I purchased AC several months ago for a small satelite home office. Still learning it and because of the small numer of patients I have seen to date, not very proficient. I haven't even purchased the $500 support and hope that I can still do so before November 1st. I wish I could import docuemnts in any format into the template sections of the chart and hope that someday this is fixed. I too was attracted to the price and the company since it provided me an inexpensive way to slowly try an EHR. If PM will be inculded for the same price, that would be great. I do have some concerns, however. Even though I am not very proficient in AC, I have used computers in my practice since the late 1980s. I started with Medisoft back then when it was still a DOS program! The program was simple and great. Support was personal and there was a useful manual. But over time the program became more complex when it became a windows program. Then the compnay was sold to a larger company and then sveral times again to publically traded companies. Now I think it is owned by McKesson. The business model has become one in which new versions are created that are expensive but offer very little improvement. The support shifted from the company to the vendors, there were no longer user manuals because they wanted you to have a yearly support contract. Money is made, not on the intial program fee but by selling services to physicains that involve yearly renewals: support, claim submission, data storage, etc, etc. Gone are the days when you bought the software and you were done. It is a kind of medical industrial complex planned obsolescence. The governemnt will keep making changes that will require a new text or numeric field that needs to be transmitted and the EMR/PM companies will change one line of code and charge you$1000 for the new version of the software. This has been my experience for more than 20 years. The business model for small companies is to grow a business and sell it to a big corporation.The big corporations love it because they don't have to do risky product development but can buy a known brand with a customer base. The small company gets a big payoff and the founder can then retire and move onto the next project. I have seen it over and over for more than 25 years. I fear that's where AC is heading. I am not angry - it is just a fact of life.
What I did was move in the opposite direction. I got off the merry-go-round. As fee for service in a low volume alternative practice, I stopped getting new versions of medisoft, stopped submitting claims for my patients (I never participated in any insurance plans) and opted out of Medicare. I even contmplated going back to the old paper receipts and appointment book. I know most of you guys and gals are not in the position to do the same and I am hoping that the PM module will allow me to move away from Medisoft completely but I pretty much assume that in less than 5 years, AC will go the way of Medisoft. So my AC solution is a temporary improvement because things in medicine will change continually and change often. Sorry but that's just how I see it.
