Branzino HealthMed spas sit in an awkward software gap. Salon and booking apps handle the retail side — packages, memberships, online booking — but they aren't medical records, and injectables, lasers, and weight-loss programs are medical care. Traditional EHRs handle the medical side, but they're built for insurance clinics: wrong workflows, wrong price, and nothing that understands a package of six sessions.
The fix isn't two systems taped together. It's one cash-first EHR set up for how a med spa actually runs. Here's what that setup looks like.
Start with the chart, not the calendar
Booking software makes the calendar the center of the business. For a med spa, the chart has to be. Every injectable visit needs a real clinical note: what was used, how many units, where, lot numbers, and the good-faith exam that justified treatment. If your state board or an attorney ever asks, "we have the appointment history" is not an answer — the chart is.
Set up note templates per service line: neurotoxins, fillers, laser, skin, weight management, IV therapy. A template that pre-fills your standard fields turns a defensible note into a 90-second habit instead of an end-of-day chore.
Consents, photos, and intake in the portal
Aesthetics runs on documentation patients complete before they hit the chair. Put it all in the patient portal:
- Service-specific consents signed electronically and stored in the chart, refreshed on your schedule.
- Medical intake — history, medications, allergies, contraindications — collected before the first visit.
- Before-and-after photos attached to the chart, not living on a personal phone. Photos of patients are protected health information; a camera roll is not a compliant place for them.
Set up billing the way you actually sell
Med spa revenue is packages, series, and memberships — prepaid value drawn down over time. Your EHR's billing should model that directly: sell a 6-session laser package once, redeem sessions against it, and see the remaining balance at a glance. Card-on-file and deposits protect you from no-shows on high-value appointment slots.
What you don't need is a claims engine. Med spas are the purest cash-pay practice there is, and paying for payer machinery is the main reason med spa owners get quoted absurd software prices. If a vendor's answer to "how do I sell a membership?" involves a workaround, keep shopping — that's red flag number one in our cash-pay EHR buyer's guide.
Don't let the retail feel fool you on HIPAA
A med spa with a medical director, prescriptions, or any treatment records is handling protected health information. That means a HIPAA-compliant system and a signed BAA with your software vendor — the same standard as any clinic. General-purpose booking and CRM tools often won't sign one, which quietly rules them out as your system of record.
A realistic setup week
- Day 1: Sign up, add providers and rooms, set your service menu and durations.
- Day 2: Build note templates for your top five services; load consent forms into the portal.
- Day 3: Set up packages, memberships, and gift-card or deposit policies.
- Day 4: Migrate existing client records — done right, this is the vendor's job, not yours.
- Day 5: Run a full dry run: book, intake, chart, photograph, invoice, rebook.
What it should cost
Med spa software quotes range from $200 to $500+ per month once "medical" modules are added — mostly insurance machinery you'll never use. A cash-first EHR shouldn't work that way. Branzino is a published cash-pay price — $29 per provider per month — with charting, scheduling, billing, the portal, and free migration included. See how med spas set Branzino up, or, for the full market picture, what an EHR should actually cost.
