Choosing an EHR for Your DPC Practice? Read This First.

The EHR Decision Feels Bigger Than It Is

Ask any DPC Facebook group which EHR to use and you'll get 47 passionate opinions in under an hour. Everyone swears by their system, everyone has a horror story about the one they left, and nobody can agree on anything. It's the DPC version of asking which running shoe is best — the answer depends entirely on your feet.

Here's what nobody tells you during the sales demo: your EHR is only one piece of your clinical workflow. You're also going to be living in a lab portal, a messaging platform, an e-prescribing tool, a billing system, and probably two or three other apps that you haven't discovered yet. The EHR that "does everything" doesn't exist — but the one that plays nicely with everything else does, and that's what you should be optimizing for.

The Contenders (Honest Takes)

Elation

Elation is the darling of DPC for a reason. The interface is clean, the charting is fast, and it's built with primary care in mind — not retrofitted from a hospital system. It handles clinical documentation well and has a solid patient portal. Where it gets tricky is when you need it to do things outside its core competency. Lab integrations can be hit-or-miss depending on your region, and you'll almost certainly need Spruce or another tool for robust patient messaging.

Hint

Hint started as a membership billing platform and has expanded into clinical charting with Hint Clinical. If your practice runs on membership revenue — and most DPC practices do — having billing and charting in one ecosystem is genuinely appealing. The trade-off is that the clinical charting side is still maturing compared to dedicated EHRs, so you may find yourself wanting more flexibility in documentation.

Cerbo

Cerbo is popular with integrative, functional, and concierge medicine practices. It's highly customizable, which is both its greatest strength and its steepest learning curve. If your practice uses specialized intake forms, custom protocols, or supplement dispensing workflows, Cerbo gives you more control than most. If you just want to chart a straightforward sick visit, it might feel like overkill.

Atlas.md

Atlas.md was built specifically for DPC from the ground up. It combines charting, billing, messaging, and even a patient portal into one system. For solo practitioners or small practices that want to minimize the number of separate tools, Atlas.md is a compelling all-in-one option. The trade-off is less flexibility if you want to swap out individual components — you're buying the whole ecosystem.

Others Worth Knowing About

Practice Fusion and Charm show up in DPC practices occasionally, particularly in functional medicine. AkuteHealth is a newer player building specifically for the DPC and functional medicine space. Each has its niche, but the names above are where 80% of DPC docs land.

What Actually Matters When Choosing

Speed of Documentation

You're going to chart 15–25 patients a day. If the charting interface adds even 30 seconds per encounter, that's 10+ minutes a day — nearly an hour a week — lost to friction. During your trial period, chart five real encounters and time yourself. That number matters more than any feature checklist.

Integration Flexibility

Can you connect your lab portal? Your e-prescribing tool? Your messaging platform? The EHR that locks you into its own ecosystem for everything sounds convenient until one of those built-in tools is mediocre. Look for an EHR that works well with the best-in-class tools you actually want to use.

Membership and Billing Fit

DPC billing is fundamentally different from insurance billing. You need membership tracking, not claims processing. Some EHRs bolt this on as an afterthought. Others — like Hint and Atlas.md — build it into the foundation. If you're running a membership-based practice, this is a non-negotiable criterion.

The Honest Truth: Your Workflow Matters More Than Your EHR

Here's the part that EHR vendors don't want you to hear: the best EHR in the world still lives in a browser tab next to six other browser tabs. You're going to switch between your EHR and your lab portal dozens of times per day regardless of which system you choose. The EHR selection matters, but the workflow around it matters more.

That's exactly why tools like Tabflows exist. Instead of hoping your EHR integrates with everything, you bring all your tools — EHR included — into one organized workspace. Your EHR stays the anchor, and everything else arranges around it. No tab gymnastics, no context switching, no lost train of thought mid-encounter.

The best EHR for your DPC practice is the one you can chart fastest in, surrounded by the tools that make it complete. Pick the EHR that fits your documentation style, then build the workflow that makes it seamless.

Stop Tab-Switching. Start Practicing.

Whichever EHR you choose, your clinical day will involve more than just charting. Tabflows makes sure all those other tools — labs, messaging, billing, references — live right next to your EHR instead of scattered across a dozen tabs. Try Tabflows and stop letting your browser tab bar dictate your workflow.