Reliable practice management is invaluable for the blended care practitioner. If you’re streamlining your practice or growing your client base, the right features and interface go a long way toward helping you achieve your goals.
But with so many similar-sounding digital solutions available, making the right choice can seem overwhelming.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at TheraNest – one of the best-known practice management programs for today’s virtual care practitioner. Read on to discover the pros and cons of the TheraNest digital clinical solution, and how it stacks up against key competitors, so you can decide whether it’s right for you and your practice.
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Features of TheraNest
Designed specifically for psychologists, counselors, therapists, and social care workers, the TheraNest platform offers features that meet a wide range of mental health professional needs.
As well as the standard practice management essentials – e.g. billing, appointment scheduling, and document management – this means helping professionals can expect more specialist functionality from TheraNest. Examples include HIPAA-compliant communications for online therapy and easy-add insurance detail functionality.
The table below gives a more detailed overview of the general practice management and mental health features of TheraNest, including some examples of the 30+ reports available.
| Feature | Yes/No | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Practice Management | ||
| Appointment Scheduling | ✓ | |
| Billing & Invoicing | ✓ | Features include batch invoicing, payments, and statements |
| Insurance Claims Management | ✓ | |
| Note-taking and Document Management | ✓ | Patient and practitioner e-signatures available online and through the app |
| Multiple Providers | ✓ | |
| Practice Management Reports | ✓ | Regular and on-demand reports of key statistics, including:
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| Inventory Management | ╳ | |
| Mental Healthcare | ||
| Client Portal | ✓ | Supports client payments, scheduling, rescheduling, cancellations, adding insurance details |
| E-Prescriptions | ✓ | |
| EMR/EHR | ✓ | |
| Custom Forms | ✓ | Digital custom forms can be filled out and securely stored by the patient e.g.:
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17 Advantages and Disadvantages
These translate into a host of different Theranest pros and cons for different practitioners.
| Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|
| Practice Management | |
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| Mental Healthcare | |
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| User Experience | |
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Target Audience and Pricing
Psychologists, psychiatrists, caseworkers, and social support professionals comprise TheraNest’s target market. With its ease of use and highly intuitive layout, especially, the platform offers a straightforward experience for practitioners looking to foray into blended care for the very first time.
TheraNest is very scalable, making it suitable for freelancers, small enterprises such as private practices, and larger, multi-site healthcare organizations with a large number of both clients and employees.
TheraNest Pricing
TheraNest has a tiered pricing structure, catering both to solo practitioners and larger practices:
- $38 monthly for up to 30 active clients
- $58 monthly for up to 50 active clients, and
- $108 per month for up to 100 active clients.
TheraNest vs Its Competitors (Chart)
In relation to some well-known competitors, TheraNest offers a decent choice of methods for user interaction.
For a slightly higher monthly starting price than the TherapyNotes software, e-counselors and telepsychiatrists can enjoy Android and iPhone accessibility, along with the ability to sync calendars across devices.
Unlike Simple Practice, however, it lacks Stripe integration.
TheraNest | SimplePractice | Quenza | |
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Case Study Example
To test TheraNest, we first scheduled a regular workday. Next, we created several invoices before looking into the note-taking and document management functions.
Finally, we took a look at TheraNest’s forms and reporting functions
Practice Management
Adding new patients was simple with TheraNest’s client management features, which were presented as an intuitive menu on the left-hand side covering all the basic requirements:
- Client Details
- Appointment Scheduling
- Notes
- Ledger
- Billing and Insurance Information
A range of different appointment options was supported, from basic face-to-face meetings to a drop-down list of virtual care session types, e.g.:
- Behavioral health counseling and therapy
- Family therapy
- Group therapy
- Case management
- Psychotherapy
- Speech therapy
- Psychiatric diagnoses
A quick and easy invitation link was automatically created and sent to our patient, and the session itself was simple to initiate with a single click.
We created a team of three practitioners and swiftly filled our calendar with a range of different sessions, all visible by every team member. The resulting color-coded, easy-to-use schedule was convenient to sync with Google Calendar and MS Outlook, accessible both on mobile and web.
Mental Healthcare
Within one client’s profile, we were able to edit several fields:
- Personal details: These covered a comprehensive range of essential details for easy access by all providers, e.g. Living Will and Durable Power of Attorney (DPOA), emergency contact information. The ability to import clients was also a convenient feature.
- Billing and insurance information: Including a quick view of overdue payments, next sessions, and more
- Staff members
- General Documents: Here, it is possible to upload forms such as Therapy Intake forms and Informed Consent documents and share them with other providers
- Reminders Log: A history of texts sent to the patient
- Reports: Including appointments notes and payment history
- Card Payment Consent, and
- Telehealth Treatment Consent
From the app, too, we could send emails reminding our virtual client of their upcoming session.
Practitioners also have full control of client portal settings, which could be useful in managing how patients interact with TheraNest on their end.
A Look At The TheraNest App
Available both on Google Play and iTunes, the app was just as intuitive – with barely any learning curve required.
A clean and simple interface made it easy for us to:
- Create, edit, reschedule, and cancel appointments
- Update client contacts and information
- Complete important therapy notes, such as progress notes, initial assessments, treatment plans, and forms. Patients and providers could both sign electronically, which was a real time-saver.
We could also email appointments to ourselves and set up alerts to remind us of upcoming sessions, then initiate these sessions from the app itself or by copy-pasting the link into a web browser on our smartphones.
The app itself was free to download and use, providing a convenient and reasonably-priced way for teletherapists and e-counselors to fully organize and conduct HIPAA-compliant, private sessions away from the office.
The aesthetics were another plus – the TheraNest app is clean and intuitive, so easy for new users to navigate.
A straightforward tutorial outlines the TheraNest app basics, and options are provided for step-by-step walkthroughs. Plenty of customer support methods were offered, including in-app messaging, phone numbers, and an email address.
5 Customer Reviews
TheraNest generally received positive reviews for the comprehensive features and ease of use – although some smaller providers mentioned there was an excess of functionality for freelancers or solo practices:
“Ours is not a therapy practice, but private pay recovery coaching for people with mental illness. So some of the incredible insurance billing features are wasted on us.” – Getapp
“I tried a different system and decided what is important to me is to have a system that has supportive staff. I am a small private practitioner and highly recommend Theranest.” – Capterra
“Intuitive interface, User-friendly, Great customer service.” – Softwareadvice.com
Negative reviews were mixed, ranging from lengthy customer service response times to missing features:
“TheraNest has a wonderful community that looks for feedback, both positive and negative, on a continuous basis which puts them at the top of my list for EHR recommendations. Even if they didn’t have such wonderful customer service, the EHR is one of the best values out there financially, and meets every need that I have plus some.” – TrustPilot
“I used Theranest for the reminder service portion of the website. I wanted it to text two people for one appointment and it couldn’t do it. So I left Therenest for another service that could do it.” – TrustPilot
Conclusion
The relatively new TheraNest offers a comprehensive suite of tools – all the essential functionality required for mental health providers to streamline a medium-sized blended care practice. Beginning with its simple videos and ending with its detailed technical walkthroughs, it provides a clean and pleasant user experience both on the web and for mobile use.
On the downside, some larger practices may experience billing difficulties as the volume of clients and different insurance providers increases – so your mileage may vary. Having tested TheraNest only for a small-to-medium-sized enterprise, however, this wasn’t an issue in our case.
A 21-day free trial and tiered pricing make this a relatively low-risk therapy app to test if you’re considering offering teletherapy services for the first time.
Final Thoughts
Overall, from its interactive, detailed calendars to its convenient multi-platform mobile app, TheraNest seems to offer many advantages for clients looking to upsize their businesses – even to go digital for the first time.
As well as providing sector-specific functions for telepsychologists, blended care mental health professionals, e-counselors, telepsychiatrists, and more, we were also satisfied with the range of good customer support options and monthly pricing plans.
While some users appear to have customer service difficulties – specifically, concerning the availability of live support and with larger volumes of insurance claims – we did not encounter these problems on our trial run.
If you want to build and share your own unique solutions, without unnecessary bells and whistles, don’t forget to begin your Quenza trial.
Our online therapy software gives you all the features you need to create unique interventions and personalized treatments online, so that you can deliver your own e-mental health solutions and enhance the mental health gains of your clients even further.
