Cerbo
The #1 EHR built for Direct Primary Care and functional medicine
What Cerbo does
Cerbo (formerly MD HQ) is a specialized Electronic Health Record (EHR) and practice management system designed for cash-based, Direct Primary Care (DPC), and integrative/functional medicine practices. It centralizes clinical charting, subscription billing, supplement inventory, and patient communication into a single platform.
Where Cerbo falls short
Cerbo is a robust clinical operations tool, not a website builder or top-of-funnel marketing CRM. Practices must build their own marketing websites to handle SEO and brand messaging before seamlessly handing the patient off to Cerbo's secure portal for actual registration.
How we set Cerbo up
A prospective patient visits a Direct Primary Care clinic's website to learn about their membership plans. When they decide to join, they click 'Become a Patient', which redirects them to the clinic's dedicated Cerbo Patient Portal. Inside the secure portal, the patient registers their demographic info, completes their medical history intake forms, selects their desired membership subscription, and enters their credit card for recurring billing. Cerbo handles the entire HIPAA-compliant transaction and charting process, while the marketing website remains purely informational.
Integration method: rest-api
What Cerbo already owns
Cerbo (formerly MD HQ) is a specialized Electronic Health Record (EHR) and practice management system designed for cash-based, Direct Primary Care (DPC), and integrative/functional medicine practices. It centralizes clinical charting, subscription billing, supplement inventory, and patient communication into a single platform.
Primary users: Functional medicine practitioners, Direct Primary Care (DPC) physicians, holistic health providers, and clinic administrators
Typical fit: Solo practitioners and small-to-midsize cash-pay or membership-based medical clinics
Core functions
- Process recurring subscription billing and cash-pay transactions
- Manage highly customizable clinical charting with the 'Chart Parts' templating system
- Provide a comprehensive Patient Portal for intake, messaging, and scheduling
- Manage supplement inventory and integrate directly with Fullscript
- Order and track functional medicine labs (e.g., Genova, Great Plains)
- Conduct integrated telehealth visits and e-prescribing (including controlled substances)
What still has to happen around Cerbo
Cerbo is a robust clinical operations tool, not a website builder or top-of-funnel marketing CRM. Practices must build their own marketing websites to handle SEO and brand messaging before seamlessly handing the patient off to Cerbo's secure portal for actual registration.
Does not offer a built-in CMS or website builder for public-facing marketing pages.
Lacks an open, public-facing developer API or webhooks for building custom headless registration flows on a marketing website.
Native website capture relies entirely on linking out to the Cerbo-hosted Patient Portal, which cannot be fully white-labeled to match custom CSS.
Advanced top-of-funnel marketing automations and drip campaigns must be handled by external marketing software.
Website and CRM integration surface
Native website path
Cerbo provides a unique, secure Patient Portal URL for each clinic. Practices typically place 'Patient Portal' or 'Book Appointment' buttons on their website that redirect users to this hosted environment, though some basic iframe embedding is possible for scheduling.
Developer surface
- Public API
- Yes
- API style
- rest-v1
- Auth
- basic-auth
- Webhooks
- Yes
- Rate limits
- Documented
- Sandbox
- No
Cerbo's public docs recommend rate-limiting the extended-details endpoint to 20 calls per second and cap list endpoints at 100 records per page.
Integration patterns that make sense
Native First
FitWhen a practice wants a secure, HIPAA-compliant patient onboarding and scheduling flow without writing custom code or assuming compliance liabilities.
The clinic adds prominent call-to-action buttons on their marketing website that link directly to the Cerbo Patient Portal. The patient creates an account, fills out intake forms, and books their visit within Cerbo's secure, hosted environment.
Api First
LimitedNot applicable, as Cerbo does not currently offer an open developer API for public website integrations.
Because there is no open API, developers cannot natively sync real-time scheduling data or build headless registration forms directly on the main website.
Hybrid
FitWhen a clinic wants to capture basic lead information (like a newsletter signup or contact inquiry) before the prospect is ready to officially register as a patient.
The marketing site uses a standard form builder to capture non-PHI lead data for email marketing. When the lead is ready to become a patient, an automated email directs them to the Cerbo Patient Portal to complete their secure registration and select a membership tier.
Data objects your stack has to preserve
Create
Patient (via Portal), Appointment (via Portal)
Read
Schedule (via Portal), Lab Results (via Portal), Invoices (via Portal)
Update
Patient Demographics (via Portal)
Who usually fits a Cerbo-centered website rebuild
Use this section to decide whether Cerbo should stay behind the website before you narrow into an industry route.
Best fit
- - Teams already running Cerbo as the system of record
- - Operators who need stronger qualification before data reaches Cerbo
- - Businesses that need a public site and intake flow shaped around health wellness demand
What operators complain about
- We struggle with the system's steep learning curve and obscure keyboard shortcuts needed to build charting templates efficiently.
- Our team gets frustrated by the limited custom reporting features, making it hard to pull specific financial or clinical data without workarounds.
- We lose time dealing with the clunky interface when trying to resolve complex billing issues or adjust custom subscription plans.
- I am frustrated that we are charged additional fees for minor customizations to our EHR intake forms or workflows.
- Our front desk team struggles to navigate the lab integration screen when we have multiple lab results, as the filtering options can feel overwhelming.
- We complain internally that training new staff is difficult because live training is limited, forcing us to rely on watching long, pre-recorded videos.
Technical trust before you connect the stack
Native path
Patient Portal URL link
The website should only promise the Cerbo handoff paths that are publicly documented.
Auth model
Basic auth
Cerbo documents Basic authentication for tenant-scoped REST API calls; portal logins stay inside the hosted patient experience.
API surface
REST v1 + webhooks
Cerbo publicly documents `/api/v1/` endpoints and configurable HTTPS webhooks, so custom server-side integrations should stay inside those published contracts.
Auth: Cerbo does not provide public OAuth or API keys for custom web development. All secure authentication is handled strictly via the Cerbo Patient Portal for patients, or the provider login for clinical staff.
Data flow: Data flow from the website is essentially a URL handoff. The marketing site passes the user to the Cerbo portal, where all data entry, validation, payment processing, and database storage occurs securely.
Security: By routing all patient registrations, health questionnaires, and payments through the hosted Patient Portal, the clinic's main website is completely removed from HIPAA compliance scope, significantly reducing legal liability.
Also in the evaluation set
If Cerbo is on the table, these adjacent systems usually come up too. Use the CRM Scorecard to decide whether you need a horizontal CRM, a vertical operating system, or a cleaner connection between both.
Cerbo by industry
How Cerbo gets configured for specific operating patterns.
beauty-studio
Cerbo is built for clinical operations, not a full marketing site. We keep seeing weak top-of-funnel pages dump vague requests while the real onboarding should start in Cerbo's hosted Patient Portal.
See the setupfunctional-medicine
Cerbo teams usually feel the leak on the first response. We keep running into this problem: the website gets interested people, but my team still has to spend too much time figuring out who is actuall
See the setupmartial-arts
Cerbo is built for clinical operations, not a full marketing site. We keep seeing weak top-of-funnel pages dump vague requests while the real onboarding should start in Cerbo's hosted Patient Portal.
See the setupmed-spa
Cerbo is built for clinical operations, not a full marketing site. We keep seeing weak top-of-funnel pages dump vague requests while the real onboarding should start in Cerbo's hosted Patient Portal.
See the setupphysiotherapy
Cerbo is built for clinical operations, not a full marketing site. We keep seeing weak top-of-funnel pages dump vague requests while the real onboarding should start in Cerbo's hosted Patient Portal.
See the setupyoga-studio
Cerbo is built for clinical operations, not a full marketing site. We keep seeing weak top-of-funnel pages dump vague requests while the real onboarding should start in Cerbo's hosted Patient Portal.
See the setupNot sure if Cerbo is the right fit?
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