How long does it take to move to new clinic software?

For a small practice, plan four to eight weeks from signature to switching the old system off. Most of that is not technical: deciding who enters what, cleaning duplicate patient records, and the weeks in which the team is slower because everything is unfamiliar. A migration presented as a weekend job usually means only demographics are moving and the clinical history is staying behind.

Should we move all our historical records into the new system?

Rarely all at once. Enter every new visit in the new system from day one, and bring a patient’s history across the first time they come back. Within a year you have complete records for everyone who attends, and the clinic never stopped to get them.

What does the software need to do if the internet goes down?

Ask exactly that, and ask to see it with the cable unplugged. Three answers are acceptable: it keeps working locally and syncs later, it degrades to a read-only view of today, or it stops but the day’s schedule is printable. An answer that avoids the question is itself the answer.

Is one platform better than several specialised tools?

One platform wins wherever data crosses a boundary — a booking becoming a visit, a visit becoming an invoice — because every boundary between two tools is somewhere a person re-types something. Separate tools win where one department has genuinely unusual needs, such as imaging. The test is how often a day staff copy a value between screens.

How do we judge a vendor’s support before we are a customer?

Send a real question to support during the trial, from a staff account rather than your sales contact, and time the reply. Ask in writing what happens outside working hours. Support is the one thing a demo never shows and the one thing you use weekly.

How to choose practice and clinic management software

The wrong choice is settled three years later, when you try to move thousands of patient records out of it. These are the criteria worth checking before you sign — not the feature list every vendor already claims to have.

IPNET Technologies SàrlSeptember 21, 20266 min read

Almost every practice that replaces its software says the same sentence: it was fine at first. The trouble rarely starts with the features compared before the purchase. It starts with what nobody compared — where the data lives, how much of it you can get back out, and what comes with you if you leave.

This is not a ranking of products. It is the set of criteria you can judge any system by, Proxia included.

Four different products, one name

Quite different things are sold as "clinic software". Decide which one you are buying first: a comparison across categories is meaningless.

A digital appointment book — a calendar and a patient list. Enough for a single-doctor practice, and it should be priced like it.
An electronic health record — clinical history, coded diagnoses, medication, vitals, labs and imaging as one file per patient.
A clinic operations system — reception, queue, cash desk, accounting, per-doctor revenue share and stock control.
A clinical assistant — visit transcription, drafted notes, prescribing support and interaction checking.

A single-doctor practice shopping for shift accounting pays every month for a module it never opens. A multi-specialty clinic that buys an appointment book is back in the market within six months — with two years of data to move.

The first criterion is not a feature

Before comparing anything else, ask one question: can I export my own data, in a format another system can read? Everything else here is recoverable. This is not: a system you cannot leave eventually sets its own price.

Ask for a sample export of one real patient record during the demo rather than a promise in a deck. A PDF is a picture of your data, not your data. What you want is structured output — a full CSV set, or better, an FHIR export — with the answer written into the contract, including who pays for it.

Twelve things worth checking before you sign

Structured export of the full record, demonstrated live, not described.
Where the data is hosted, under whose legal jurisdiction, and who at the vendor can read it.
Backups: how often, kept how long, and when a restore was last tested — the question almost nobody asks.
Per-user access control: a receptionist cannot open a clinical note, a locum cannot open last year’s accounts.
An audit trail on clinical records. A record that can be edited invisibly is not a record.
Search and reporting across patients, not just within one file.
Coded diagnoses (ICD) rather than free text, if a report is ever to count anything.
Prescribing with automatic allergy and interaction checking against the patient’s own list.
Scheduling that models your real working pattern — shifts, rooms, walk-ins — not one flat calendar.
Accounting that reconciles to the cash desk at the end of a shift, if you run one.
What happens on a bad network day. A cloud system with no degraded mode stops the clinic, not the computer.
Support: the channel, the hours, and what a realistic response time looks like in writing.

Hosted or installed on a machine in the building?

	Hosted (web)	Installed on site
Works away from the clinic	Yes	Only with extra setup
Updates	Continuous, by the vendor	Scheduled, usually billed
Backups	The vendor’s responsibility	Yours, in practice nobody’s
Behaviour when the line drops	Degrades or stops	Unaffected locally
Who can physically reach the data	The hosting provider	Whoever is in the building
Cost shape	Monthly, predictable	Large up front, then maintenance

Neither column is the answer on its own. The decision is really about who you would rather trust with a restore at eight in the morning: a vendor under an obligation, or whoever owns the backup drive.

The licence price is not the cost

Build the three-year number before comparing monthly fees. The line that moves it is rarely the licence.

Setup and migration from whatever you use now, including the part staff will do by hand.
Training, and the productivity lost during the first month — assume you see fewer patients for two to three weeks.
Per-user fees as the team grows, and whether a part-time receptionist counts as a full seat.
Charges per extra clinic, per extra doctor, per additional room.
Usage-based features — messaging, voice, document processing — cheap at demo volume and not at real volume.
The cost of leaving: export fees, and the weeks of double entry while both systems run.

Run a two-week pilot, not a demo

A demo shows the software working the way the vendor rehearsed it. A pilot shows it meeting your Tuesday morning.

Pick one doctor and one receptionist. Not the most enthusiastic pair — the most sceptical.
Run real appointments in it for two weeks, in parallel with what you use now. Double entry is the price of finding out cheaply.
Count clicks on the three things you do fifty times a day: book, register an arrival, write the note.
Deliberately break something — a double booking, a wrong diagnosis code, a cancelled visit already paid for — and see how hard it is to correct.
At the end, ask for the export. That single request tells you more about the next three years than the whole demo did.

Frequently asked

How long does it take to move to new clinic software?: For a small practice, plan four to eight weeks from signature to switching the old system off. Most of that is not technical: deciding who enters what, cleaning duplicate patient records, and the weeks in which the team is slower because everything is unfamiliar. A migration presented as a weekend job usually means only demographics are moving and the clinical history is staying behind.
Should we move all our historical records into the new system?: Rarely all at once. Enter every new visit in the new system from day one, and bring a patient’s history across the first time they come back. Within a year you have complete records for everyone who attends, and the clinic never stopped to get them.
What does the software need to do if the internet goes down?: Ask exactly that, and ask to see it with the cable unplugged. Three answers are acceptable: it keeps working locally and syncs later, it degrades to a read-only view of today, or it stops but the day’s schedule is printable. An answer that avoids the question is itself the answer.
Is one platform better than several specialised tools?: One platform wins wherever data crosses a boundary — a booking becoming a visit, a visit becoming an invoice — because every boundary between two tools is somewhere a person re-types something. Separate tools win where one department has genuinely unusual needs, such as imaging. The test is how often a day staff copy a value between screens.
How do we judge a vendor’s support before we are a customer?: Send a real question to support during the trial, from a staff account rather than your sales contact, and time the reply. Ask in writing what happens outside working hours. Support is the one thing a demo never shows and the one thing you use weekly.