The patchwork
A practice that only does testing
Heather Griffith has nearly twenty years of experience in psychoeducational evaluations. PACE Consulting, the practice she owns, does testing and only testing: autism, ADHD and learning-disability evaluations for children and adults.
That focus made software hard to get right. Over the years Heather used SimplePractice, Thryv, Carepatron, athenahealth and AdvancedMD, and trialed TheraNest and TherapyNotes. The systems with the most features were difficult to customize. The easy ones didn’t have everything she needed.
So she filled the gaps herself: Monday.com to track where each client was in the testing process, Blueprint.ai for AI-generated session notes, Clinicom for mental health screeners, and a separate AI receptionist for a busy phone line. It worked, but it meant paying for several systems, managing all of them, and constantly switching between them.
I often felt like I was trying to make my workflow fit the EHR instead of having an EHR that fit my workflow.
Heather M. GriffithCEO and Owner, PACE ConsultingThe switch
Live in weeks, not months
Heather saw Ona advertised online and decided to try it. The move was quick. Nearly two years of AdvancedMD history, including client charts, visit history, notes, diagnoses, billing records and upcoming appointments, came across in an import that took under an hour. Intake forms went out from Ona that same afternoon. Nine days later the practice’s phone line was running through Ona, AI receptionist included.
Training didn’t take months either. Heather’s Ona representative taught her new features as she needed them, and sat in on a staff meeting to introduce the platform to the whole team.
After my experiences with athenahealth and AdvancedMD, where getting everyone trained and comfortable with the system took quite a bit of time, it was refreshing that Ona didn’t require months of training for me and my staff.
Heather M. GriffithCEO and Owner, PACE ConsultingAI receptionist
An AI receptionist for a busy phone line
PACE’s phone rings a lot, and mostly with people the practice doesn’t know yet: in its first eight weeks on Ona, more than 4 in 5 callers weren’t existing clients. Every one of those calls became a record the team could follow up on.
Ona’s AI receptionist picks up whenever the team can’t. It answered 95% of incoming calls and handled nearly half of all calls start to finish, without anyone on staff stepping in. Callers who want a person can ask to be transferred.
When a new caller wants to get started, it opens their client chart while they’re still on the line, and 1 in 4 new charts at PACE was created that way. It also books and cancels appointments and answers common questions. Together with online booking, that means nearly 3 in 4 appointments booked since mid-October were booked by clients themselves.
Ona also has an integrated AI receptionist. It can create new patient charts, schedule and cancel appointments, and answer common questions in a conversational way. That has been especially useful because our practice gets a high volume of calls.
Heather M. GriffithCEO and Owner, PACE ConsultingOmnichannel
Every conversation, in the chart
Calls, texts, emails and patient portal messages all arrive in Omnichannel, Ona’s shared inbox, and every one of them was filed automatically to a client’s chart or to a record for a new enquiry. When an existing client calls, Ona recognizes the number and puts the call straight into their chart.
I don’t have to go back afterward and manually write a note summarizing every phone call or message.
Heather M. GriffithCEO and Owner, PACE ConsultingScreeners
Screeners built for a testing practice
General therapy platforms come with general-purpose screeners. PACE needed its own measures. Over three days in early October, the practice built 19 scored screeners in Ona, covering autism, ADHD, anxiety, depression, executive functioning and sensory processing. Every completed screener has been scored automatically. Intake packets go out as secure links, and consents come back e-signed.
That flexibility is important for a testing practice because we don’t always use the same measures that a general therapy practice would use.
Heather M. GriffithCEO and Owner, PACE ConsultingFax
Faxes and referrals, handled
Fax is built in, and it matters: about 6 in 10 faxes PACE receives are referrals. Ona reads each fax as it arrives. It picked out the client’s details on 83% of incoming faxes, and it turns faxed referrals into referral records ready for the team.
Tags
Tags instead of a separate tracker
PACE used to follow each evaluation through its stages in Monday.com. Now 16 tags in Ona do that job, from pending intakes to intakes completed, insurance on file and referral on file, right on the appointments.
I can use tags to track clients through our workflow, so I no longer need a separate program just for workflow tracking.
Heather M. GriffithCEO and Owner, PACE ConsultingThe partner
One platform, and a team that says yes
Heather has cancelled several of the services she used to pay for separately, saving the practice hundreds of dollars a month. The team no longer moves between programs to stay organized.
The other difference is the relationship. Heather typically hears back from Ona’s support team within an hour or two, with updates along the way when something takes longer. And when she asks for something Ona doesn’t do yet, the answer isn’t no.
Every time I’ve asked whether Ona could do something, or suggested a feature that would make the platform work better for my practice, the team has either implemented it or shown me how to use an existing feature to accomplish what I was trying to do.
Heather M. GriffithCEO and Owner, PACE ConsultingIf you’re looking for strong AI options, customization, and the ability to consolidate several different systems into one platform, Ona is definitely worth considering.
Heather M. GriffithCEO and Owner, PACE ConsultingFigures come from PACE Consulting’s Ona account between September 9 and November 6, 2026, and are shared with the practice’s permission.