Migration
Moving to Bio6 in 30 days
A four-week migration plan for a clinic changing software: who does what, in what order, and the difficulties to expect along the way.
Changing clinical software is a worrying decision, and with good reason, since your appointments, your records and your billing all live in it. The question is less whether Bio6 will suit you better than whether you can make the switch without losing a day of clinic.
This guide sets out the order of operations, detailed day by day for the first week. It does not describe the on-screen steps, since the help centre already covers those in detail.
Three decisions before you begin
Settle these three questions before starting the first week. Postponing them is the main reason a migration ends up stretching over three months.
Set a specific day on which the old system becomes read-only. Without a date, the two systems coexist indefinitely and the team ends up entering everything twice.
Avoid the beginning of the month if you bill CNESST.
It is rarely necessary to bring over ten years of history. A rule that works well is to migrate active patients from the last 18 months and keep the old system available for consultation for the rest.
Migrating less lets you verify properly.
Name a specific person and free up their time. It is not necessarily the owner: it is often someone from the front desk, since that is where the records are best known.
Week 1: prepare and export
Allow about three hours on your side. The rest is waiting time, which is why the export request goes out on day one.
Day 1: create the clinic and start the export
Two operations, in this order.
Start by requesting your export from your current vendor. This is the longest step and the only one that does not depend on you. Make the request in writing and be specific about what you expect:
- the patient list with contact details and health insurance numbers;
- the appointment history;
- clinical notes, specifying the format you expect;
- open billing balances.
Check your contract the same day. Some vendors charge for the export, others impose a processing delay. It is far better to find this out now than the day before the cutover.
Then create your clinic in Bio6 and fill in its basic information.
Days 2 and 3: invite the team and assign roles
Invite your team members one at a time and assign roles deliberately. The role determines who has access to what, including clinical data. It is not an administrative detail to be settled later.
If you have never reviewed your roles in your old system, this is a good moment. A migration is one of the rare occasions when the whole team agrees to discuss access again.
Days 3 to 7: configure what does not depend on data
While the export is being prepared, set up everything that does not require your records: your opening hours, your appointment types and their durations, your note templates and your billable services.
This work might look postponable, but it really is not. Doing it now saves you having to pick it up again in week 3, when the team is testing the system and every irritant weighs more.
The export often arrives in a format nobody checked, for example one PDF per patient rather than a structured file. Open the file the day you receive it, even if you do not plan to import it until the following week. It is the most expensive unpleasant surprise of the process.
Week 2: import and train
Allow about four hours.
Validate on twenty patients before importing two thousand
Import about twenty records first. They are what will let you check whether accents, health insurance numbers and dates of birth transferred correctly. Once the result is satisfactory, run the full import and compare the counts, not only the number of patients but the number of appointments as well.
Carry the consents over
This is the most common oversight of the whole migration, and it goes unnoticed.
A contact detail is not a consent. An appointment reminder or a form link is only sent on a channel whose consent has been recorded, and the boxes are unchecked by default. You can therefore import two thousand phone numbers without a single reminder being sent, and without any error message telling you.
Train on a typical day rather than on the software
A three-hour session covering every function does not produce good results, since nobody retains the essentials. Train your team instead on how a real day unfolds: open the schedule, open a record, write the note, bill.
A 45-minute group session on test records, followed by individual practice during the week, is usually enough.
Week 3: run in parallel
For one week, appointments are entered in both systems. That is genuinely double work, but it is also the only moment when you can discover discrepancies while a safety net still exists.
It is not about checking in a general way whether the system works, but about verifying four specific things.
| Checkpoint | How to verify |
|---|---|
| The schedule matches | Compare a full day, appointment by appointment |
| Reminders go out | Take a test patient with your own number |
| Notes get signed | One complete note, from template to signature |
| Billing balances | Bill one day in both systems and compare the totals |
The front desk is the best judge. If it manages to spend a full day in Bio6 without reopening the old system, you are ready. If it still needs to consult it, note precisely why: that is your work list before the cutover.
Do not extend the parallel week out of caution. Double entry exhausts the team and eventually creates discrepancies between the two systems. One week is enough. If it reveals a real blocker, fix it and run another full week rather than stretching the period.
Week 4: switch over
The day before. The old system becomes read-only. The date and time are announced in writing to the whole team. You run a final export to pick up anything that changed since week 1.
The day itself. Plan for about 70 % of your usual volume. This is not about emptying the day, but about giving yourself room. Make sure the person responsible stays available and out of clinical work, since that is precisely why they were named.
The following week. Hold two ten-minute check-ins a day, in the morning and at the end of the day, to go over what blocked and what will be fixed that day. These meetings become unnecessary on their own after a week.
The most common difficulties
- Requesting the export on day one and following up in writing
- Validating on 20 patients before importing 2,000
- Carrying consents over at the same time as contact details
- Comparing the number of recurring appointments before and after the import
- Addressing quickly, and privately, anyone who is not on board
- The export is late, since the outgoing vendor has no reason to hurry
- Accents get corrupted on import and nobody notices before the cutover
- Contact details are migrated without consents, so no reminder is sent
- A series of recurring appointments is exported as a single appointment
- A practitioner quietly carries on with their old methods
On that last point, it is rarely a deliberate refusal. Most often a specific function is missing for that person. Asking the question is usually enough to get the answer.
If you are opening a new clinic
In that case, much of this guide does not apply to your situation.
With no data to migrate, only the configuration remains: the clinic, the team and roles, your appointment types and your services. Allow half a day. The guide Opening a new clinic on Bio6 covers the startup steps in order.
Keep two things from the plan above all the same: recording consent from the moment each patient is created, and training on how a day unfolds rather than on the software's full feature set.
Frequently asked questions
Can we switch in less than 30 days?
Yes. A small clinic with no history to migrate can do it in about ten days. What cannot be compressed is your current vendor's export delay and the week of parallel operation. Cut elsewhere if you need to.
What happens to our old records?
You keep the old system read-only for the duration of your retention obligation. That is what allows you to migrate only active patients without losing anything.
Do we have to stop working during the cutover?
No. A day at 70 % of normal volume is enough. Clinics that block a full day generally find they lost a day of revenue for nothing.
What if our vendor's export is unusable?
This does happen, particularly with exports in the form of one PDF per patient. Two options are then open to you: enter active patients manually, which remains feasible for 200 records but not for 2,000, or migrate only upcoming patients and leave the history in the old system. That decision must be made before setting the cutover date.
Who steps in if something blocks on cutover day?
The person responsible for the migration first, for anything to do with procedure. Keep them out of clinical work that day, since that is precisely the reason they were named.
Do patients have anything to do?
No, unless they used a portal with your previous vendor. In that case, notify them a week ahead and restore their access after the cutover. Otherwise the migration should be invisible to them.
Further reading
- Getting started with Bio6, how a day unfolds, useful for week 2 training
- Inviting your team, roles and the access they grant
- Making the most of Bio6's AI, once the cutover has settled
More guides
- Making the most of Bio6's AI in your clinicWhat Cortex, Scribe and clinical relevance actually do, their usefulness in a clinic week, how to deploy them and what precautions to take.
- Opening a new clinic on Bio6Setting up a clinic from scratch, in the order of the startup guide: profile, team, first patient, first appointment, billing.
- Getting started with BioBandA guide for pilot clinics: pairing the band, positioning it, running a first assessment, and reading the measurement correctly.
- Completing the CNESST account of care and treatment (5055) in Bio6The full procedure: create the file, code the month's attendance, check the fields the 5055 requires, submit the period and follow the payment through.
- Reducing no-shows and missed appointmentsWhy a clinic can hold every patient phone number and send no reminders at all, how to choose when they go out, and the cancellation policy that makes the difference.
- Running a successful clinic pilotHow to scope a four-week pilot, define success criteria before starting, choose the participants, and reach a decision you can defend at the end.
- Standardising your assessments with PROMsChoosing the questionnaires, deciding when to administer them, and reading a change in score: what makes results comparable across clinicians and over time.
- Configuring the phone assistantAnswering the calls nobody picked up: the forwarding to set up with your provider, the transfer line, and the thirty-second test that confirms it all works.
- Opening online booking without losing control of the scheduleThe confirmation mode, which services to open first, the booking window, and what to watch during the first month.