Best EHR for Group Therapy Practices

• Documentation Templates (SOAP, DAP, progress notes) - Group practices need consistent note structures across multiple clinicians. Without platform-enforced templates, documentation quality varies by provider, which creates compliance risk and slows billing when notes are incomplete or inconsistent.
• Scheduling and Automated Reminders - With multiple providers manual scheduling errors are expensive; automated reminders reduce no-show rates without adding front-desk workload, which matters more as session volume grows.
• Insurance Billing and ERA/EOB - Group practices billing insurance across multiple providers need clean claim submission, automated eligibility verification, and ERA/EOB reconciliation to close the loop on every claim. Without this integration, revenue leakage accumulates through manual billing errors and missed denials.
• Telehealth — Individual and Multi-Client Sessions - Virtual care is now standard across behavioral health; for multi-provider practices that also run group sessions, the ability to handle both 1:1 and multi-participant video calls within the same scheduling and billing workflow matters — a separate tool for each session type adds coordination overhead that compounds as the team grows.
• Client Portal with Intake Forms - Paperless intakes ensure clients complete consent forms and assessments & provide insurance or payment details before their first session, keeps records complete from day one, and reduces the administrative back-and-forth that slows new client onboarding in high-volume practices.
• Role-Based Permissions for Clinicians, Administrators, and Billers - In a multi-provider practice, not every staff member should have access to every client record or billing detail. Granular permission controls reduce liability, protect PHI, and prevent accidental errors by front-desk staff who don't need clinical record access.
• Centralized Client Records Across Providers - A single longitudinal record follows the client across every provider they see within the practice — whether in individual, group, or specialty sessions — ensuring continuity of care, seamless care handoffs, and eliminating the need for providers to manually coordinate documentation.
• Reporting and Analytics for Performance, Utilization, and Revenue - Practice owners and clinical directors managing multiple providers need visibility into session volume, provider productivity, and revenue by service line to manage the business — not just individual caseloads — and platforms with only basic reporting create a visibility gap that grows more costly as headcount increases.

Group therapy practices evaluating EHR platforms should apply the following criteria in roughly this order of priority. Each criterion distinguishes platforms meaningfully at the practice sizes where it matters most.

1. Practice Size Fit (solo vs. group) - Confirm that the platform is architecturally designed for your team size, as some platforms built for solo providers add multi-provider features as afterthoughts. Ask vendors: how many providers does the typical customer on my plan have, and what happens to pricing and functionality when I add provider 6 or provider 11?
2. Insurance vs. Cash-Pay Billing Support - If the practice bills insurance, verify that the platform handles claim submission, ERA/EOB reconciliation, and eligibility checks natively or via a tightly integrated clearinghouse — not through a manual export process. If cash-pay only, verify superbill generation and payment processing are included.
3. Group Session Workflow Support - If your practice runs group sessions — where multiple clients attend the same appointment — do not just ask whether the platform “supports group appointments.” Ask whether a single session can generate individual client records and insurance claims without a separate note per client. This distinction separates platforms built for group care delivery from those that allow group scheduling but require manual per-client documentation after every session.
4. Documentation Template Depth - Confirm that SOAP, DAP, progress note, and any specialty-specific templates are available in the base plan, not as add-ons. Ask whether templates are customizable per provider or per service type.
5. Implementation Complexity - Group practices switching from another EHR face data migration risk — ask each vendor which source systems they migrate from, what data types transfer, and what the typical timeline is. A free trial is common; use it to run through a real onboarding scenario with your team.
6. Streamlined Provider Onboarding - As the team grows, new clinicians need to reach full productivity quickly. Evaluate whether the platform provides templated workflows, guided setup, and a support model that can handle onboarding at volume — not just one-time implementation help.
7. Multi-Location and Multi-Program Support - Practices operating across more than one office or running multiple programs (e.g., outpatient + IOP) need scheduling and reporting that can be segmented by location or program. Confirm this is native, not a workaround.
8. Role-Based, Customizable Permissions - Verify the number of distinct roles available and whether access can be scoped to specific record types, billing functions, or client populations. Two-role systems (admin/clinician) are often insufficient for practices with dedicated billing staff.
9. Secure Shared Client History Access Across Providers - Ask how the platform handles shared clients — can two providers each access the same client record, add notes independently, and see the other's documentation?
10. Flexible Appointment Types with Multi-Timezone Support - Confirm support for multiple appointment types (individual, group, intake, telehealth), and verify whether the platform handles multi-timezone scheduling for practices with providers or clients in different regions.

Small Group (2–5 providers)

Primary recommendation: SimplePractice or Healthie — depends on billing complexity and role needs.

Depends on team size and billing complexity. Small multi-provider practices with 2–4 providers and consistent insurance billing may find SimplePractice sufficient — it offers fast onboarding, clean documentation templates, and a familiar interface that minimizes training overhead for new teams.

TherapyNotes is worth a close evaluation for small insurance-based behavioral health groups: its real-time eligibility verification, automated payment posting, and 24/7 phone support make it one of the strongest billing platforms in the behavioral health market. Factor the AI scribe add-on ($40/month per clinician) and Premium Telehealth add-on ($15/month per clinician) into total cost modeling before committing.

Practices in this tier that bill insurance across multiple payers, also offer group sessions, or expect to add providers within 12–18 months will find Healthie’s multi-provider infrastructure a better long-term investment. The additional setup time relative to SimplePractice or TherapyNotes pays off when operational complexity increases — and native group charting eliminates what can become hours of post-session documentation work for practices running group visits regularly.

Scaling (6–10+ providers)

Primary recommendation: Healthie for practices that need scalable role permissions, multi-location scheduling, and native group session charting.

Healthie is the clearest fit for group therapy practices at this size. Role-based permissions with multi-tier access (admin, provider, billing, care team), multi-location scheduling, native group charting that generates individual records and claims from a single session, provider- and org-level reporting with exports, and a full API (an add-on on the Group and Enterprise plans) for custom integrations provide the infrastructure to manage a growing team without a platform migration.

TherapyNotes supports group and enterprise configurations and handles insurance billing at scale.

SimplePractice is not well-suited to this tier.

Group therapy practices operate across cash-pay, insurance-based, and hybrid billing models, and the choice of EHR has a direct impact on billing efficiency at each model.

• Cash-pay practices need superbill generation, payment processing, and client invoicing in one place. SimplePractice and Healthie both handle this well. TherapyNotes is built with insurance billing as a core workflow; cash-pay functionality is available but the platform is oriented toward insurance.
• Insurance-based practices need electronic claim submission, ERA/EOB reconciliation, real-time eligibility verification, and A/R tracking. TherapyNotes includes ERA/EOB and automated payment posting; the 25¢ per electronic claim transaction fee should be factored into total cost modeling for high-volume practices. Healthie handles CMS-1500, superbills, and ERA/EOB via partner integrations. SimplePractice offers standard insurance billing workflows and is best suited to practices with consistent, single-payer billing rather than complex multi-payer scenarios.
• Hybrid models billing both cash-pay and insurance across multiple providers need a platform that can manage both simultaneously — segmenting by client, provider, or payer without manual workarounds. Healthie is the strongest fit for this model given its multi-provider architecture and billing flexibility. Practices considering TherapyNotes for hybrid billing should verify how the platform handles mixed billing workflows across providers.

Understanding setup complexity before committing is especially important for group practices, where implementation affects multiple staff members and carries data migration risk.

Healthie — Low/Moderate

Practices can go live quickly using Healthie's out-of-the-box configuration, or invest in a more tailored setup built around their specific workflows — establishing role-based permissions, configuring appointment types and specialty-specific templates, connecting billing integrations, and building out reporting structures. For practices with multiple provider types, complex billing workflows, or multi-specialty coordination needs, this configuration investment pays off — but practices should plan for a 2–4 week setup timeline and actively use Healthie's onboarding support, which is included on the Group plan. Assisted data migration from a prior EHR is available with onboarding support.

SimplePractice — Low

Designed for fast-start deployment, SimplePractice can be operational quickly for solo providers and small teams with uniform workflows. Data migration from a prior EHR is supported. The limited configuration surface means setup is fast but customization headroom is also limited. Support is via chat and email; free credentialing support is available at sign-up.

TherapyNotes — Low

Structured, guided workflows and minimal configuration make TherapyNotes one of the faster platforms to deploy for behavioral health groups with straightforward documentation and billing needs. On data migration: TherapyNotes imports client demographic and insurance information at no charge from a named list of source EHRs (including SimplePractice, TheraNest, Kareo, and TherapyAppointment), but cannot import clinical notes, treatment plans, billing history, or calendar data — those transfer as PDF uploads to client charts. Practices with significant historical clinical documentation should factor this limitation into their switching decision. Current Group plan pricing is $89/month first clinician + $60/month per additional; add-ons for AI documentation ($40/month per clinician) and Premium telehealth ($15/month per clinician) increase total cost meaningfully for larger teams.