Lost notes and lost messages are, in my humble opinion,a SERIOUS unresolved software problem.
It seems that the programmers have a very difficult time fixing a problem that occurs erratically. On Friday my MA sent a message to me querying a treatment protocol for a patient. The whole message which included a question from her, my reply and her second question was lost. It wasn't in the outbox, deleted, any of my boxes...it was gone. I lost an entire note from Friday and realized it yesterday when I tried to retreive it and send it to the hospital EMR for her admission on Monday. I had signed it with out attatching a billing code because it is a preop visit and included in the global service. Fortunately I did not have any difficulty recalling the necessary information and simply did the note over again.
One work around for the lost note is to assign someone in the office to double check the appointment roster from the day before to make sure that each patient has a note in their chart, but that assumes the doc is doing their charting basically "real time" ( a valid goal of EMR) and also increases the work load for the staff ( not a goal of a good EMR).
Billing is a separate issue. If you ask me it is worth the "expense" of a good billing software which pays for itself easily by simply doing a good job.It costs a bunch in lost revenue to use something that doesn't work well. I use AdvancedMD and the X-link to AC.
I think the lost note and disappearing message problems are much higher priority problems than enhancing the practice management side of AC.
