South Africa

Therapy practice management software for South Africa

The enquiry, the clinical note, the booking and the invoice on one client file, with the front desk kept out of the record. Priced in rands.

Therapy practice management software, for a South African practice, is the system that carries a client from the first enquiry to the signed note and the paid invoice. It should do that without the receptionist reading the session and without the same name being typed into three places. This page explains what to expect from it, what Reach + Within does, and when another South African product is the better buy.

Built with clinicians, for clinicians. Reach + Within was designed at Liberty Home, a working rehab in South Africa, by its CEO Vincent Conlon, and is refined every day by the counsellors, nurses and doctors who use it. The workflows on this page come from that clinical work, not from a boardroom.

Reach + Within is from R500 a month per clinician for therapists and group practices. Admin, finance and management users are free. Rehabs and treatment centres are quoted. Medical aid claims are coming soon, and we would rather you read that here than after a demo.

What practice management should cover

Most small practices start with a diary app, a folder of Word documents and an invoicing tool. Each one works. Together they mean the client’s cell number lives in three places and is right in one. The clinical risk is smaller than the privacy risk: whoever sends the statement can often open the folder that holds the notes.

A connected system fixes the order of work rather than adding a fourth tool:

• The enquiry lands in a pipeline with an owner and a next step.
• Onboarding opens the client file with the details already filled in.
• The session is booked on the same client, in the practice calendar.
• The clinician writes the note, or signs a draft, on that client file.
• The invoice refers to the session, not to the content of the session.
• Admin roles can book and bill, and cannot open the clinical record.

If a product does only one of those well, it may still be the right buy. It is notes software, or booking software. It is not practice management.

How Reach + Within is split

Reach is the front office: enquiries, onboarding, the calendar, invoices, statements and aged balances. Within is the clinical record: history, assessment, treatment plan, session and group notes, documents and consent. You can write the note yourself in your own format. If the client agrees to a recording, Assist drafts the note and you review, edit and sign it. Assist does not diagnose.

Role-based access and an audit trail are included. Sign-in with a second factor is coming soon. Client data is hosted in the EU (Netherlands). You remain the responsible party under POPIA. We act as your operator. The POPIA guide explains what that means in practice, and what to check in POPIA compliant practice software is the buying checklist.

A week in a South African practice

Monday is the people who wrote over the weekend. A fair waiting list has a next contact date and a name next to it, not a colour only one person understands. The waiting list guide is the policy. The software should show the date and the owner.

Midweek is sessions. The note lands on the same client as the booking. If you see adolescents or work with families, the consent form says who may receive a report. A secure family report link shares an approved report, not the session note.

Month end is invoicing. Clients are invoiced directly. Payments, statements and aged balances sit in Reach. If most of your income runs through medical schemes today, that is the honest limit of this product until claims ship.

Records, HPCSA and POPIA

HPCSA Booklet 9 sets out what a health record should contain and how long to keep it. The periods quoted in the text we read are in how long to keep therapy records. Put your own period in the client notice. The software will not pick it for you.

POPIA treats health information as special personal information. That raises the bar for who can see it, why, and where it is stored. Software helps by separating roles, logging access and keeping one copy of the record instead of five. It does not make a practice compliant by itself. Your notice, your consent forms and your habits do that.

Who should look elsewhere

• A practice that needs medical aid claims submitted this quarter. Read our Bookem comparison and look at the South African billing products.
• A solo practitioner who wants the lowest published rand price and only needs a diary.
• A clinician inside a hospital, who should use the hospital’s record.
• A department that needs statutory case management rather than private practice software.

Who it suits

Psychologists, registered counsellors and social workers in private practice, and group practices with a practice manager, who want the enquiry, the note and the invoice on one client. Profession pages go into more detail: psychologists, registered counsellors and social workers. Treatment centres should read rehab software.

The rand price, and what it does not include, is on South Africa pricing. The trial for therapists and group practices is 30 days with demo clients and no card. If you want to see the product first, the demos are short and captioned.

Related reading

• POPIA compliant practice software: what to check
• For psychologists
• South Africa pricing