I have just switched from using the standard AC over to AC in the Cloud. Perhaps others on the Board might find this of interest especially if you have considered making the switch. I'd also be interested in hearing from others who have switched.
My situation was of course different from someone who starts fresh with AC in the Cloud. I have been using AC for about 2 years. I'm not very technically savvy and wanted an EMR solution which minimized my hassles. With the regular AC I was having to spend significant amounts of time troubleshooting problems with the network and AC. I was dreading having to handle the update of AC and how much time and emotional energy that would involve. One of the advantages of AC in the Cloud is that THEY do the upgrade, not me. Another big factor in pushing me to made the switch was anxiety about my backup system. I just wasn't really comfortable that my data was secure. I was using the AC offsite backup service, Jungledisk and backing up to an external HD in my office. But I didn't know how to test to see if I could really restore my system if my server crashed. So I decided to switch to AC in the Cloud.
I've had a number of glitches along the way and it's taken longer (2 months) and involved more hassle than I expected to make the switch. The basic process is that someone from AC tech support logged into all my office computers. Then they installed the AC in the Cloud software on each computer. Then they tried to upload my data to the Cloud server. Unfortunately, 12 hours later it still didn't finish. It turned out that my internet speed was too slow. I had DSL with upload speed ~5mbps. So I had to switch to a cable internet service. Now I have 50mbps service. The folks at AC told me that the Cloud system requires at least 18mbps upload speed.
I won't go into all the details, but finally today we got the system running. This time it took about 2 hours for tech support to upload my data (including imported items) and set things up. I then spent another 2 hours working out various issues. In our office there are three of us, a secretary, medical assistant and myself. My secretary uses one computer and my MA and I each have two work stations that we use. This was a problem with AC in the Cloud. Each user gets a login to connect to the Cloud. Only one connection per user. There is a workaround--they can set up two logins for each of us so we can run two different computers at the same time. I'm waiting for that to get worked out.
Other issues that needed to be resolved included being able to import documents into AC in the Cloud. We use Excel spreadsheets to track patient labs. To do this requires that the folks at AC do some fix at the Cloud server. Then we had problems with my Mac. I had been told that AC in the Cloud works fine on the Mac--without having to use Parallels (which is how I was using AC). But it required installing Remote Desktop Connection for Mac software and some other issues. Then there was the problem with Updox. We're still trying to get that fixed so that my documents go to AC in the Cloud. I still need to get my hospital lab to transfer my interface so that lab reports will import into AC in the Cloud.
But I was able to begin using AC in the Cloud tonight to document on a couple of patients I saw earlier in the day. So far I am pleasantly surprised by the performance of the system. It's actually faster than my old in-house system. It appears that I won't have the problem of occasionally losing a note. With my system if I was charting on a patient and the system froze I would lose data. Even "LastNote" never seemed to work very well. With AC in the Cloud, if I lose internet connection while in the middle of a note, nothing appears to get lost. I like that!
Anyway, that's been my experience so far.
