> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://www.practiceownersguide.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Choose your EHR and practice management system > A system you can live with for a decade, judged on the dimension vendors don't demo: how cleanly it moves money. **Goal:** a system you can live with for a decade, judged on the dimension vendors don't demo: how cleanly it moves money. The EHR (clinical) and PM (scheduling, claims, payments) usually come bundled, and switching costs make it a ten-year decision. Demos are clinical because the audience is clinicians. Practices bleed on billing. Weight accordingly. ## Shortlist by specialty first Specialty fit dominates everything. Rough map: dental (Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental, cloud entrants like Curve), medical primary care and multi-specialty (athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, NextGen), therapy and behavioral health (SimplePractice, TherapyNotes, CentralReach for ABA), plus specialty-specific systems for derm, ophtho, ortho, and PT. Build a shortlist of 3 from peers in your exact specialty and size, not from search results. ## The money-side evaluation Put these in writing to every vendor, and require demonstrations: * **Claims out.** Which clearinghouse, at what cost, with what scrubbing? Show the rejection workflow end to end. * **Remittances in.** Does it auto-post [835s](/concepts/what-is-an-835)? What happens with files that don't balance, and with PLB adjustments? Can it ingest an 835 generated from a scanned EOB ([how lockbox paper posts](/concepts/lockboxes))? * **Reconciliation surface.** Can it report remittances vs. actual deposits, or does it assume posted = paid? Nearly all assume, which is why [deposit-side reconciliation](/concepts/reconciliation) lives outside the PM system. It needs to export cleanly to whatever does it. * **Eligibility and patient payments.** Real-time eligibility, card-on-file, payment plans, statement costs, and the processing rates. Bundled processing is convenient and frequently overpriced. Can you bring your own processor? * **Data out.** Asked while you have leverage: what do you get if you leave? Full structured export, in what format, at what cost? A bad answer here is information about year eight. ## Contract and implementation Price the true total: subscription, clearinghouse, statements, processing spread, implementation, training, and migration in *and* out. Schedule go-live far enough before opening to [test claims through the full cycle](/guides/get-credentialed). Verify integrations with live references, not the marketing page. **Lemma aside:** Lemma sits on the banking side of any EHR: it reads remittances and deposits, reconciles them, and can feed 835s back into the PM system. EHRs that answer the questions above well make that easy ([docs](https://docs.getlemma.com)).