Valant EHR Suite

Schedule building is easy and looking into client charts is easy.

There are too many tabs in the therapy progress notes that don't apply to therapists using the platform. The intake document is too long and clients don't want to complete it, which means therapists are going into intakes with no client history, no understanding about why the client is coming for therapy, and having to gather all of that information in one hour. I dislike that Valant automatically takes you to a different screen when you click from, say Dashboard to Scheduler, instead of just opening a new window. The treatment plan tool is too involved and most therapists on my team don't want to use it.

- Calendar - scheduling/billing/notes accessed all from one screen.
- Integrated CC processing. Third party processor (Elavon) provides details statements for easy bookkeeping.
-Easy to submit insurance claims (albeit only after a protracted setup process with Change Healthcare)
- Insurance ERA integration (not perfect - for example UHC has many subsidiaries and it requires registering each once with Change Healthcare for the ERAs to appear in Valant. This is a hugely time consuming process and I never managed to get all my payers correctly registered.)
- Reliable. Minimal downtime. Support is very accessible.
- Pt statements are simple and clear and superbills have been consistently accepted by payors without any issue
- Able to integrate multiple providers and multiple locations. Effective for tracking insurance reimbursement from multiple payers across multiple locations. This is Valet’s key strength.

- Looks and handles like Windows Vista. Clunky and outdated. Functions are often behind multiple drop-down menus and not always intuitively bundled together.. However, it functions well enough once learnt.
- Significant learning curve, particularly in understanding the billing/accounting aspects. Educational videos are detailed but incredibly dry and time consuming to work through
- Integrated CC processor is expensive! An additional $2-3 per visit billed quickly adds up and is a high price to pay for convenience.
- No personalization of notes/documents beyond the provided templates, many of which are outdated and redundant. There is the option to add a blank tab and use a third party software like text expander to add in templates that way.
- Esignitaure for documents is an additional fee. This quickly became prohibitively expensive. I returned to using third party options such as DocuSign and Adobe Sign, both of which were cheaper. Note that this function is free with Simple Practice which is over 60% cheaper!
- Note writer is tabbed, awkward and clunky. Unable to scroll through the note as a whole. Option to add Macro is outdated. I used TextExpander as it was faster, despite additional expense
- The patient portal is unreliable. I had patients complain about being redirected to a portal for another practice, for example. This raised other concerns about data security and HIPAA.
- Note writing tool is difficult to customize and cumbersome to operate. Notes are difficult to customize and the available options are often outdated and include multiple redundant options.
- Templates were clunky and awkward to customize. The tabbed interface is cumbersome and outdated. The templates are very click heavy with a lot of redundant information and the notes generated are often bloated which makes reviewing far more labor intensive and time consuming than it needs to be. The notes are generated only as pdf files which makes searching through past documents a painful process of downloading each note in turn or downloading the whole lot, every time you need to check the plan form the last visit or the labs from two visits ago…

- “Integrated” prescribing is actually a link-out to Rcopia. Cannot navigate back and forth between prescribing window and pt notes.

Be aware that a standalone DrFirst account costs approximately $650 per year and the standalone experience is identical. There is no benefit of using the software “through” Valant and it is inaccurate to describe it as “integrated”. It isn’t.
- Mobile app is an HTML throwback that made me nostalgic for college. Limited functionality makes it practically unusable.
-Notes are turned in to pdf files on signing which makes searching or quickly reading past notes very difficult. Open each pdf individually rather than scrolling through text in the window.

- Very expensive. Double the cost of some competitors. $300 + per provider plus additional costs for Rcopia and additional costs for electronic document handling and costs for patient reminders. All becomes very expensive very quickly. Unless I were filing a significant number of insurance claims or managing insurance claims across multiple locations and providers, it is hard to justify the high price tag. Even so, there are cheaper alternatives.

Simple Practice has comparable functionality and is a third of the price. Even accounting for a third party e prescribing service.

Patient age - this sounds minor but grows to become a major annoyance. The patients’ age is only displayed on the patient record screen so when not writing or prescribing, it involves clicking through another couple of screens in a new tab. It doesn’t sound much but, believe me, these wasted seconds add up over time and grow to become a major annoyance.