A primary care day rarely stays inside the appointment grid. A patient calls about an earlier visit, a report needs review, someone arrives without completed intake and a prescription question interrupts the next consultation. Your EHR has to fit the day you actually run.
For a small practice, start with a shortlist that reflects your payment model, clinical needs and staff capacity. Then use the same sample visit to compare the options below.
Decide what your practice needs covered
Write down whether you will see insured patients, operate a direct-care model or use a mixture. List your clinicians, locations and expected visit types. Include lab connections, prescribing, patient communication and the reporting your practice needs.
Now name the work your team struggles to finish. A good note editor may not solve a long callback list. A better booking experience will not, by itself, clear a results-review backlog. Prioritizing both helps you compare the whole practice workflow.
This guide is published by Moxcares, using vendors’ public information reviewed on October 16, 2026. The selection notes below are suggestions about what to explore in a demonstration, rather than results from a hands-on product trial.
Five EHR options worth comparing
Elation: explore the longitudinal primary care record
Elation’s EHR is designed around primary care and describes a clinical-first interface with native AI and scribing workflows. Consider it when reviewing history and documentation are the center of your buying decision. Ask how an outside result, an unfinished task and a follow-up plan appear during a busy visit.
Tebra: explore a connected independent-practice workflow
Tebra’s EHR offering connects charting with scheduling, billing and patient-facing functions, and explicitly addresses primary care and smaller independent practices. Put it on the shortlist when you want to review clinical and office operations together. Ask for the exact included services, integrations and onboarding scope for your clinic.
athenaOne: explore the EHR and revenue service together
athenaOne presents EHR, billing, practice management and patient engagement as an integrated offering. It is worth discussing when billing operations are central to the purchase. Ask the vendor to show the handoff from a signed encounter to a claim needing attention, and explain how responsibility is shared with your team.
Practice Fusion: examine the published EHR subscription closely
Practice Fusion’s pricing page lists EHR pricing from $199 per provider per month, with a required annual commitment and monthly billing. It provides a concrete subscription starting point for a small-practice comparison. Check the current package inclusions and price the rest of your intended office workflow alongside it.
Moxcares: start with patient interaction or the full practice
Moxcares connects patient communication, scheduling and intake with optional EHR, scribing and revenue workflows. You can also begin with patient interaction while retaining your existing EHR, after confirming the setup and handoff. Demonstrate the entire patient journey: the first call, preparation, documentation review and the work after the appointment.
Use the same visit to compare the systems
| Moment | Demo request | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Before the visit | Book a fictional patient and send the intended intake. | Staff can find missing information and the clinician can identify patient-reported answers. |
| During the visit | Review past history, a new outside result and the current medication list. | The information needed for this visit is accessible without losing unfinished work. |
| Documentation | Draft, correct and sign the note. | AI suggestions remain reviewable and the final record reflects the clinician’s edits. |
| After the visit | Assign a result-related task and a follow-up appointment. | A named person can see the task, status and next step. |
| Office administration | Reschedule, verify coverage where relevant and handle a payment question. | The front desk and billing team can complete the work with a clear handoff. |
Take notes while the people doing the work try each step. Count repeated entry and unresolved exceptions. You do not need a complicated scoring system: record what worked, what needs setup and what remains unproven.
Compare prices using the same units
“Per provider” and “per clinic” are different billing units. An EHR-only subscription and an operational platform’s entry plan also cover different work. Put them into a single first-year budget with the modules you intend to use.
Moxcares starts at $99 per clinic per month for Starter, billed monthly. Clinical EHR seats, ambient scribing and revenue modules are priced separately. Practice Fusion’s published figure above is an EHR price per provider with an annual commitment. Obtain complete, current quotes before comparing the total.
Include migration, training, prescribing, lab connections, billing services, payment processing, phone and message usage, additional staff access and support. Ask when billing begins, what a renewal can change and how a data export works. Keep the written answers with your budget.
Check the connections your practice depends on
Bring the names of your lab, pharmacy workflow, current clinical system and any required reporting service to the demonstration. Ask what data moves, who supports the connection and how you will test it. A list of integration logos is only the beginning of that discussion.
If your practice needs certified technology for a particular program, check the exact product and version against the Certified Health IT Product List and the program’s requirements. Separately, discuss data handling, access and the applicable business associate agreement. Certification and a suitable daily workflow are both matters to investigate.
Give the small team a realistic rehearsal
Ask the physician to complete a note, the front desk to reschedule a patient and the person responsible for billing to resolve an example exception. Use a fictional patient so the rehearsal can include mistakes without exposing real information.
Try the awkward version of each task. Correct an intake answer after it was submitted. Receive a result that cannot be matched automatically. Have a patient decline the offered appointment. The response to those situations tells you how the system will support the team on an ordinary busy day.
The Health IT Playbook’s selection resources include vendor questions and demonstration scenarios. For a practice that is still preparing to open, our new-practice EHR guide puts these checks into the launch plan.
Questions from small primary care practices
What should a solo physician prioritize? Pay attention to the work you will personally inherit. If you have limited staff, try patient messages, unfinished notes, scheduling changes and billing exceptions yourself during the demonstration.
Should AI scribing decide the purchase? Review it alongside the rest of the clinical workflow. Check how the draft reaches the chart, how you correct it and what the selected package costs. A separate scribe subscription may fit; so may a product that includes it.
Can we improve patient access without changing the EHR? Yes, that can be a sensible first project. Confirm where bookings are written, how staff see messages and what remains manual. The Moxcares AI receptionist page shows the patient-interaction workflow to discuss.
Keep reading
Show us an ordinary day in your practice.
We’ll demonstrate the patient and staff workflows you need, with the plan, clinical seats and connections priced clearly.
Explore Moxcares for primary care