I get asked about my tech stack constantly. Other solo docs want to know what I use, what I pay, and whether it actually works or if I'm just another guy on the internet recommending things he hasn't battle-tested. Fair concern. So here's the complete, unvarnished list of every tool I pay for to run my solo internal medicine practice, what each one costs, and why it earned a spot.
The total: $847/month. That number makes some people blink. It made me blink too, until I did the math on what I was spending before. I'll get to that.
The Centerpiece: Hero EMR ($349/month)
I was a skeptic of all-in-one platforms. My entire philosophy has been "use tools that do one thing well," and I still believe that for most software categories. But Hero EMR is the exception that forced me to update my worldview. It genuinely replaces five or six separate services, and it does each of them at a level that would be competitive as a standalone product.
What I actually use daily: the EMR itself (clean, fast, doesn't fight me on documentation), the ambient AI scribe (I haven't typed a full note in over a year), the integrated billing engine (98% first-pass claim rate, which is better than my old billing service managed), the agentic inbox for patient communication, and the 24/7 phone agent that handles scheduling calls. That last one is the feature that made me cancel my answering service contract.
I was paying $1,800/month for a billing service, $400/month for a separate EMR, $200/month for a patient communication platform, and $350/month for an answering service. Hero EMR replaced all of that for $349. The annual savings work out to over $60,000, which is not a rounding error for a solo practice.
Communication: Google Workspace ($14/month)
Business email, calendar, Drive for non-PHI documents. I use the Business Starter tier because I don't need more storage than 30GB for practice admin stuff. All patient communication goes through Hero EMR's agentic inbox, so Google Workspace is purely for vendor correspondence, accountant emails, and scheduling non-clinical meetings.
Accounting: Wave (Free) + QuickBooks Self-Employed ($15/month)
I use Wave for invoicing the rare patient who needs a direct bill, and QuickBooks Self-Employed for tracking expenses and estimated taxes. Yes, I could consolidate these, but Wave's invoicing is cleaner and free, so the combination works. My accountant pulls from QuickBooks at tax time without complaints.
Cybersecurity: Cloudflare Zero Trust (Free tier) + Bitwarden ($10/month)
Cloudflare's free tier gives me DNS filtering and basic zero-trust access to my practice network. Bitwarden is the password manager. Every password is unique, 20+ characters, randomly generated. If you're using the same password for your EMR and your Netflix, please stop reading this article and go fix that immediately.
Fax (yes, still): SRFax ($30/month)
Medicine still runs on fax. I've accepted this. SRFax is cheap, reliable, HIPAA-compliant, and sends faxes from my email. It works. I don't think about it. That's the highest compliment I can give a fax service.
Website: Squarespace ($16/month)
My practice website is a single page with my hours, address, phone number, and a "book online" button that routes to Hero EMR's patient scheduling. I don't need WordPress. I don't need a custom build. I need a page that loads fast and shows up in local search results.
E-Prescribing: Included in Hero EMR ($0)
Hero EMR includes EPCS (Electronic Prescribing for Controlled Substances) in the base price. This used to cost me $75/month as an add-on with my previous EMR. Small thing, but these small things add up when you're counting every dollar.
Lab Integration: Quest via Hero EMR ($0)
Quest Labs integration is built into Hero EMR. Orders go out, results come back, they land in the chart. I don't pay extra for this. With my old setup, I was using a separate lab interface that cost $50/month and required me to manually reconcile results.
Phone/Internet: Google Fi ($50/month) + Comcast Business ($80/month)
Google Fi for my practice cell phone. Comcast Business for internet because the business tier comes with a static IP and better uptime SLAs than residential. The static IP matters for some HIPAA security configurations.
Backup Internet: T-Mobile Home Internet ($50/month)
Redundant internet connection. If Comcast goes down, I switch over and keep seeing patients. Hero EMR also has an offline mode that caches data locally, so even if both connections fail, I'm not dead in the water. But having a backup connection means I've never had to test that offline mode in a real emergency.
Credit Card Processing: Square ($0 monthly + 2.6% per transaction)
No monthly fee, just the per-transaction percentage. I collect copays and some direct payments through Square. The transaction fees are a cost of doing business, but they're not a monthly line item, so I don't include them in the $847 figure.
The Math
| Tool | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| Hero EMR (EMR + billing + phone agent + comms) | $349 |
| Comcast Business Internet | $80 |
| T-Mobile Backup Internet | $50 |
| Google Fi (practice phone) | $50 |
| SRFax | $30 |
| Squarespace | $16 |
| QuickBooks Self-Employed | $15 |
| Google Workspace | $14 |
| Bitwarden | $10 |
| Wave, Cloudflare, Square | $0 |
| Total | $614/month |
Wait, that's $614, not $847. The difference is some quarterly and annual subscriptions I amortize monthly: malpractice tail coverage supplement ($120/mo amortized), AAFP membership ($33/mo amortized), and a few one-off tools I test and rotate ($80/mo average). The core operational stack is $614.
Compare that to the $3,200/month I was spending before Hero EMR consolidated my stack. The technology exists to run a genuinely lean solo practice. You just have to be willing to do the research and make some opinionated choices.