Kareo is a cloud-based medical practice software solution originally developed with a focus on medical billing, but which now includes practice management features as well. It is particularly suited to smaller practices and billing companies.

It can handle patient scheduling, insurance confirmations, delinquent account management, collections, storage of patient documents, developing customized reports, and more. Kareo claims it can be up and running in a practice in as little as 48 hours after sign-up. The pricing is structured on a monthly subscription basis and does not require a contract. It can be used in a wide variety of specialty practices, including family medicine, pediatrics, mental health, cardiology, podiatry, chiropractic, and many others.

Pros

Here are the positive things users have to say about Kareo:

• Users primarily interested in the medical billing features are very pleased with the system’s functioning as a clearinghouse.
• Most users find the system easy to use, and easy to navigate as well.
• Those who primarily use it for billing purposes note that the live chat support feature quickly resolves most of the issues and problems that come up.
• Users also appreciate that Kareo keeps up with changes in coding for insurance purposes.
• A number of users also mentioned that they appreciate the efforts Kareo is putting into the ICD-10 transition.

Cons

There are also negative comments by users, including the following:

• If your practice has multiple locations and you want a report by location, you’re out of luck. In general, you really want to make sure before signing on that you’re going to be able to get what you need out of the reporting, which is surprisingly limited. Some users find they have to combine information from multiple reports to get what they want, which is a huge waste of time.
• It’s very telling that with Kareo there used to be a “Community Forum” where people would list problems that need to be resolved or features that ought to be added. That has been done away with, which essentially hides complaints. Instead, you have to fill out a “Feature Request,” but it’s not transparent to other customers.
• One user noted that adding new insurance carriers can be too confusing.
• Several have noted that the EMR side of the system is not as user-friendly as the practice management side of the system.
• More than one user noted that not all insurance payers are available for electronic clearinghouse transmission, most often these are secondary or supplementary plans.
• A few users also noted problems with refreshing/updating. For example, when some users run a daily report and need to change something, they have to back all the way out of the system for it to refresh.
• Several users noted that after the initial introduction and implementation is all taken care of, customer and technical support seems to become increasingly slow to respond.
• Multiple users have noted that there are integration/synchronization problems between the EHR/EMR and the practice management sides of the system. The specific issues are pretty complex, but the end result is that practices end up wasting a lot of time dealing with the issues that arise because of the poor integration.

Although Kareo works well for those using it for billing, it does not appear to be as good a solution for practices looking for both billing and EHR/EMR solutions.