James,
It goes without saying that we are well into the ?subjective? area; these are just my opinions, and understand that I don?t speak for physicians, AC users or really anyone but myself.
1. This is not an issue of ?doctors vs. programmers? or who has a tougher job. No one is saying that this is easy. Users are stating that we are anxious to have the promised upgrades to the program, anxious to have them within the promised time frame, and anxious to receive information about delays as they become available. We would also like to make our priorities in the area of program development known to the company, and have an impact there. Although AC is not perfect in these areas, I think they are significantly better than most of the ?big guys? in the software world. But EMR development is a fast moving target, and while there are some terrible products out there, other companies (e.g. Practice Fusion) are setting a high bar with regard to development speed and customer responsiveness. As I have said before, we all have a stake in the success of AC, and I think we should keep pressure on the company to continue to perform at a high level.
2. With regard to government intervention, in my opinion the issue is not so much ?bad ideas? as it is ?bad implementation?. I think physicians are slow to move to electronic records for many reasons. Just one reason is the high cost of doing so. A ?stimulus? program (really, a ?partial reimbursement? program) is appropriate to encourage the transition. What followed enactment was an ongoing series of mandates and requirements, many of which are still to be written and many of which are worse than useless. I am probably in the minority of physicians with the view that the government does have an important role to play in this process. I just think they are continuing down a road of very poorly implementing some good underlying ideas. And yes, the software industry takes some blame for this as well. Overall the quality of their products in this area is poor; I am not speaking of AC now, but most EMR?s are inadequate. Plus, they are taking advantage of the situation: the software is a relatively small part of the cost of EMR implementation to the physician. But these companies greedily price themselves close to (or exactly at!) the level of the stimulus rebate, hoodwinking many of our colleagues into thinking ?well, we are getting it back anyway?.
At the end of the day, we (and AC) are left to work our way through this.
Last edited by JBS; 03/14/2011 11:32 AM.
