Sort the reasons by site before you sort them by vendor
A search for alternatives from a group tends to start with one location. Write each reason with the site beside it. Then mark whether a different platform would change it or whether a system around the current one would. An unanswered phone, a lapsed patient, a party that fills by hand and a monthly report built across sites are growth jobs, and they run around any platform. A checkout the desks fight with or a membership rule your team can only set up by hand belong to the platform list.
What a multi-site booking and membership platform holds, and how each piece moves
- The appointment book at each site, with future bookings that are re-entered or imported and checked against the old book, location by location.
- Patient profiles, which land in the new system with whatever notes and tags survive the export. Ask the vendor in writing what comes out and in what format.
- Memberships, packages and gift card balances, each sold to a patient at one site on stated terms. Decide in writing how each is carried over before any patient hears the plan, and confirm with your accountant what is owed on anything unused.
- The point of sale and the card on file. Cards are re-authorized one patient at a time; read what your processing agreement says about ending it and confirm with counsel.
If consents or treatment notes live in it, treat that piece as a chart
Some practices keep signed consents, intake forms or treatment notes inside the same platform as the appointment book. If yours does, that piece is the legal record of care, and moving it is a project with its own rules about retention, format and who holds the old copy. Confirm those with counsel and your medical director before any export, and move that piece on its own timetable rather than with the calendar.
Answer these for each location, not for the group
- Count the reasons at this site and mark each one platform or growth.
- Count the providers and front desk here who would work two systems through the overlap, and for how many weeks.
- List the memberships and balances held by patients of this site and where each would be honored if the platform changed.
- Read the agreement for the whole group: term, notice, data export and whether sites can leave one at a time. Send it to counsel.
- Ask where patient information sits during a move and who signs the Business Associate Agreement; confirm with counsel what applies to your practice.
Who owns the step at each site
| Piece | Moves or stays | Owner at each site |
|---|---|---|
| The appointment book | Moves only if the platform changes; re-entered or imported, then reconciled | The site's coordinator, with a last-check date |
| Memberships, packages and gift cards | Carried over on the terms sold, wherever billing lands; what is owed confirmed with your accountant | You, each site manager and your accountant, before patients are told |
| Consents and notes, if they live here | Treated as a chart: retention, format and the old copy confirmed with counsel | Your medical director and counsel |
| The phone and the DMs at each site | Stay; answered on each site's number and booked into whichever calendar that site keeps | The growth system, with handoff to that site's desk |
| The comeback and the weekly page per site | Stay; read from the visit history in whichever platform each site keeps | The growth system; read weekly by you and the site manager |
The growth system can go in one site at a time, with the platform untouched
NorthCore builds the growth system around the platform a group keeps, one site at a time if that is the order you want, and moves nothing. The first site goes live with its number answered while Dana is in a treatment, its book taking the booking, and its comeback list read from its visit history. Jess, who had neurotoxin at the second site in April, is texted when they are due, with the reply landing at that site's desk. Each site's margins are costed to the dollar on its own menu, so a membership sold in one location is priced from that location's numbers. A weekly page sets the sites side by side on calls, bookings, no-shows, reactivations and revenue. If you stay on Zenoti, that is what it reads. If you switch, the system is rebuilt on the new platform after the overlap, site by site. The Crush your parties page shows how a party is priced from margin, and what stays in the platform is on the Zenoti page.
How to decide in two weeks
- Days one to three: at each site, write the reasons, tag platform or growth, and send both lists to you with the site's name on top.
- Day four: send the agreement's term, notice, export and per-site clauses to counsel.
- Days five to seven: export one site's patient list, memberships and future bookings, open every file to see what survived, then ask any vendor under consideration for a test import of it.
- Days eight and nine: cost the overlap in hours per site, including the desk re-authorizing cards and the manager reconciling two books, and ask who signs the Business Associate Agreement.
- Day ten: at each site, count last month's calls to voicemail and the patients past their interval. Those are the growth lists.
- Days eleven to fourteen: price the growth lists as a system around the current platform, price the platform list as a switch, and decide them apart, site by site.
What to do next
NorthCore's Run the whole practice solution builds the ten jobs around Zenoti or whatever platform your group keeps, site by site, scoped in writing before work begins. Results in 90 days, or we keep working until you have them.
