Wound Care Software Demo Checklist: 12 Questions to Ask Every Vendor
The 12 questions to ask during a wound care software demo — offline capability, wound-specific workflows, graft tracking, billing compliance, and the red flags that save you from a bad decision.
Damon Ebanks
Medipyxis
Why You Need a Checklist for the Demo
Software demos are sales presentations. The vendor controls the narrative, the pace, and the scenarios. Every workflow they show you works perfectly — because they built the demo to show you the workflows that work perfectly.
The questions you don't ask during the demo become the problems you discover 6 months into your contract. And by then, you've migrated data, trained clinicians, re-established billing integrations, and signed an agreement that makes switching expensive.
This checklist is designed to break the vendor's script and expose the gaps that matter for wound care. Print it, bring it to every demo, and don't leave without answers to all 12. If a vendor can't answer a question live, that's data.
For the full EHR evaluation framework — including a scoring system and red flags — see our wound care EHR selection guide.
The 12 Questions
1. "Can I document offline and sync later?"
Why it matters: Your clinicians work in SNFs with unreliable Wi-Fi, ALFs with no guest network, and patient homes in rural areas with no cell signal. If the system requires an internet connection to document, your clinicians can't chart at the point of care. They'll chart from memory at the end of the day, and documentation quality will suffer.
Good answer: Full wound documentation, photography, measurements, product tracking, and e-signature work offline. Automatic sync with conflict resolution when connectivity returns.
Bad answer: "Limited offline mode for basic note-taking." Or the classic deflection: "Most of our customers have Wi-Fi." That answer means they've never served a mobile practice.
2. "Show me the wound measurement workflow."
Why it matters: Wound measurement is the clinical foundation of every visit. Length, width, depth, wound bed composition, periwound condition, undermining, tunneling — these are structured data elements that drive treatment decisions, healing trajectory tracking, and billing justification. If measurements are free-text fields instead of structured inputs, you lose the ability to track healing over time.
Good answer: Structured measurement entry with wound bed percentage composition, periwound assessment, and a wound timeline showing trends across visits. Photos captured inline.
Bad answer: Free-text measurement fields in a SOAP note. Photos uploaded as attachments. No wound timeline.
3. "How does graft inventory tracking work?"
Why it matters: Skin substitutes are high-value products that require lot-level traceability from receipt through application to claim. Medicare auditors want to see the chain: when the product arrived, where it was stored, when it was applied, to which wound on which patient, and what quantity was wasted. If your EMR doesn't track this, you're maintaining a parallel spreadsheet — and the spreadsheet always drifts from reality.
Good answer: Product receipt with lot number and expiration, application linked to a specific wound on a specific visit, waste documentation, and automatic claim line generation with the correct Q-code and units.
Bad answer: "We have a product field in the template." Or: "You can integrate with a third-party inventory system." Two systems that must stay synchronized won't.
4. "Walk me through a skin substitute billing workflow end-to-end."
Why it matters: Skin substitute billing is where most wound care denials originate. The workflow must connect documentation (wound measurements, medical necessity, product details) to the correct CPT codes, Q-codes, ICD-10 diagnoses, and modifiers — and verify that all LCD-required elements are present before the claim is submitted. If any link in that chain is manual, it's a denial waiting to happen.
Good answer: Documentation through product application, LCD compliance validation, auto-populated CPT/Q-codes with modifiers, and claim-ready output. The system blocks submission when required elements are missing.
Bad answer: "Billing codes are entered manually by your billing team after the note is signed." Manual code entry on complex wound care claims is the largest source of preventable denials.
5. "What happens when my documentation doesn't meet LCD criteria?"
Why it matters: This question reveals whether the system treats compliance as a guardrail or an afterthought. LCD-aware systems check documentation against Medicare requirements before the clinician signs the note — catching gaps at the point of care, when they can be fixed in 30 seconds, instead of 30 days later when a denial arrives.
Good answer: The system identifies missing LCD-required elements before note signing and blocks completion until requirements are met. They demonstrate it live.
Bad answer: "We have compliance reports you can run after the fact." After-the-fact checking means you discover gaps when the denial arrives 30 days later.
6. "How does routing and scheduling work for mobile teams?"
Why it matters: A mobile wound care practice doesn't schedule appointments — it schedules routes. Clinicians seeing 10-14 patients across 3-4 facilities need schedules optimized for geography, drive time, and facility access windows. Without route-aware scheduling, operations managers spend hours manually planning efficient routes.
Good answer: Visual route mapping, geographic clustering, drive-time optimization, facility window awareness, and mid-day rerouting for cancellations.
Bad answer: "We have a calendar view with appointment slots." A calendar without geography is for a stationary practice.
7. "What does data migration look like from my current system?"
Why it matters: If you're switching from another EMR, your patient records, wound histories, measurements, photos, and billing history need to move with you. The quality of the migration determines whether your clinicians walk into day one with full patient context or start from scratch.
Good answer: Structured data import from specific formats/platforms, specific timeline, clear list of what transfers and what doesn't. Specificity is the signal.
Bad answer: "We can work with you on that." Vagueness means they'll figure it out after you sign the contract.
8. "What's the total cost including implementation?"
Why it matters: The per-provider monthly subscription is the number vendors want you to compare. It's the least useful number. Implementation, training, migration, and add-on modules can double or triple the effective cost.
Good answer: A written year-one total including subscription, implementation, training, migration, and every add-on.
Bad answer: "It depends on your configuration." Push back. Get a year-one estimate for your practice size.
9. "Can I export my data if I leave?"
Why it matters: Data portability reveals the vendor's confidence in their product. Vendors who make it easy to leave are betting you'll stay because the product is good. Vendors who make it hard to leave are betting you'll stay because leaving is expensive.
Good answer: Full data export in standard formats — demographics, clinical records, wound histories, photos, billing data. Specific timeline and cost (ideally $0).
Bad answer: "We can discuss that at contract time." Or silence. Your data is a hostage.
10. "How long until we're fully operational?"
Why it matters: The gap between contract signing and go-live is revenue you're not collecting (or revenue you're collecting less efficiently while running two systems in parallel). Every week of delayed go-live costs a typical wound care practice $5,000-$15,000 in reduced productivity.
Good answer: Specific go-live timeline with milestones. Look for 4-6 weeks for straightforward implementations, 8-12 for complex migrations.
Bad answer: "It varies." Everything varies. The question is whether they can give you the range.
11. "What does your training program look like?"
Why it matters: Clinician adoption determines whether your investment pays off or becomes expensive shelfware. Training should cover both clinical workflows (wound documentation, product tracking, photo capture) and operational workflows (scheduling, billing, reporting) — and it should be available for new hires, not just the initial implementation team.
Good answer: Role-specific training tracks (clinician, biller, administrator), documented materials, and ongoing access for new hires at no additional cost.
Bad answer: "A two-hour training session during implementation." Two hours doesn't cover wound care complexity, and it doesn't help the clinician you hire six months later.
12. "Show me the compliance and audit dashboard."
Why it matters: This question tests whether the system treats compliance as an operational capability or a checkbox. Wound care practices operate under constant documentation scrutiny — LCD requirements, audit risk, denial patterns, and documentation completeness are ongoing concerns, not annual reviews.
Good answer: A live dashboard showing documentation completeness rates, LCD compliance scores by clinician, denial rates by payer, and audit-readiness indicators. Actionable today, not a quarterly report.
Bad answer: "We can build custom reports for that." Custom report development for compliance means it isn't a core function.
How to Use This Checklist
Before the demo: Send these 12 questions to the vendor in advance. This filters out vendors who can't answer them.
During the demo: Start with your questions, not their script. Watch for deflection: "Let me show you something related" usually means they can't answer.
After the demo: Score each answer 0 (can't do it), 1 (partial/workaround), or 2 (native, demonstrated live). Below 16/24 means operational gaps.
Compare across vendors: Same 12 questions, every platform. These surface the differences that matter for wound care — not the similarities that make every demo look adequate.
For the full evaluation framework, see our EHR selection guide. For what a Medipyxis demo covers, see what to expect.
Ready to Run This Checklist Against Medipyxis?
We built Medipyxis for wound care practices that have already been through the cycle of choosing a general platform and discovering the gaps. Every one of the 12 questions above has a concrete, demonstrable answer in the platform — not because we designed to a checklist, but because we built the system while running mobile wound care operations.
Bring your checklist. We'll answer every question live.
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