Bert and Roy,
Guys of all the people I want to see remain good friends, you two are certain there. As you all know I certainly agree with Roy in terms of the purchase of our EMR program verses leasing and worse yet, leasing with terms and conditions that say one can be thrown away or turned away with little or no just cause. The support section of the EULA is even worse, support is totally hit or miss, if AC wants to they will and if they don't care to they won't??? That is some upsetting and concerning terms and conditions. And worse yet one must sign off on accepting such messed up terms and conditions just to get their bought and paid for quarterly updates??? Give me a break, that is selfish and rude, plain and simple, no less the fact that it is almost impossible to defend such a position.
I agree that it would be nice to return to the days before all this talk about the EULA, I would love to see nothing more. It is why I have always wanted to have AC get togethers, I love the sense of community. But what are the governing principles of this community??? This community was founded by Jon (thank-you) on the basis of fair play and many of us, myself and Nancy included took such things to heart and tried to act appropriately by those principles. I think Roy is extremely entitled to his feelings of being deceived, bait and swithced, in light of the conflicting concepts coming off two sides of the same basic subject from the company.
And I have one or two very old machines that I still have like Windows '95 or '98 on simply so I can still use the old programs and more importantly access the old data we created on those old machines and programs so long ago now. Just in case. I understand if at some point MS no longer wants to support a version of their program that is like 7 or 8 years out of production, but I still have things I created in that old stuff and nobody should be able to tell me I have to stop using it. There is a real difference.
In the end this really comes down to a matter of trust and it seems that the vendor wants us to trust him more than he is willing to trust us. Not to be a broken record, but I have no issue with giving AC its annual fees, I just want to know that I can always access my patient data via its native program that we were lead to believe we were buying, not leasing over two years ago now. Otherwise both Roy's practice and ours might as well finally break down and simply use the ASP based programs that are both flying out of our local hospitals and be done with all of this already. There really is no difference anymore. We are no more nor no less secure in our continued use of the program or any of the data we created in it.
I could use QuickBooks on-line or some other business program that is web-based but I won't and for the same exact reasons. I want to always be able to have and hold the native program that my vital data is created in. That is our personal comfort level and anything less than that is below mine and Nancy's comfort level. That is what we were all lead to beleive we were purchasing and I have recommended the same to many other offices that have asked my opinion. I feel as Roy does that there needs to be federal legislation on such things in light of the fact that offices such as ours have all these long legged information laws that we must comply with like HIPAA and other similar state based ones.
If not, then we should all go back to paper. Imagine if you would the concept of having Staples or OfficeMax take back your filing cabinets, folders and papers and have them post-facto no less, turn your purchases of such supplies into renewing leases, that the vendor themselves for any reason that fit their fancy could kick you out of no less. Sorry, tough, here we come to take back your files. Or if they had a deviced rigged that could destroy your files via remote control because they didn't want to renew your lease, even if you were willing to re-up. How crazy is that???
That is what is really happening when you take away a healthcare providers access to their own electronic medical records in its native program. Its not a crime right now, but it sure as hell should be. And I say this not just as a practice manager or spouse of a doctor, but as a consumer patient of another doctors office who she too uses another EMR vendor. Damned as hell if Dr David Tully Smith (ChartWare) can suddenly lock me and my chosen healthcare provider out of my own medical records. That is totally BULLCCHITT and that can not be denied.
In the end I think that Roy's perspective and feelings are that the great values and governing priciples that founded this great little company and gave rise to this wonderful product we all use and depend on each and every day, should be self evident in the terms and conditions of the contracts it gives its faithful users to sign. And that the rules of the game, when they were so obviously originally based on such fine principles, should not be changed on us in the the midst of our relationship. It was the original terms and conditions, combined with those great giuding principles that got us to "buy-in" in the first place. And it really does feel kind of "raw" to go radically changing them now. I know they are certainly Mine and Nancy's wishes and desires. We still really want to get return to WaterBury VT (Hey now there's a great place to hold our "Next" AC get together!) too. Thanks for listening....
Paul and Nancy
