Software for physiotherapy clinics: diary, records and body chart

Software for a physiotherapy clinic has to solve three everyday things: booking and moving sessions without physiotherapists, rooms and equipment clashing; recording each session in the patient's record, with a body chart that keeps what was marked at each visit; and handling payments and invoices without working out figures by hand.

What a physiotherapy clinic asks of its software

A physiotherapy clinic does not work like a single-visit practice. The same patient comes back several times in a few weeks, sessions can be paid in advance as a session pack, several people share couches and rooms, and what was noted in the previous session has to be to hand in the next one, even if a colleague is treating the patient.

A generic diary copes for the first few weeks. Then come the session packs where nobody knows how many sessions are left, the paper notes that do not turn up when the patient changes physiotherapist, and the room booked twice. If you are searching for a “CRM for physiotherapists”, what you need is the opposite: each patient in a single file, with their sessions, their documents and what they have paid.

This table summarises what to ask for and how Mi Clínica handles it:

Need	What to ask of the software	In Mi Clínica
Rooms, couches and equipment	That it warns you if something is already in use	The diary warns of clashes in practitioner, room or resource.
Records	A physiotherapy record, not a generic one	A physiotherapy tab with history, attendances, progress notes, body chart and files.
Body chart	That what was marked at earlier visits is not lost	It is saved in versions: each visit is kept as a version.
Session packs	That the balance does not depend on noting it down by hand	Not today: Mi Clínica does not sell session packs or deduct sessions.
Team	That each person sees their own part	Permissions by role and, if needed, by person.

Session diary: the next appointment and groups

How to set up a diary with several practitioners, rooms and equipment is covered in the diary of a clinic with several practitioners. In physiotherapy there are also two situations that come up every day:

• The next session, before the patient leaves. In Mi Clínica, the consultation sheet has a shortcut to schedule the follow-up, which opens a new appointment with the same patient and the same practitioner already filled in, ready for you to adjust the day and time and save it. That way the next appointment does not depend on reception remembering.
• Group sessions. A single appointment can bring together several patients: the main patient and their companions, each with their own file.

If a piece of equipment is shared between treatment rooms, set it up as a resource: the diary warns of the clash just as it does with a room or a practitioner.

The physiotherapy record and the session sheet

In Mi Clínica the patient's file holds a general history with allergies, medication, medical history and habits, and a tab for each specialty. The physiotherapy one comes ready-made, with its history, its attendances, the progress notes of each session, the body chart and the files.

Allergies recorded in the general history also appear as a warning in the file header, visible to the whole team: whoever books the appointment sees them too, without accessing the medical record.

At the start of the session, the “Iniciar consulta” (Start consultation) button marks the appointment as “en consulta” (in consultation) and opens the sheet to record the session. From that sheet you can also take a clinical photo without changing screen, and the photos are saved in the patient's file, private by default.

What goes on the sheet is for each physiotherapist to decide. Mi Clínica is management software: it organises and stores what you write, but it does not diagnose or give health advice.

Body chart: each visit, a version

The body chart is the drawing of the body on which the session's areas and annotations are marked. In Mi Clínica you mark on the drawing of the face or the body, with your finger on the tablet or with the mouse, and each mark can be a point, a line, a freehand stroke, a text or an area, with its note.

What matters most for running the clinic is how it is saved:

• Each visit is kept as a version. The body chart is saved in versions, so the map from any earlier session is still there to look at again.
• What is saved is not overwritten. The map for an attendance is not changed or deleted; to correct it, a new version is created starting from the previous one, with the “Partir de esta versión” (Start from this version) button.
• The author and the time cannot be touched. Each version records who made the map and when, and this cannot be changed by hand.

In practice, if the patient moves from one physiotherapist to another, the second has in front of them the map from each previous session and knows who made it, without relying on a screenshot or a notebook.

Session packs and payments

If you sell sessions as session packs, the perennial problem is the balance: if it is noted by hand, sooner or later it does not match the sessions delivered. Today Mi Clínica does not sell session packs or deduct sessions from a balance: sessions are charged and invoiced like any other appointment or quote.

Payments in cash, card, Bizum (a Spanish mobile payment app) or bank transfer are recorded in the program, with no online payment, and invoices are issued with gap-free serial numbers and cancelled with a corrective invoice.

Several physiotherapists: who sees what

As the team grows, the question stops being “who has the diary” and becomes “who sees what”. By default, in Mi Clínica the healthcare professional sees their own diary and their own clinical part, and neither invoices nor manages; “Recepción” (Reception) handles the diary, patients, payments and administrative documents with nothing clinical; and “Administración” (Administration) manages and invoices but does not see the medical record.

If a physiotherapist needs to see the whole team's diary, for example because they coordinate the rooms, that permission can be granted to them alone, without changing anyone else's.

A log records who consults the medical record, with user, date and time. And for running the clinic, the statistics give, per practitioner, their occupancy and what share of their completed appointments have another appointment after them with the same patient and the same practitioner, a useful figure for dividing up diaries without going in blind.

What to check during the trial

A sales demo shows little. A week with your real clinic shows much more. During the trial, do this:

1. Add your physiotherapists, your rooms and the equipment that is shared.
2. Create your treatments in the catalogue with their duration.
3. Book a week of appointments and force a clash to see the warning.
4. Record a session with a body chart and, at the next one, start from that version.
5. Log in as a reception user and check what they see and what they do not.

And bear in mind what it does not do today: automatic reminders to the patient by email, SMS or WhatsApp are being activated and are not sent today, and it has no online booking or online payment. If you are coming from another program, Mi Clínica imports patients and appointments from CSV or Excel with a preview; we explain how to approach the switch in switching clinic management software. A summary of the features is on the Mi Clínica page (in Spanish).