Your EHR probably costs more than it should

Your EHR probably costs more than it should

If you signed on to an electronic health record (EHR) or practice management platform during implementation and haven't revisited the plan since, there's a reasonable chance you're paying for features you've never opened. Software vendors design their tier structures to reward commitment to higher plans, and the renewal cycle is easy to let roll over without much scrutiny, especially when the priority is patient care, not software audits.

The features most small and independent practices actually rely on day to day — scheduling, charting, e-prescribing, a patient portal, basic billing — are typically covered at the entry level. More advanced tools like registry reporting, referral management and private cloud hosting are meaningful for larger or more complex operations, but for a solo or small-group physician, the honest question is whether those modules are in use at all.

If you're coming up on a renewal, it's worth pulling a usage report from your vendor and having that conversation before you sign for another year. For a closer look at how family practice software is priced across tiers and vendors, download the 2026 Family Practice Software Pricing Guide from Software Advice.