Your patient records are the most valuable and most sensitive asset in your practice. They are also the one thing you cannot afford to lose or get locked out of. That is why the software you choose to hold them deserves harder questions than most clinicians think to ask. And the time to ask them is before you commit, not the day you try to leave.
Here are the questions worth asking any practice management software, and why each one matters.
1. Can you export your data, and in what format?
This is the single most important question. You should be able to get your patient records, appointments, and billing out of the system whenever you want, in a usable, standard format like CSV or PDF, not trapped in a screen you can only look at. If a vendor makes export hard, or only offers it as a paid favour, treat that as a warning sign. Your data should never be held hostage.
2. Who actually owns the data?
Read the terms. You, the practice, should own your patient data, and the software should simply be the custodian that stores and processes it for you. Some agreements are vaguer than they should be. If it is not clearly stated that the data is yours, ask for it in writing before you sign.
3. How are backups handled?
Ask how often backups run, where they are stored, and how quickly your data could be restored if something went wrong. “We back up” is not an answer. You want to know that a hardware failure, a mistake, or an outage would not cost you a day of records.
4. How is your data protected?
Sensitive health information should be encrypted both in transit and at rest, protected with SSL, and guarded by proper access controls so only the right people see the right records. Ask what protects the data on the wire and in storage, and who inside the company can access it.
5. Is it HIPAA and PIPEDA compliant, and where is the data stored?
For practices in Canada and the US, this is not optional. Confirm that the platform is built to support both HIPAA and PIPEDA, and ask where the data physically lives. Data centres in Canada and the US matter for both compliance and peace of mind.
6. What happens if you decide to leave?
Every relationship should have a clean exit. Ask what offboarding looks like: can you take a full copy of your data with you, how is it returned, and what happens to the copy the vendor holds. Software that makes leaving painful is counting on you never trying.
7. Who can access your data, and how are breaches handled?
Ask who at the company, and which third parties, can touch your records, and what happens if there is a breach. A serious vendor has a clear answer, including how and how quickly they would notify you.
Why these questions matter more than the feature list
It is easy to choose software on features and price. But the features you love mean nothing if, two years in, you cannot get your records out, or you discover the fine print never said the data was yours. Switching practice management software is one of the most stressful moves a practice makes, and it is almost always the data, not the features, that makes it hard. Asking these questions up front is how you avoid that trap.
How CompanyOn answers them
We built CompanyOn on the belief that your data is yours. You can export your records, your data is encrypted in transit and at rest and protected with SSL, and the platform is fully HIPAA and PIPEDA compliant, with data stored securely in Canadian and US data centres. The questions above are exactly the ones we want you to ask, because we are comfortable answering every one of them.
Thinking about your next platform, or your first? Book a demo and ask us every question on this list, or start your free 14-day trial and see for yourself.
