The price increase will help pay for the upcoming features on which we are working. The most important right now is to ensure we are HITECH compliant.
HITECH is the part of the ARRA stimulus package earmarking money for providers if they can show "meaningful use" of a "certified" EHR. Neither term has yet to be defined, but will be later this year as required by the law. Thus, we are currently as HITECH compliant as any other program - and by using us compared to other EHR software - means that the HITECH money is for our clients to pocket, instead of simply reimbursing them for purchasing bloated overpriced software.
We anticipate that CCHIT certification will be the "certification" they speak of (though this is not yet a guarantee), but since we suspect that is the reality, we have already applied (and paid 43K to CCHIT) to get CCHIT certified in both ambulatory care and child health. We hope to complete the long and painful process later this spring. In terms of "meaningful" use, we'll need to see how this is defined, but suffice it to say, ensuring we are compliant is our primary goal at this time.
Our secondary goal, on which we've already begun work, is to have a completely integrated, intuitive, and terrific practice management component. Our timeline for this is also to complete it in 2009 (long before the 2011 deadline for getting the maximum reimbursement proposed by the HITECH law - though PM use isn't part of that law).
In terms of "locking in" ones price forever, while we are looking at a new payment portal that would allow users to update their credit card and get warned of pending expiration, the reality is that prices (and our expenses) go up over time. The "lock-in-until-your-creditcard-is-declined-for-automatic-rebilling" concept, seems to be a reasonable way to allow our precious users to pay less over time while still protecting our need to spend money enhancing our products and complying with whatever new requirements are thrown at us (i.e., CCHIT and it's 43K application + 7k each year to remain certified).
Jonathan Bertman, MD, FAAFP President Amazing Charts
