This episode is brought to you by PAR. The BRIEF®2 ADHD form uses BRIEF®2 scores to predict the likelihood of ADHD. It’s available on PARiConnect– PAR’s online assessment platform. Learn more at parinc.com.
All right, y’all, welcome back. Glad to have you for this first businessy episode of 2021. Hope you all had a good new year.
So I took a break from the EHR review series last week to do the best of 2020 episode, but I am back. Today I’m reviewing an EHR called TheraNest. Now, many of you may have heard of TheraNest. It’s been around for a while. It’s fairly popular.
[00:01:00] And I’m going to dive into it. For the purposes of the podcast, I’m going to go over the pros and cons. These are relatively short episodes with the intent really being that you go check out the accompanying YouTube video where I spend about 40 to 45 minutes walking through the EHR, and diving in, really getting hands-on through the lens of a testing psychologist to figure out how it might work for us. So definitely go check out the YouTube video that’s embedded in the blog post here. So to the website to check that out. The link is also in the show notes for the podcast.Before we get to the review, I want to extend an invitation to any of you who are launching your practice in 2021 to check out the beginner practice mastermind group. So this is a group coaching experience specifically for folks who are about [00:02:00] 6 months away from launching their practice all the way to 6 months on the other side of launching their practice.
So it’s a group of 6 psychologists. I’m the facilitator and we just dive into all those things that come up in the beginning around how to set up your schedule, how to find office space, how to set up a business, how to purchase materials, those sorts of questions that so many of us wrestle with when we’re just getting started. If that sounds interesting to you, you can go to thetestingpsychologist.com/beginner and apply for a pre-group call and we’ll talk about whether it’s a good fit or not. So, check that out if you’re interested.
And without further ado, here is my review of [00:03:00] TheraNest.
Okay. We are back and today, like I said, I am talking all about TheraNest. Now, this episode is part of a series. I’m doing about 6 EHR reviews, looking through the lens of a testing psychologist. So, if you haven’t seen the other episodes, please go back and check those out or look forward to them if you are listening in real-time here. There will be some others after this. But as far as TheraNest is concerned, let’s talk about that.
So TheraNest is an EHR. It’s been around again for several years. It’s one of the, I think, more popular EHR’s. So things that I liked about TheraNest.
I’m just going to jump right into the pros and cons and then give a little bit of a verdict on what I thought about TheraNest.
So pros, fairness is relatively easy to look at. The layout I think is [00:04:00] pretty clear, the colors are nice, it’s generally aesthetically pleasing. So, this is something I can’t help but notice right off the bat when I’m looking at any webpage or software. So if the aesthetics aren’t on point, it’s a big problem for me. But aesthetics are good. That was not a sticking point for me here.
[00:04:26] Little details that jumped out as pros with TheraNest, one is you can change the colors of the appointments, which is not always available in other EHR’s. One thing that really jumped out to me is that there is a ton of detailed demographic info and rather… there are many demographic choices that you can pick regarding gender identity for pronouns, that sort of thing. I noticed that TheraNest has a lot more choices, particularly around gender identity [00:05:00] compared to other EHR’s which was really nice. That, again, jumped out right away when I was entering client information. [00:05:09] Another little feature that really stuck with me is, they have a box in the contact information for the client that says whether or not you can mention the practice name when you contact the client. I thought that was a nice little touch around protecting client privacy.And then one of the other things that I noticed that I really liked is that the appointments can be moved around just by clicking and dragging. So this seems like a small issue, but for those of us who might reschedule appointments fairly frequently, this can be a really nice feature.
So those are just a few pros that jumped out about TheraNest. Now, you’ll probably notice that most of those are just kinds of nuances and little details which do go a long way. You can tell that [00:06:00] that TheraNest put a lot of attention to the details. And just those little pieces that many other EHR’s haven’t really thought about. And that was great. It definitely jumped out how much attention they put to detail, particularly around client identity and privacy.
[00:06:19] Let’s take a quick break to hear from our featured partner. The BRIEF®2 ADHD form is the latest addition to the BRIEF family of assessment instruments. Using the power of The BRIEF®2, the gold standard rating forum for executive function, the BRIEF®2 ADHD form uses BRIEF®2 Scores and classifications statistics within an evidence-based approach to predict the likelihood of ADHD and to help determine the specific subtype. It can also help evaluators rule in ADHD and rule out other explanations for observed behaviors. Please note that BRIEF2 parent and teacher form scores are required to use this form. The BRIEF2 ADHD form is available on PARiCconnect, [00:07:00] PAR’s online assessment platform. You can learn more by visiting PARinc.com/Brief2_ ADHD. [00:07:11] All right, let’s get back to the podcast. Now, the list of cons is a little more heavy with TheraNest.So, when I really got into TheraNest and you’ll see this on the review video, I found that the navigation for TheraNest was really not intuitive at all to me. I had a really hard time finding the information that I needed or finding how to execute certain actions in TheraNest. For example, I couldn’t find my agenda like a to-do list for which notes I needed to write for the session. I [00:08:00] just had a hard time sort of finding what I needed in TheraNest when I was clicking around, like. Like I said, one other thing that jumped out was just, there was no obvious way to write custom notes or create custom notes for testing appointments. This is a big deal. So, as far as I could find, the only way to write a note for an appointment was to use their templates which were customizable in a sense but certainly nothing in the vein of what we need for testing appointments where you document the time and the tests that you use and so forth. So that was really challenging.
And then another thing that jumped out is that billing codes were easy to enter but really hard to figure out how to apply 2 appointments. So, [00:09:00] the way that I was doing it and granted this is just a basic look, this is me just going in with fresh eyes, no familiarity with the EHR during these reviews, so I just went in and tried to conduct these general tasks that we do; scheduling appointments, billing appointments, entering client and phone and so forth. But I could not find an easy way to actually choose which CPT code goes with which appointment. It was a cumbersome process and I really did not like that.
[00:09:37] Thus far TheraNest is the only EHR where I had to dive into the help section and actually search through some articles to try and figure out how to complete the actions that I was trying to complete. And for me, that’s just a huge turnoff. I mean, it could be a [00:10:00] great EHR, but the fact that I as a new user couldn’t go in and just sort of intuitively navigate around the system and figure out how to do the major primary tasks that I have to do, that was really a pretty big negative for me. So I know there’s always an argument to be made there like, Jeremy, you have to read the instructions, like give us some time and then see how you do when you’re familiar with it. But like I’ve said from the beginning of these EHR reviews, the whole point is to go in with just a blank slate, check the initial impressions of an EHR, and figure out how intuitive they are to do what we need to do. TheraNest really stood out as being not intuitive, really at all for me. So, it could be me. Your mileage may vary, but [00:11:00] that was a takeaway for me from TheraNestSo the overall verdict is it would take a lot of persuasion and coaching for me to consider using this as an EHR. There were a couple of kind of deal breakers as far as being friendly to testing. One, of course, is not being able to enter billing codes easily and or assign them to appointments rather. And the other was just not being able to write custom or create custom testing notes for testing appointments. So far as testing specific features, that was pretty challenging for me. So as far as I’m concerned, TheraNest to be off my list. But again, your experience might be different and I would encourage you to check out the YouTube video and really dive into some details with TheraNest and [00:12:00] see if it might be a better fit for you.
I think that one of the pieces that I didn’t mention just to throw this out there is that the pricing for TheraNest is really nice. So TheraNest is one of those EHRs is that prices by the client rather than by the clinician. So that was nice. You get a little bit of a pricing break depending on how many active clients you have.
So just want to close on a positive note. But again, generally speaking, I probably won’t revisit TheraNest as a potential EHR, nor would I recommend it to testing folks moving forward unless they make some major changes.
So I hope that [00:13:00] this was informative for you. Like I said, watch the YouTube video to gather some of your own impressions. This one I will acknowledge was a little challenging simply because I really did have to navigate around quite a bit to figure out how to work the EHR. So, moves a little bit slowly in parts, but I think that’s an accurate representation of what your experience might be like.
Like I said at the beginning, if you are interested in a group coaching experience where you are hanging out with other psychologists and being held accountable for getting your practice started, the beginner practice mastermind is launching in a couple of months for our spring cohort. So you can go to thetestingpsychologists.com/beginner and check that out and see if it might be a good fit for you.
All right, y’all hope your 2021 is off to a fantastic start [00:14:00] and looking forward to another episode on Monday around processing speed. I’ve got Ellen Braaton coming back. She’s talking about processing speed and its relationship to different psychiatric disorders or psychopathology, but we get into a number of topics that I think are quite interesting. So she’ll be back Monday. And then the following Thursday, we’ve got another EHR review of TherapyAppointment. So until next time, take care.
The information contained in this podcast and on The Testing Psychologist website are intended for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast or on the website is intended to be a substitute for [00:15:00] professional, psychological, psychiatric, or medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please note that no doctor-patient relationship is formed here. And similarly, no supervisory or consultative relationship is formed between the host or guests of this podcast and listeners of this podcast. If you need the qualified advice of any mental health practitioner or medical provider, please seek one in your area. Similarly, if you need supervision on clinical matters, please find a supervisor with an expertise that fits your needs.