Ask a pediatric practice manager whether they need a CRM and you'll usually get one of two answers. "We have an EHR, that's our CRM." Or: "Yes, because we keep losing families before their first visit and nobody can tell me where our new patients come from."
Both are right. A pediatric practice has two very different kinds of "customer relationship" work, and they belong in different systems. This guide separates them, shows what your EHR and patient-engagement tools should already be doing, and then walks through building the piece most practices are missing: a simple pipeline for new and expecting families, before they're patients.
The two halves of a pediatric CRM
Half one: families who are already patients. Well-child visit recalls, vaccine catch-ups, sick-visit follow-ups, sports and camp physicals, overdue balances. This is clinical and billing data. It is protected health information, and in the US it falls under HIPAA. It belongs in your EHR or practice management system, plus whatever patient-engagement tool you use for reminders and messaging, and every vendor that touches it should have signed a business associate agreement (BAA) with you.
Half two: families who aren't patients yet. Expectant parents choosing a pediatrician, families who just moved to town, a parent who called about a new-patient appointment and never booked, referrals from an OB office. Most EHRs are bad at this, because there's no chart yet. So it ends up in a front-desk notebook, a shared inbox, or the memory of whoever answered the phone.
If you're losing families, it's usually in half two. If your schedule has holes, it's often half one: recalls that never went out.
Half one: make sure your existing tools are actually doing the job
Before building anything, check these. Most of them are settings, not new software.
- Well-child recall lists. The AAP's Bright Futures schedule sets the visits: the newborn visits (in hospital and at 3 to 5 days), then 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 24 and 30 months, then yearly from age 3. Pediatric-focused systems such as Office Practicum and PCC, and general ones like athenahealth and eClinicalWorks, can produce a list of children who are due or overdue. Ask your vendor to show you the report, and who on your team runs it each week.
- Automated reminders. If your EHR doesn't send texts that parents answer, a patient-engagement tool (Weave, Luma Health, Klara and others) usually sits on top of it. Check they've signed a BAA and that replies land somewhere a person reads them.
- Sports and school physical season. Pull a list in spring of children aged 11 to 17 with no visit in the past year, and message them before July.
- No-show follow-up. A missed well visit should create a task for the front desk, not just a line on the schedule.
None of this needs a new app, and you shouldn't put this patient data in a homemade tool. Keep half one where it is, and make the existing system work harder.
Half two: the new-family pipeline
This is where a small custom app helps, because no off-the-shelf pediatric system is built around prospective families, and a general sales CRM like HubSpot or Pipedrive feels wrong for a medical office (deals, quotas, "closed won").
What the front desk actually needs is short:
- One place every inquiry lands. Website form, phone calls logged by staff, OB referrals, prenatal "meet the doctor" requests.
- A stage for each family. New inquiry → contacted → meet-and-greet booked → attended → first visit booked → became a patient (or lost, with a reason).
- A follow-up date on every open family, so nobody drops off because the person who took the call was off on Friday.
- Where they heard about you, so you know whether the OB referrals, the Google profile or the hospital list actually bring families in.
- A weekly view for the practice owner: new families this month by source, and how many reached a first visit.
Keep the data minimal
Even before a child is born, information a practice collects about a family can count as health information. So keep this pipeline to contact and admin details: parent name, phone, email, expected month (not a due date), insurance carrier if they volunteer it, source, stage, next follow-up, and notes about scheduling only. No symptoms, no medical history, no child's chart. When a family becomes a patient, they move into the EHR and the pipeline record just says "became a patient".
Check this list with whoever handles compliance for your practice before you start. If any tool will hold patient information, ask the vendor about a BAA first.
Building it, step by step
Here's how this looks in Mythex, the AI app builder I work on. You describe the app in plain English and it writes the code, adds a Postgres database and publishes it, so the same steps work as a spec for any builder or for a developer.
Prompt 1: the data.
Build a new-family pipeline for a pediatric practice. Each family has: parent name, phone, email, expected month or child's age, insurance carrier (optional), source (website, phone, OB referral, hospital list, friend, Google, other), referring OB office (optional), stage (new inquiry, contacted, meet-and-greet booked, attended, first visit booked, became patient, lost), lost reason, next follow-up date, assigned staff member, and scheduling notes. Add a table of OB offices with name, contact and phone.
Prompt 2: the front desk screen.
Make the home screen a board with one column per stage. Each card shows the parent name, source, and next follow-up date in red if it's today or overdue. Add a "Log a call" button that opens a short form and creates a new family in "new inquiry".
Prompt 3: the website form.
Add a public "New families" page with a short form: parent name, phone, email, expected month or child's age, how did you hear about us, and a checkbox to request a meet-the-doctor visit. Show a note that says not to include medical information. Submissions create a family in "new inquiry" with source "website".
Prompt 4: follow-ups.
Add a "Today" list for staff: every open family whose next follow-up is today or earlier, sorted oldest first. When staff mark a call done, ask for the new stage and the next follow-up date.
Prompt 5: the owner's view.
Add a report page for admins only: new families per month by source, how many reached "first visit booked" and "became patient", conversion by source, and a list of lost families with reasons. Add a table of OB offices showing how many families each referred this year.
After each prompt, open the preview and test it as the front desk would: log a call, move a card, submit the website form from your phone. Then ask for changes in plain words, for example "make the follow-up date required when a family is in 'contacted'".
What you get, and the honest limits
What you get: a web app with a real database, a members-only staff area (the app's own sign-in, which the agent builds for your staff), a public form you can link from your website, and a URL on your own domain if you want one. On Pro it can also be packaged as an Android or iPhone app for staff. The code is yours to export.
The limits:
- Mythex has no HIPAA certification and isn't a clinical system. That's why this guide keeps patient data in your EHR and limits the pipeline to admin details. If your compliance person says even this data needs a BAA, use a tool that offers one.
- It won't talk to your EHR out of the box. Moving a family into the EHR stays a manual step. That's usually fine at the volume of a single practice (a handful of new families a week).
- Someone has to own it. A pipeline nobody updates is worse than a notebook. Make one person responsible for the "Today" list, and look at the owner's report once a week at the same time.
For practices with more than one location or provider
If several front desks or providers share the pipeline, a few things matter: each staff member gets their own login, the report page is limited to owners and the practice manager, and families can be assigned to a location. On Mythex's Business plan the whole team works in one shared workspace with roles (admin, editor, viewer), apps that only signed-in colleagues can open, and Google Workspace sign-in if your practice uses Google. Plans and prices are on the pricing page.
A one-week plan
- Monday: run your EHR's overdue well-child report and see how many children are past due. That number tells you whether half one needs attention first.
- Tuesday: write down where new families came from last month, from memory if you have to. If you can't, that's the case for half two.
- Wednesday and Thursday: build the pipeline (the five prompts above take an afternoon), and put the "New families" form on your website.
- Friday: agree who owns the "Today" list, and when the owner looks at the report.
If you want a starting point with pediatric-practice examples already written, there's one at mythex.ai/ai/industry/pediatric-clinic. And whatever you use, keep the two halves separate: patients in the EHR, prospective families in a pipeline someone checks every day.
