Autumn8 Review: Affordable Locally Hosted Chiropractic Management Software

Autumn8 Logo
Autumn8 (acquired by ChiroTouch), is an affordable, license-based practice management software that helps streamline every step of your workflow, from SOAP notes to billing and payroll.

Autumn8 by TGI Software is one of the most affordable, yet full-featured chiropractic practice management software solutions on the market. The software has all of the features needed to help streamline your practice from end to end. Though Autumn8 was recently acquired by ChiroTouch in October 2016, the Autumn8 team is continuing to iterate on their software, serving as a more affordable option for cost-conscious practices. This makes Autumn8 a great solution for smaller practices who are just starting out, and who are looking for their first practice management software. Most of Autumn8's clients are smaller practices with 1-3 providers.

Pros

  • Affordable, yet full-featured chiropractic practice management software.
  • Can electronically send insurance claims via any clearinghouse of your choice.
  • Fully customizable.
  • Exceptional customer support, with average callback time being ~15 minutes. Also offers support via live online chat.
  • Fast note-taking capabilities through customizable macros.
  • Free data conversions if switching from other software providers.

Cons

  • Windows OS only.
  • Technical support is mandatory for the first year; representatives are available 8am-5pm central time, so if you are in a different time zone, your work schedule may not align with theirs.

Price

  • $3,495 one-time license fee. Additional fees for optional patient portal, or data backup.
  • Mandatory 12 months of support $900 for first year.
  • Free demo.

Key Features

Though Autumn8 is one of the most affordable locally-installed chiropractic software systems that we reviewed, it has all of the functionality needed to help run your practice, and can be customized to suit your needs. We'll discuss some of the key features of Autumn8, and explain how the software can be used to benefit your practice.

Scheduling

The appointment book has various customizable options. You can color-code the appointment book however you want, and can also have as many columns as you want. In addition, you can manage multiple appointment books, and create a list of custom 'visit types', which have a specified length of time associated with each visit type. This makes it convenient to manage multiple types of visits, of various time lengths. You can also generate multiple appointments simultaneously with a treatment plan.

Autumn8's appointment book can automatically send out appointment reminders via email and text message at no additional cost. This is a nice perk, since many other software vendors charge extra for this functionality. The scheduling module also automatically tracks patients who fail to show up for their scheduled appointments, and compiles this data into a report to help you remember to follow up with them in the future. Both reminders and no-show tracking can be powerful tools that boost your practice's revenue, and increase patient recall.

Another great feature of the appointment book is that you can set up alerts that remind you about patients who have special circumstances. For example, if a patient notifies you that their insurance is ending, you can set up an alert in their profile to remind you the next time that they check in, that you should discuss the option of switching to a cash plan.

Autumn8 patient alert pop-up in scheduling system

SOAP Notes/Documentation

If you opt to add on the patient portal for $300 a year, you will be able to offer your patients the option to check in and fill out their information electronically. They can also fill out their subjective findings in the portal, which helps get a jump start on the SOAP note. Roughly half of Autumn8's customers use the patient portal.

Autumn8 provides users with as much guidance as possible in order to generate compliant, accurate SOAP notes. As shown below, the objective findings portion of the SOAP note includes helpful graphics and buttons that cover a comprehensive set of options.

objective findings

Autumn8 helps automate a lot of cumbersome documentation processes by providing built-in macros, and by enabling users to create their own custom macros. These macros make it so that you can create complete sentences and paragraphs in your notes, just by clicking on a few buttons. You can customize the macros to work for the treatments and procedures that you use most frequently.

soap notes in Autumn8

Since chiropractors have many repeat patients, the software makes it easy to view each patient’s most recent notes so you can gain a comprehensive view of his/her history. Then, to make an updated note for the patient’s current appointment, you can import the previous day’s notes and make the appropriate changes. Again, using macros makes this process even faster and reduces the likelihood of making errors or forgetting a step.

Billing

Autumn8 has several features to make the billing process as seamless as possible. To minimize the number of insurance claim denials, the software has built-in alerts to notify you when a claim is missing certain information. This serves as an automatic check to catch silly mistakes before they get sent out.

patient claims in Autumn8

You can send claims either in paper form or electronically, to the clearinghouse of your choice. However, TGI Software has a partnership with TriZetto, which offers insurance verification in order to reduce payer rejections.

Reports

Reports expose helpful statistics about practice, to help you keep everything running as smoothly and economically as possible. As an admin, you can specify what permissions each user account will have in the software, which is helpful if, for example, you want to prevent certain account holders from being able to access payroll reports.

With powerful reporting capabilities at your fingertips, you can focus on addressing your patients' needs, and leave it to the software to identify data-driven ways to optimize your practice. One of the reports will automatically track inventory and generate a purchase order to restock/reorder the items if they run low.

Another report (shown below) helps you determine what claims are still unpaid, and filter by provider, procedure, or query by time period.

reports in Autumn8

Is Autumn8 the right software for you?

Autumn8's license-based chiropractic practice management software is a sensibly priced end-to-end solution that helps streamline every step of your practice's workflow. It is also highly dedicated to delivering exceptional customer support, with an average callback time of 15 minutes. The company provides a library of educational videos to get your staff up and running with the software right away. However, the software is not suitable for Mac users, since it is only compatible with Windows systems. Also, if you are looking for some of the more modern features, including data backups and the patient portal, it's worth noting that these come at an additional cost.

If you are looking for full-featured software that's affordable and includes excellent customer support, we recommend Autumn8 as an effective solution to improve your practice's efficiency and compliance.

Bruce Hogan

Bruce Hogan is Co-founder & CEO of SoftwarePundit. He leads the team's research and publishes content about software products and trends. Bruce has experience investing at multi-billion dollar private equity firms, leading teams at venture-backed technology companies, and launching new businesses. You can connect with Bruce on LinkedIn.

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