What is a Frankenstack?

Your software stack is costing more than you think. Disconnected systems waste 2.5 hours per day, drive 14% claim denials, and quietly drain $50,000 per provider each year.

The cause behind all of this inefficiency?

A Frankenstack.

Frankenstack

NOUN • fran·ken·stack • /ˈfraNG-kən-stak/

Definition: A collection of disconnected software systems used to run a medical practice. A Frankenstack forms when separate tools—such as an EHR, practice management system, patient communications platform, online scheduling tool, payment processor, reputation management software, and billing solutions—are added over time to solve individual problems but were never designed to work together.

The result is a patchwork of technology that creates duplicate work, fragmented data, inefficient workflows, vendor finger-pointing, and unnecessary complexity across the practice.

How did my practice get here? 

Frankenstacks are built slowly over time.

Each system in your back office was purchased after careful research and evaluation by you or your staff, aimed at solving a specific problem or need. A payment platform that allows patients to pay with a variety of methods. A billing system that can manage blended insurance claims for biopsies, excisions, and cosmetic treatments. A scheduling tool that takes into account annual peak times for appointments throughout the year based on your practice’s location.

These platforms all run smoothly on their own--but when stitched together to form the spine of your back office, the gaps begin to show.

This can look like:

• Your staff is working double and triple time to input patient records, payment preferences, appointments, and staff schedules--but nothing ever seems to line up correctly.
• Your patient no-show rates are on the uptick, due to missing automated appointment reminders or a confusing patient portal.
• Daily maintenance, data protection, and slow IT operations put important PHI at risk and add more work for your staff.

The hidden cost of the Frankenstack

Even worse, your practice will begin to face the hidden costs of the Frankenstack.

• Operational Drag: Your staff becomes the connective tissue between systems--switching screens, re-entering data, chasing one vendor down for support to be pointed to a different one.
• Staffing & Burnout: Burnout is now coming from the workflow, not the workload. Tangled systems create constant cognitive load and drive increased turnover.
• Financial Leakage: Denied claims, slow collections, and redundant subscriptions hide in the space between tools.
• Patient Experience: Patients feel a disconnected office, even if they can’t see why: slower check-in, missed messages, and a clunky digital experience stick out like a sore thumb among their other medical visits.

Workarounds that have become standard procedure

Every practice that's been on the wrong system long enough develops them: the shared spreadsheet tracking what the EHR doesn't report, the extra check-in step added because the system misses something, or the manual verification process created because an integration isn't reliable. What start as small operational fixes can slowly become standard procedure, reshaping workflows around the limitations of the software instead of supporting the practice itself. When nobody questions the workaround anymore, that's usually a sign it's been there too long — and that the practice may be serving the software, rather than the other way around.

Ditch the Frankenstack with Ezderm

If the creep of system mismatches and processes that are held together with glue and good intentions are beginning to impact your dermatology practice, Ezderm is here to help.

In our guide, 4 Signs Your Practice Has a Frankenstack, we take a deeper look at what a Frankenstack is, the challenges it causes, and how you can ditch it--and the inefficiencies it causes.

Download the full guide here.