AdvancedMD Integration Services
Almost anything you want connected to AdvancedMD can be. The work is deciding what should flow, and keeping it flowing.
AdvancedMD can connect to almost anything. It publishes a read-only database connection and an open API under its Enterprise and Group Practices tools, plus a marketplace of ready-made connections. What it cannot do is decide what should flow where in your practice, or notice at 6am when a connection quietly stopped. PracticePath connects AdvancedMD to the systems around it, automates the work that spans both sides, and keeps watch on it. Two reasons practices ask: so work moves without anyone retyping it, and so their data can answer a question no single system can answer alone.
What AdvancedMD already gives you.
You have a pairing in mind. AdvancedMD and your scheduling tool, or your lab, or your accounting software. And somewhere along the way, somebody told you no. That no was almost always about effort or budget. It was rarely about whether the thing can be done.
AdvancedMD did not lock its data away. It publishes three routes in and out, listed under Enterprise and Group Practices rather than under any product page, which is why most owners have never seen them.
A marketplace of ready-made connections.
Already done for you. Vendors who have made the connection with AdvancedMD before, covering common ground like patient communication, payments and clinical tools.
An open API.
For anything the marketplace misses. A system can send and receive in real time, which is how the custom work gets done.
A read-only database connection over ODBC.
Your own copy of your own data. Available to larger groups, and the thing that makes reporting across systems possible.
Three doors, all supported, all documented. Almost nobody walks through the second and third, and it is not about cost or permission.
Connecting two systems is solved. Deciding what passes between them is not.
Right now somebody covers that gap by hand. They open one screen, read a number, and type it into another. They have done it long enough that nobody calls it a job. It is just Tuesday. None of that is a failure on their part. Nobody ever decided the work should belong to a person. It landed there because no one wrote down what ought to move, and a human filled the gap, the way humans always do.
Take one example. You connect online booking to the schedule. Fine. Now answer the questions that follow. What happens when the patient picks a slot that was taken forty seconds ago. What happens when they book with the wrong provider type. What happens when the name they type does not match the chart they already have, and you are one keystroke from a duplicate patient record that will follow them for years.
None of those are technical questions. They are questions about how your practice runs, and a vendor on the other end of a connection has no way to know the answers.
The second half is worse. Connections stop. A password expires, a vendor changes a field, a system goes down for an hour. Nothing announces it. The work everyone believes is handled simply stops happening, and the first sign is a number that looks wrong three weeks later.
Examples of what people connect.
Not a menu. These are the ones that come up most often, written as what changes rather than what plugs into what.
Patients getting in
- A patient books online and the slot is held in AdvancedMD, with nobody retyping it
- Coverage gets checked before the visit instead of at the front desk
- Intake forms arrive already filled in and land in the chart
- Reminders and confirmations reflect the schedule as it is right now
- A referral from another practice arrives as a task instead of a fax
Care happening
- Lab orders go out and results come back into the chart on their own
- A telehealth visit creates its encounter without anyone opening a second screen
- Prescriptions and refill requests move without a separate login
- Documents file themselves to the right patient instead of being sorted by hand
Money moving
- Payments post from the card processor without being rekeyed
- Cards on file stay current instead of expiring quietly
- Statements and payment plans reflect today's balance, not last week's
- Claim status from the clearinghouse lands where billing already works
- Deposits reconcile to the ledger without a spreadsheet in the middle
The rest of the business
- Payroll and scheduling sit next to what the practice actually produced
- Accounting sees revenue by location without a manual export
- Your CRM knows which enquiries turned into patients
- Marketing spend connects to the visits it produced
Eighteen examples. There are more, and the useful conversation is usually about the one you already have in mind.
What quietly expiring looks like.
One of these is worth walking through, because it shows how ordinary the money usually is.
Cards on file live with your payment processor. Patients live in AdvancedMD. Nothing joins the two, so nothing knows that a card is about to expire until a charge fails. At one practice, 171 patients were sitting on cards that had already gone stale. Nobody had done anything wrong. There was simply no report that could see both sides at once, and no alert because no system owned the question.
Connecting the two turns a quarterly surprise into a weekly list of names at the front desk. The fix is not clever. It just needs someone to notice the question was never being asked.
Moving information is half of it.
Get two systems talking and all you have done is put the same information in two places. The value arrives when something happens on its own once it lands.
Here is the part nobody owns. AdvancedMD automates work inside AdvancedMD, and it does that well. Your other systems automate work inside themselves, and they do that well too. The work that spans both belongs to neither vendor, so it falls to a person, and the person becomes the automation.
Three shapes of it come up over and over.
Something in one system starts work in another.
Coverage comes back inactive from the eligibility check, so a task lands at the front desk two days before the visit rather than turning into a denial six weeks later.
A rule watches both sides and acts on the difference.
A card in the payment processor expires next month and the patient has an appointment in three weeks, so the name appears on a front desk list while there is still time to ask.
Work that only exists because two systems disagree.
Reconciling a deposit against a ledger, checking one screen against another, chasing what did not match. That work is not automated. It stops existing, because the disagreement stops happening.
We also connect to automation you already run instead of replacing it. If AdvancedMD's own tools already handle a step, or a vendor's product already does its job, that stays. What we add is the part that reaches across, and the watching that tells you it is still running.
AdvancedMD Automation Services covers the work inside the system. This page covers the work between systems. Most practices need some of each, and the second one is usually the part nobody has looked at.
Each system is right about its own piece and blind to the rest.
Integration is not only about work moving. It is also what makes a real answer possible.
Payroll knows what your staff costs. Accounting knows what you spent. Your marketing knows where the patient came from. AdvancedMD knows what happened at the visit and what was billed. Any question that spans two of them has no home.
How much of the capacity you pay for turned into revenue. What a referral source is worth a year later. Which staffing level produces the best collection rate. None of those live in one system, and none of them are reporting problems until the systems can see each other.
That side of the work has its own page. AdvancedMD Reporting Services covers what gets answered once the pieces are next to each other.
A decision, not just a connection.
Before anything is wired, we agree what flows, in which direction, what wins when two systems disagree, and what happens in the odd cases. That conversation is most of the value.
Name two systems, then the smallest one first.
Thirty minutes, free. Name the two systems that annoy you most. We will tell you whether it is a ready-made connection, a custom one, or a process change that removes the need entirely.
The look. We map what actually moves by hand today, who touches it, and what it costs in hours and in errors. You get that back with numbers on it, whether or not you go further.
Then it runs and stays watched. Connections are put in place one at a time, smallest first, each one watched from the day it starts.
Two reasons to close this page.
If nobody in your practice retypes anything, checks a second screen a machine could check, or reconciles by hand, you do not need us.
If your systems already talk and the problem is what to do with what they say, start with the reporting side instead.
If part of every day goes into being the glue between two systems, and you plan to change how that work runs rather than just confirm it is a problem, we are worth your time.
Somebody told us AdvancedMD will not connect to our system. Is that right?
Usually what was meant is that no ready-made connection exists, which is a different thing. AdvancedMD publishes an open API and a read-only database connection, so the question is normally effort and cost rather than whether it is possible.
Does AdvancedMD have an API?
Yes. AdvancedMD publishes an open API under its Enterprise and Group Practices tools, alongside a marketplace of ready-made connections and a read-only database connection for larger groups.
What is the AdvancedMD ODBC connection for?
It gives a practice read-only access to its own data outside the reporting screen. Larger groups use it to keep their own copy of their data, which is what makes reporting across systems possible.
How long does an AdvancedMD integration take?
A ready-made connection can run within days. A custom one takes weeks, and most of that time goes into agreeing what should happen in the unusual cases rather than into the connection itself.
Do we have to replace any of our systems?
No. AdvancedMD stays where it is. We connect what sits around it, and nobody migrates or learns new software.
Is integration the same as automation?
No. Integration moves information between systems. Automation decides what happens once it arrives. Most practical jobs use both.
Can you automate work that crosses two systems?
Yes, and that is usually where the time goes. Each vendor automates inside its own product, so anything that spans two of them falls to a person. Cross-system rules are the part we put in place and watch.
What happens when a connection breaks?
Every connection we put in place reports whether it ran and what it could not handle, and exceptions go to a named person the day they occur. A connection that stops silently is worse than one that never existed.
Will this create duplicate patient records?
Only if nobody decides the matching rules first. Deciding how two systems agree on the same person is one of the first things settled, and it is a common reason connections go wrong.
Is patient data safe when systems are connected?
That depends on the connection and the vendor at the other end, not on integration as an idea. Any route we use has to meet the same handling standards as the systems it joins.
Where should we start?
With whichever thing gets retyped most often. It is usually the cheapest to stop and the easiest to measure.
Name the two that annoy you most.
Book 30 minutes. Tell us which two systems make somebody retype, and you will leave knowing what it takes to stop it.
Grab 30 minutes with us →Everything on this page about AdvancedMD comes from AdvancedMD. The rest of what we do on it is here.
AdvancedMD is a trademark of AdvancedMD, Inc. PracticePath is an independent service and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by AdvancedMD, Inc.