What PatientNow is for
PatientNow is an EMR and practice management system for aesthetic practices. It holds the patient record, the charts and the calendar, and all of it stays where your team already works. What NorthCore builds sits outside that record and reads from it; the page for PatientNow shows the connection and what is built around it. The reading comes first, and it is described under Know your numbers.
A practice with several service lines has several margins, and the growth system reads each one out of PatientNow before it plans anything. An IV is costed as the bag, the tubing, the needle and the nurse's time, with the vitamin as one line among them. A weight-loss visit is costed with the medication, the supplies and the provider's minutes. Tox is costed by the unit with waste counted. Revenue by line comes from wherever you take payments, and margin by line and utilization by room come out of the record. The plan for the next ninety days follows the line with the best margin and the most open room. Then the phone and the DMs are answered on your number and booked into the PatientNow calendar. The comeback runs on each line's clock, and the dashboard shows every line side by side.
Three service lines run on three clocks, and one record holds all of them
A weight-loss patient is seen on a weekly or monthly cadence, a tox patient on a cadence of months, and an IV patient whenever they feel the need. One record in PatientNow holds all three, and the growth system reads the treatment type on each visit to decide which clock applies. The weight-loss patient who misses a week hears from the practice within days, in Dana's voice, if your medical director wants a missed week followed up. A tox patient hears from the practice when the interval your practice plans around has passed. For the IV patient, the message comes before the next event or the next hard week, with the party invite rather than a reminder. Those intervals are the ranges your practice plans around and are set with your medical director; none of them is medical advice.
Job by job: where it lives and who does it
| Job | Where it lives | Who does it |
|---|---|---|
| The patient record and the charts | In PatientNow; the system writes nothing into a chart | Your providers |
| The calendar and the patient record | In PatientNow | Your front desk and your providers |
| Answering the call, the DM and the text in seconds | The growth system, booking into the PatientNow calendar with the note attached | The voice and text agents, with anything clinical handed to a provider |
| Timing the comeback, one clock per service line | Treatment type and visit date read from PatientNow; the interval per line and the message in the system | The system, in Dana's voice, with the intervals set by your medical director |
| Segmenting for a party or a launch | The system, from visit dates in PatientNow | The system, with the offer and the eligibility set by you and your medical director |
| The dashboard: calls, bookings, no-shows, reactivations, revenue | The system, reading PatientNow | Read weekly by you |
When staying on PatientNow is right
Stay on PatientNow. A practice that has three service lines charting in one record has every visit in one place, which is the first thing a growth system needs. The chart is the legal record of care, and moving it is its own project with its own rules. A practice that wants a reminder per line, a dashboard per line or an answered phone wants work that lives outside the chart. NorthCore builds that work around the record and moves nothing.
What a switch would cost you in time
Leaving an aesthetic EMR moves the patient record, the charts and the calendar at once, and each comes out in its own format. The weight-loss charts carry weights and medications that have to arrive intact, and someone on your team checks them record by record. The old record carries retention rules past the switch; confirm with counsel and your medical director what must be kept and for how long. Providers chart twice through the overlap and the front desk books in two places. Whatever the agreement says about term and notice is for counsel to read first. None of that answers the Tuesday afternoon call.
How to do this on Monday
- Pull revenue by treatment for last quarter from wherever you take payments and group it into service lines: injectables, weight loss, IV, skin, and whatever else you sell.
- Cost one IV as the bag, the tubing, the needle and the nurse's minutes, and one weight-loss visit as the medication, the supplies and the provider's minutes. The line with the better margin and open room is the first job.
- With your medical director, write the cadence each line is planned around and which patients are excluded from a message while they are mid-course.
- Check written consent to marketing texts for every patient on the overdue list before anyone is messaged; what counts as consent is for counsel to confirm.
- Call your own number three times this week, once in each service line's busiest hour, and note what a new patient heard.
What to do next
NorthCore's Run the whole practice solution builds the growth system on top of PatientNow: the answering, the comeback timing, the segmentation and the dashboard, and PatientNow stays where it is. Scoped in writing and covered by the promise on this site: results in 90 days, or we keep working until you have them.
