What each one is for
Aesthetic Record describes itself as EMR and practice management software for med spas. It holds the charts, the consents, the before-and-after photos, the calendar and the patient record, and NorthCore runs the growth system on it in a working practice today. The system reads the last treatment and the visit date for timing, books onto its calendar with the call note attached, and leaves every chart to Dana.
Symplast's home page calls it a plastic surgery EHR and practice management platform and an operating system for aesthetic medicine. It holds the patient record, the charts, the photos, the calendar and billing. A practice with a surgeon, an operating schedule and a non-surgical wing reads that description one way; a two-injector med spa reads it another. Neither reading is wrong, and the home page is all this page takes from the vendor.
The two records, side by side
| The question | Aesthetic Record | Symplast |
|---|---|---|
| What it holds | Charts, consents, photos, the calendar and the patient record, all inside the EMR | The patient record and the charts, with the photos, the calendar and billing in the same platform |
| Who it is built for | Med spas, in the vendor's words | Plastic surgery and aesthetic medicine practices, in the vendor's words |
| Where the calendar lives | Inside the EMR, on the patient record | Inside the EHR, on the patient record |
| Where the checkout lives | Confirm on the vendor's page which checkout and processor the record includes | Billing is inside Symplast; confirm on the vendor's page how the front-desk checkout and the processor connect to it |
| What the growth system adds around it | Answering into the Aesthetic Record calendar, the comeback timed from the last treatment, segments by treatment, the dashboard read from the record | Answering into the Symplast calendar, the comeback timed for the non-surgical patient, segments by treatment, the dashboard read from the record and billing |
The questions that decide it, and they are about your case mix
- Whether a surgeon operates under this roof. If the practice schedules procedures, holds surgical consents and follows a surgical patient for months, that half of the practice sets the record. If no one operates, the injector clinic sets it.
- The split of revenue between surgical and non-surgical. Pull last quarter by category and write the two totals; the record system serves the larger one and the growth system serves the comeback on the smaller.
- How the non-surgical patient is followed. A neurotoxin patient and a filler patient come back on the intervals your medical director sets, and a surgical patient's follow-up is clinical. Decide which calendar each lives on.
- Who bills, and from where. If billing sits inside the record, as the vendor's own menu places it, the practice management half matters to the front desk every afternoon.
- The balances. Packages, series, gift cards and memberships carry balances, and the platform with the checkout holds them; what is owed on each is for your accountant to confirm.
- Where PHI is stored, who at the vendor can see it and who signs the Business Associate Agreement. Put both answers in writing and confirm with counsel; this page gives no HIPAA verdict. Price is on each vendor's pricing page.
What a switch between a med spa EMR and a surgical EHR would involve
The chart moves, and the chart is the legal record of care. For a practice with surgical records, what retention requires is a question for counsel and your medical director, and this page states no rule. Photos and consents go as files and are re-attached where the formats differ. Open balances, memberships and prepaid series are reconciled to the dollar, and what the practice owes on them is confirmed with your accountant. The phone number is yours and comes along; the calendar history is exported in full, because every comeback the system sends is timed from it.
Before deciding to move anything, write down what you want the new record to fix. If the list reads unanswered calls, lapsed patients, a party that did not fill and numbers in four places, those are growth jobs. NorthCore builds the system that does them on Aesthetic Record or on Symplast with the chart untouched.
A two-week evaluation for a practice with both kinds of patient
- Day one: list last quarter's visits by category, surgical and non-surgical, and the revenue of each. The larger column names the practice.
- Days two to four: Dana charts a filler visit with a photo and a consent in each demo. If a surgeon is in the practice, they chart a consult in each as well, and both are timed.
- Day five: export last treatment by patient and the open balances from what you run today. That is the migration in miniature.
- Week two: send the PHI questions to each vendor in writing and read each pricing page with your own provider and location counts. Ask each for a reference practice that matches your case mix.
- Last day: against each job on your day-one list, write chart, billing or growth. The growth column is the same work on either record.
What to do next
NorthCore's Run the whole practice solution reads the numbers out of either record, builds the ninety-day plan and runs the answering, the non-surgical comeback and the dashboard around it. Scoped in writing and covered by the promise on this site: results in 90 days, or we keep working until you have them.
