Remedly is a general-purpose cloud-based EHR platform that caters to a wide variety of healthcare specializations. Because it is general purpose, the software offers more than we need. It’s clear that we won’t encounter any growing pains if we ever choose to use it.
The Remedly UI looks sleek, modern, and intuitive. Managing appointments in the calendar relies heavily on color-coding and symbols to convey information (e.g., confirmed appointments, forms completed, patient checked in, etc.). However, its form template editing tool looks like a basic word processing application. We were assured that it’s very user-friendly and easy to learn, but it looks lean compared to others we’ve seen. We have some doubts that note templates, and therefore note-taking, will be easy to manage. That said, the tool should be adequate for our needs.
Remedly uses a patient portal, and does not support temporary links for patient-filled forms. A patient has to create an account in the patient portal in order to access paperwork. That said, the patient portal appears to be straightforward, intuitive, and customizable. It looks good, but it’s not ideal for us.
Charting doesn’t seem well-suited for our needs. Remedly is not capable of automatically pulling information from previous related treatments. A provider will be required to use search tools to quickly find the appropriate charts. A major drawback, considering that many tattoo removal treatments might not occur on consecutive appointments. Grouping notes from related treatments will be a bit of a challenge. Photo upload features looked adequate, but doing side-by-side photo comparison looked cumbersome. The major drawback was the rigidity of their charting system, which would force us to pre-plan every treatment instead of adapting dynamically to concerns like time or patient discomfort.
Remedly’s workflow design starts with scheduling an appointment, which automatically triggers forms/paperwork to be sent to the patient. This doesn’t fit with our intended workflow, in which appointments are only scheduled after paperwork has been completed. The proposed workaround involves scheduling dummy appointments, perhaps on Sundays, that do not actually occur. Unfortunately, this would likely trigger automated reminders or would require providers to diligently cancel upcoming dummy appointments before they trigger messages. Other workarounds were proposed, but all seemed tedious and troublesome.
Automated reminders and notifications are very customizable, but only support one template at a time. All appointments, regardless of type, trigger the same reminder message.
Though this seems viable for other clinics, it is not the best fit for our needs. Two-way texting is available, and is 100% manual via a chat platform (on the provider’s side). There is no API (application programming interface) available, due to proprietary software features and services. Patients can upload photos and chat with providers. Smart phrases (dot phrases) are not available. If a provider wants to upload a photo from two-way texting into the patient’s record/chart, it must be done manually (i.e. save to hard drive, then upload). Other than the tedium of copying shared images to patient charts, Remedly’s two-way texting feature looks more than adequate.
Overall, it didn’t seem like Remedly was a good fit for us. It’s worth noting that many of Remedly’s weak points are specific to our needs – a different clinic might find exactly what they need from this software. It’s our specific priorities that ruled out Remedly, not our general priorities. Tattoo removal chart templates already exist in their database, so we know it’s being done somewhere.
We want potential patients to fill out a form before they schedule their first appointment. If we planned workflow around patients scheduling a preliminary appointment upon entry into our system, Remedly would be more appealing to us.
We want to be able to quickly track treatment progress across multiple appointments, with photos attached to each stage of treatment. If we were less concerned with tracking progress so meticulously, Remedly would be more appealing to us.
We want a provider to be able to easily add an unplanned treatment on-the-fly, in a way that can be easily referenced with minimal keystrokes and search/filter tools. If we planned workflow around knowing exactly what tattoos will be treated before an appointment, Remedly would be more appealing to us.
We want EHR software that doesn’t use a password-protected patient portal for filling forms. Temporary links (with expiration timers) are far more effective for our target demographic. If this were less of a priority for us, Remedly would also be more appealing to us.