountable’s journaling tool to record their moods and request appointments with their specialists or coach on the user end. |
| Name | CoachAccountable |
| Price | $20+ monthly |
| Good For | Practice Management, Coaching Management, Wellness Coaching, Business Coaching, Mental Health Coaching, Therapy |
| More info | CoachAccountable |
App | Details |
|---|---|
 | Power Diary can be used for basic Electronic Medical Records (EHR) management, billing, reporting, and calendar management. It offers telehealth capabilities for live sessions and a client portal on the mental health side of things. This app has the advantage of being white-label, allowing smaller practices to bill and communicate with clients under their own brand. It’s affordably priced, light-weight, and easy to learn. |
| Name | Power Diary |
| Price | $5+ weekly |
| Good For | Telehealth, Invoices, Billing, Coaching Management, Practice Management, Therapy |
| More info | Power Diary |
App | Details |
|---|---|
 | Yellow Schedule has one key function: to schedule appointments. It’s HIPAA-compliant, making it suitable for therapists, prescribing clinicians, and mental health professionals in all kinds of disciplines. Additionally, this app can create and send branded emails and correspondence, so it may also have some CRM and client engagement value. It’s easy to sync with existing calendars such as Google Calendar, Outlook, and more. |
| Name | Yellow Schedule |
| Price | $29.95 monthly |
| Good For | Therapy, Coaching, Practice Management, Psychiatry, |
| More info | Yellow Schedule |
Final Thoughts
As a mental health professional, patient care comes first. But that doesn’t mean you can’t grow your business or develop your skills by freeing up admin time daily.
That’s all possible with the right software today, and sometimes, finding the perfect system is as simple as trying it on for size. Start your $1, 30-day trial of Quenza and see how it works for you!
