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Eleven questions to ask any practice management vendor, including us
A checklist for the demo call. Every question has a checkable answer, and the ones a vendor avoids tell you more than the ones they answer well.
A demo is a vendor's home ground. They choose the workflow, the data and the pace, and everything works because they rehearsed it. That is not dishonest, it is just what a demo is — but it means you learn very little from watching one.
You learn a lot from questions with checkable answers. Here are eleven, in rough order of how much they matter. Put them to us as well; we have linked our own answers so you can hold us to them.
Getting out
1. Can I export everything, and what exactly is "everything"?
Ask for the list. Patients, appointments, clinical notes, documents, photographs, invoices, payments, consents, care plans, message history. A system that exports patients and appointments but not notes has not really answered.
Ours: exporting a patient's data, and erasing it.
2. What does it cost to leave, and how long do I have?
Look for an exit fee, a notice period that holds your data while it runs, or an export that expires in days. A product that has to trap you to keep you has told you what it thinks of itself.
3. Will you give me a sample export file now?
The strongest version of questions 1 and 2. Not a description of the format — the actual file, from a demo account, today. It takes a vendor five minutes and it settles the question completely.
Who can see what
4. Are reads logged, or only edits?
Almost every system can tell you who changed a record. Far fewer can tell you who looked at one, and after an incident that is the question that gets asked. Ask whether the log can be edited, and by whom.
5. How is my clinic's data separated from other clinics'?
"Each customer has their own account" is not an answer to this. Ask whether the separation is enforced by the database or by application code, and which roles are exempt from it. We wrote up a case where our own answer was weaker than we thought.
6. Where does the data physically live, and who else can reach it?
For special category data — which clinical records are — a processor outside the EU makes you, the clinic, the controller who has to justify the transfer. Ask for the sub-processor list and the notice period before it changes.
Messaging
7. What stops the system texting a patient who has withdrawn consent?
Listen for whether the answer is a place or a promise. "Staff shouldn't select that list" is a promise. "The template declares the consent it needs and the send path checks it" is a place. Ask what happens to a send that fails the check, and whether anyone can see that it failed.
Ours: consent and messaging.
8. Are quiet hours enforced, and what is exempt?
Every system claims quiet hours. Ask what is allowed through them and why. If nothing is, ask how a time-limited cancellation offer works.
Getting in
9. Does the import dry-run before it writes?
You want counts on both sides, duplicate detection before anything is created,
and the chance to fix the file and go again. Ask specifically what happens when
a date reads 03/04/1978 — day first or month first — because if the vendor
has not thought about that, they have not done many Irish migrations.
Ours: moving from Cliniko, Zanda or Pabau.
10. Can I run both systems for a week?
If the answer is no, ask why. A parallel week is how you find out whether the migration was right while you still have the original.
The one people forget
11. Which of the things you have just shown me is live today?
Ask it exactly like that, and ask for the distinction feature by feature. Roadmaps are not dishonest — every product has one — but "we're building that" and "that shipped last year" are very different purchases, and the difference tends to disappear in a demo.
Our answer, for the avoidance of doubt: Orla is in build. It is recruiting build partners rather than customers. Some of what our feature pages describe shipped recently and some is being built this quarter, and we will tell you which is which on the call rather than after you sign something. If you need a system that is proven today, our comparison pages say plainly where the mature products beat us.
What the answers tell you
Nobody answers all eleven perfectly. What you are listening for is whether the answers are specific and checkable or reassuring and vague — and whether the vendor is willing to tell you where they are weak.
A vendor who says "that's a good question, we're not strong there yet" has told you something true, and is more likely to keep telling you true things later, when it is your data and your practice and it matters more.