If you’ve assembled your practice’s tech stack piece by mismatched piece, you’ve got what’s sometimes called a Frankenstack.
It typically starts out as a logical cost-saver. You say, “We don’t need to buy the entire expensive suite of tools. We just need to do (insert task), and we can get that with (insert third-party app/software) for way less money or for free.”
This might make sense at first, but if you repeat this action a few times, you’ve now got yourself a Frankenstack. And make no mistake about it, it’s a monster. Your business is now being run by a series of third-party or “bolt-on” programs that you assume work pretty well for you. But the truth is, you’re the one working for them.
The Frankstack is a trap that a lot of cost-conscious startups and small businesses in every sector fall into. However, it’s particularly problematic for businesses in the medical sector. Your attempt to save money may have led to several hidden costs and problems.
Here’s why.
A Frankenstack begins when you purchase a solution based on need. It’s often sudden and reactionary. However, reactive spending without a high-level tech plan is a lot like reactive or panic-based hiring without a long-term hiring plan. It’s often going to cost you a lot more in the long run.
This all began as a budget-conscious decision. But it’s easy to lose track of the total costs of several software solutions. You didn’t want to pay a lot of money for the expensive solution, so you went with the cheaper one. And then another one. And then another one. It doesn’t take long for the total price of those subscriptions to creep up to the price you said no to a few months ago.
You also need to consider the hidden costs associated with…
Simply put, the time it takes you to perform a simple task in your Frankenstack may take two or three times (sometimes considerably more) than it would take you to do it in an integrated solution.
Again, the solution is supposed to work for you, but you’re working for it as you and your team struggle with:
At the same time, you don’t have a single source of truth, so you’re often trying to reconcile entries and notes in one system with another.
When most companies make a mistake, a customer may get overcharged or receive the wrong service. When you make a mistake or something falls through the cracks, it can have serious health-related consequences for your patients.
At the same time, your patients expect a very high level of professionalism from you. They may start to look for another provider if their messages aren’t returned in a timely manner because you’re trying to reconcile all the different messaging systems for your email and texts, or phone calls and voicemails.
If you’re starting to notice churn in your practice, your Frankenstack may be to blame.
HIPAA compliance is harder to maintain when you’re using several tools that were not built with HIPAA in mind.
More systems mean more potential points of failure or misconfiguration. You may also struggle with uncertainty surrounding who is responsible for data breaches or backups.
And worst of all, regulatory reporting may be difficult or even impossible as your audit trails are scattered or incomplete.
If you were an enterprise-level multinational corporation, siloed information usually means the marketing office in Denver doesn’t have access to the same data as the sales office in Boston. However, information siloes are just as likely for small (or even one-person) teams.
For your practice, it means that your various systems don’t integrate or share information. You have to hunt to find the information you need to make high-level decisions. And by the time you find the information and apply it to the big picture, the data may be stale or less relevant.
The end result is that opportunities are missed, small problems have time to grow into bigger issues, reporting is a nightmare, and planning ahead is considerably harder.
In Mary Shelly’s original Frankenstein story, Dr. Frankenstein tries to run away from the monster he created, but it follows him relentlessly. Your Frankenstack will follow you and hold you back, particularly when you want to scale your practice.
The first problem arises when you have to introduce your first hire to your monster, whether it’s a new physician, assistant, or office manager. The various policies, procedures, and hacks you’ve created to make everything work are not easily passed on to someone else. Knowledge transfer and training are incredibly difficult, and you may encounter some costly mistakes along the way.
You will encounter another major issue when you try to introduce new services, whether you’re trying to expand to include telehealth, group visits, or a membership model. Your already-precarious tech stack may finally be toppled, and you may need to start over.
Ideally, you want to add more efficiency when you scale, not more confusion.
You’re having trouble getting Tool A to work with App B. But, Tool A wasn’t designed to work with App B, so it’s an unsupported action, and neither tech support team can help you. You are 100% alone.
If you’re lucky, you might be able to find another physician in your network who’s doing the same thing and has encountered the same problem. Or, you might be able to do some deep dive Googling to find a solution. However, now your problem is stretching over several days or even weeks, as you have to fix this yourself.
A lack of tech support never seems like a problem... Until you’ve got a problem.
Practices often have to create their own Frankenstack because there are very few solutions out there that were designed with the medical sector in mind. But Cerbo was purpose-built for overwhelmed practice owners just like you.
It’s a do-it-all EHR, practice management, and patient portal solution that works for you without the need for bolt-on applications. It also plays well with others and integrates with over 65 tools that are probably already in your stack right now.
“While it takes a while to customize Cerbo to fit your practice, it is well worth the investment and ultimately saves time and money. The best part is that this translates into successful patient outcomes while minimizing the burden of charting, educating, and day-to-day administrative tasks on the practice team.”
— Dr. Kristann Heinz, MD, RD, Red Hill Medical + Wellness, Pennsylvania.
