All behavioral health EMR comparisons
Sunwave vs. BestNotes
When your software decision reaches beyond clinical notes into claims, payments, and financial reporting, take a close look at Sunwave. Our EMR, CRM, and revenue-cycle tools bring clinical and business workflows together for behavioral health organizations. This guide explains that case for Sunwave alongside BestNotes’ clinical, CRM, and billing options.
Why consider Sunwave alongside BestNotes?
Choose Sunwave when revenue-cycle operations are a central part of your platform decision. Our revenue-cycle tools cover eligibility and verification of benefits, claims, remittances, payment posting, and financial reporting. We provide them alongside our EMR and CRM. BestNotes offers clinical records and CRM, with billing options that vary by edition and setup, including BestNotes Fresh and clearinghouse or billing partners. Compare the complete scope your staff will use.
Make billing ownership clear before you choose an EMR
Consider a hypothetical program that documents group attendance, creates a claim, receives a remittance, and follows up on the remaining balance. The clinical note is only one part of that work. Your billing lead also needs a clear way to find claim errors, reconcile payments, and review outstanding balances. Include those responsibilities in the software decision from the start.
Our revenue-cycle tools include claim error detection, remittance matching, patient-balance workflows, and financial dashboards. That breadth is a reason to evaluate Sunwave with both your clinical and billing teams in the room. Define the products, interfaces, and staff responsibilities in your proposed setup so everyone understands how the work will move forward.
How the same operating workflows compare
Product scope
For Sunwave, map your requirements to our CRM, our EMR, our revenue-cycle tools, our telehealth tools, and our alumni-management tools. BestNotes groups Clinical Profile, CRM, calendar, portal, telehealth, outcomes, collaboration, AI, medication, and HR features in its offering. Compare the included products, optional services, external systems, and staff handoffs in each quote.
Inquiry, referral, and admission work
Our CRM includes inquiry tracking, referral-source reporting, call tracking, a live bed board, VOB status, calendars, and pre-admission assessments. BestNotes describes calls, emails, referrals, reminders, staff notifications, conversion reporting, and bidirectional referral tracking; its portal can route website applications into BestNotes. Compare how each setup turns an inquiry into a client record and where insurance, bed, or referral information needs reconciliation.
Clinical record
Our EMR includes assessments, configurable treatment plans, progress notes, scheduling, individual and group appointments, medication workflows, and a client portal. BestNotes’ Clinical Profile lists assessments, individual and group notes, treatment planning, utilization review, discharge documentation, organization-specific content, and updates to its standardized documentation set. Review the forms your program uses, including signatures, corrections, exports, and how attendance and documentation reach billing.
Revenue cycle and billing
Our revenue-cycle tools include eligibility and VOB, claims, remittances, payment posting, error detection, utilization review, self-pay workflows, statements, reports, and a billing portal. BestNotes describes in-house billing through clearinghouse partners and exchange with third-party billing companies, while BestNotes Fresh adds integrated billing capabilities. Identify the billing product, clearinghouse, interfaces, fees, claim-edit owner, and reconciliation process in each proposal.
Telehealth, outcomes, and post-discharge outreach
Our telehealth tools support individual and group sessions, reminders, electronic forms and signatures, and documents linked to the patient record. Our alumni-management tools support scheduled outreach, interaction logs, engagement reporting, and engagement flags. BestNotes describes individual and group telehealth, reminders, electronic questionnaires, trend reporting, and outcome exports. If you need structured post-discharge outreach, compare the coordinator’s workflow, available communications, permissions, and reporting in each proposed setup.
Roles, access, and handoffs
Run the same scenario with admissions, clinical, billing, and leadership users rather than relying on an administrator-only demonstration. Check which role can view or edit each field, how approvals and corrections work, what appears in an audit history, and whether reports reconcile to the underlying record. Obtain the promised permissions, interfaces, and responsibilities in writing.
BestNotes capabilities that matter in this comparison
BestNotes serves behavioral health and addiction-treatment providers, including organizations with multiple locations. Its offerings include clinical documentation, CRM, and billing options. If you are considering BestNotes Classic or Fresh, have the proposal identify the edition and the billing tools and services included. Your requirements should determine the scope you compare with Sunwave.
One BestNotes packaging question deserves explicit attention: a July 2026 BestNotes help article describes New Resilience AI as an integrated CRM enabled by a system administrator through Account Integrations after completing an agreement. It lists referral and contact management, email campaigns, an admissions pipeline, insurance verification, feedback, and analytics, while directing readers elsewhere for pricing. Ask whether a quote includes the CRM described on the main solutions page, New Resilience, or both, and how existing CRM data would move between them.
What a written proposal still has to settle
- Which quoted products and editions cover CRM, clinical records, billing, telehealth, outcomes, and post-discharge outreach? Identify every required module, integration, clearinghouse, and third party.
- In a live demonstration, can each role follow one hypothetical client from inquiry through admission, documentation, a corrected claim, discharge, and follow-up without losing identifiers, status history, or responsibility?
- With our team, map the data your quoted CRM, EMR, revenue-cycle, telehealth, and alumni tools need to share. For BestNotes, identify whether the proposed setup uses its CRM, New Resilience, clearinghouse partners, a billing company, BestNotes Fresh, or another integration.
- Document configuration, data mapping, migration volume and validation, interface ownership, training, go-live support, security review, exports, retention, and termination assistance, including the responsible party and any added fee.
- Compare total cost over the same contract term. BestNotes publishes per-user pricing and offers additional integrations and services; the cost of your setup depends on the options you select. With our team, request a Sunwave proposal covering your required products, interfaces, migration, and services. Include renewal terms and your internal implementation effort when comparing the proposals.
Primary product sources
- Sunwave products: EMR, CRM, RCM, telehealth, and alumni management
- BestNotes product documentation: Behavioral Health EHR, Solutions, and New Resilience AI CRM help article
See the full revenue-cycle workflow in Sunwave
Bring your clinical and billing leads to a Sunwave demonstration, along with a representative service, claim correction, and payment scenario. We will walk through the relevant products and discuss the setup your organization needs. If your next EMR must support the financial work around care, let us show you what Sunwave offers.