Thank you all for the great posts. As a solo doc, having a clean, precise, intuitive and inexpensive EMR is paramount to my success. Heck, the current prediction is that I (being solo) will not last 5 years. I am the only solo primary care left in my area (those who jumped ship could now kick themselves but there is no going back). I have succeeded I believe because I have my own patient base that likes the way I do things. They stick with me because we "match". I strive to keep things down to earth, personal, simple and fun. I lost some patients when I gave up hospital practice but I have gained far more who are sick and tired of voice mail and having to see a different "provider" every visit. Sure, I have had to add a few ancillaries in order to remain profitable (things I swore 10 years ago I would never do) but they really have not changed the overall complexion of my practice. That is why I am so disappointed with the direction I see AC heading. I do not want to have to change but, if we no longer fit, then I will have to find something that does. I personally do not want the PM. I have a PM program already, do my own in house billing and feel it is a trivial thing to have to enter info twice (the majority of it is only re-entered once, when a new patient's info is first gathered.) The time that has been freed up for my office staff in other areas more than makes up for the time it takes to do a duplicate entry.
My PM program now has an EMR side and it sucks. But, they are separate programs. I can still just have the PM without it being all bogged down by the EMR which I would not use.
And, James, how many of those new users to which you refer, who were swayed to purchase AC because of the upcoming PM, are now those on the boards complaining about Eprescribing, having to purchase new hardware, having trouble with installing, system crashes, etc.? I have never ever seen so much negativity and complaining on the boards as I have this last year. It used to be people came on and got their questions easily answered, made requests for simple additions or fixes and extolled the virtues of AC. Not anymore. I understand how the government forced many of the changes. I too have to deal with these changes everyday. They bog down my practice and force me to practice a little differently but they have not led to patients leaving my practice. Somehow, some way, there has to be a middle ground. There has to be a point where AC simply says "just because everybody else is doing it, we are not". There has to be a time when AC mans up and says "we are not doing that to our loyal customers".
I will now shut up.
