I read the above insightful posts with interest, and was tempted to jump in on several occasions. I decided to wait until the dust settled a little and I had a bit more information. Yesterday at the Baltimore Pri Med meeting, a group of us had a chance to speak with Jon Bertman and representatives of Pri Med (including Dr. Marc Mossier; I was late so unfortunately I didn?t get the names or roles of the others there). Now I feel more comfortable weighing in. For those of you who have spent any time talking to Jon B, some things have not changed. The discussion seemed to be as open as above board as it always has been in the past. Hopefully the Pri-Med people are equally comfortable with this approach.
I will try to summarize some of the facts we heard (which as usual, are colored by my own opinions). If I get anything wrong, I am sure that someone will step in and correct me. Hopefully others that were in attendance will add their take.
We heard something of the history of Pri Med (which has some interesting elements) and little about their parent company (to briefly paraphrase? ?they will leave us alone?). Jon B?s explanation for the sale to Pri Med is on the AC site, so I won?t repeat it. The financial viability of AC was never an issue, but the hope is to gain resources from the acquisition that will allow AC to a). better address challenges in program development, and b). better deal with logistical issues related to meetings (ACUC and regional conferences) and marketing/sales. The latter would occur by accessing the Pri-Med program network.
There was some discussion about ?what?s in it for Pri-Med?. I think that some of us are still a bit hazy about that. Of course it isn?t our business, so we don?t need to understand it in detail? but some of the skepticism comes from our concern about their use of our patient care data in AC. Some of those concerns were allayed with two statements from Drs. Bertman and Mossier:
1. We will always have the choice to share or not share our data with the company. In fact, to do so will require us to proactively ?opt-in? (as opposed to information gathering unless we opt-out).
2. The information we do pass on will never be shared with anyone outside of Pri-Med. Not with pharma, not with their parent company, not with anyone.
For those of us who are waiting for some delayed program improvements, the good news is that there will be a version 6.5 released ?probably in late January? that will incorporate a few long requested changes. These were not detailed at the meeting, but the one that I am most excited about is a new letter writer that looks to be a significant upgrade (and may represent a fix to perhaps the most longstanding complaint on the AC board). There are other improvements as well; I am trying not to steal too much of AC?s thunder. The bad news regards practice management; the summary on the release date is ?no time soon?. Jon B. said he plans to make an announcement about this in the near future.
In summary, I think it will be some time before we really know how this acquisition plays out for us, as users. We heard that pricing will not change, our data is secure, the direction and culture of the company will not be affected, customer support will remain strong and perhaps improve, and product development will be accelerated. Jon B. didn?t sell to a bigger EMR company (which many of us dreaded) and in theory, Pri-Med should be a good partner (well, owner, actually). What we are hearing generally sounds good; let?s hope the reality meets the promise.
