I will chime in just with my two cents...

There is a downside of experimenting with the EMR and PM (primarily billing) at the same time. If the EMR fails it would throw your billing into a chaos. And that hurts..

Give you a quick example. I have used Medisoft for a long time for billing. We switched to an EMR/PM vendor few years ago. We did not import any billing data to the new system. So all patient accounts were split up into two different bills. Three months later, we couldn't deal with the EMR any more and gave it up. At this point we had to reenter 3 months of billing and payments data back into Medisoft. It was a royal pain.

Lesson learned for me: I wouldn't touch my billing system until I am fully comfortable and settled into my EMR. Yes I have to enter patient demographics twice in to two different systems. But that is once for every new patient which comes to the office and I am willing to live with that. At least I know if the EMR does not work out my billing would not take a hit.

Anil Gupta, MD, FACC
Adult Cardiology
Toms River, NJ