Home Forums Discussions General Discussion I'm happy it is not a subscription service!

P.S.
Bert,
As you so properly said; it is the vendor's right to change such things if he so choose to do so. But as Vinny once said to me about when his right of center views and my left of center views on things like CCHITT and protecting citizens' patients rights of medical privacy were absolutely aligned and in sync: "It's not about whether is left or right, it's about whether it's right or wrong". Good old common horse sense. Is this the right thing to do for AC and it's guiding principles of always treating people fairly? And I would wager a bet that most folks in their hearts just know that it is not. Such things are not very "AC", they just aren't right, plain and simple.

No, to the OfficeMax. A better way of putting it would be if they could some how (unlikely) come into your office and take away your cypher for understanding your own records, or if they could suddenly scrabble your words and letters on your paper into meaningless garbage. Sure you still have the original paper and ink they were created in (data right?) But, For most of us, execpt perhaps you and Vinny, if we don't have the native program our data was created in, it is just about unaccessable gobbledy gook. It is just about locked away from us. And without a full team of IT people or spending thousands of dollars on a conversion of the data (and that is NEVER a sure thing, many of those just fail, sorry) we are screwed.

We all know this. This is why those web-based ASP programs can claim a 95% retention rate of customers. It really has very little to do with satisfaction with the program or their support, and almost everything to do with now your data is basically held hostage. They rarely ever have to say this overtly. It just sort of seeps in on the practice manager or the doc over time. "Well how would we move on to another vendor?" That's when the light bulb goes off. In the end, almost all end users need the native program that their data was created in to be able to properly access what they created in it.

And a purchase of the program itself means, renewal of the support or not, I am entitled to keep using the program for as long as I care to, as long as I have a valid operating system to run it on. Now again, we intend to freely re-up each and every year. But as I just said in a private email, contracts are not for when the honeymoon is happening, they are for when all hell has broken loose and neither side can really talk to one another anymore. That contract will determine how smoothly or poorly things are going to go for either party when that awful day comes down. Remember all the talk about that terrible LabCorp contract? It stunk. That is the main reason it took so long for us to finally get a lab interface going. Bad contract so no sign up. But in terms of here with AC, many of us have already signed up back when the EULA had swear words in it and Jon bless his heart, won us all over ranking on all the other awful, rip-off EMR vendors. That's what we agreed to and now that we have put so much critical data in the darn thing it is really dead wrong to change the terms and conditions so. He may be within his legal rights, but is it truly right to do??? Obviously that answer is no....

Correct me if I'm wrong, but until recently there was never any discussion of leasing vs purchasing programs like databases where the user then first created important stuff that they may always need to access such stuff later? Yeah I've heard that ASP is starting to creep into main stream financial business, but for the most part, database programs are just inherentally understood to have a long term need for the original user to access and use the program. This is almost silly at some point. Who would ever think of creating such a bad system in the first place?

As many of you know, we used to use a different program that we actually did buy the rights to. We found that other program to be just awful to live with and their support was the worst I have yet to ever see. So snooty, they looked down at us as we were struggling for the first time to learn the new terms of this strange new database world. So after a year or so of feeling abandoned, taken and vunerable to the least little problem and not being able to easily network it like AC, we went and bought a new product.... AC. What a relief, to come in out of the cold, in this harsh, take small providers for a ride enviornment that the EMR business is. Oh and Carlos and Jamie (remember her? She was so nice and helpful, just like Carlos) on the other end of the phone, we were in EMR heaven. But we had bought this other product out right and as many of you know from long ago posts, although we no longer chart in this program (although we could legally and otherwise) we still have it running on Nancy's old original laptop as an archival filling cabinet to refer to from time to time on some of our earliest patients. We even have to print out copies of whats in there now and again as a family leaves the area or practice. And it is our legal right to so.

Don't you feel that not leaving previous users with such basic protections and rights to access their very own data, their patients data, their patients record, so says the federal govt for goodness sake is just highly suspect and uneithical??? The patients chart as we have discussed in the past is really the joint intellectual property of both the patient and the provider who charted that encounter or the practice it resides in. How about a little respect for those intellectual property rights? The ones we are bound by federal law to uphold??? I gather none of you forgot that one? This is where Roy and I really see eye to eye. Law is always lagging behind technology. There needs to be a change in the law that affirms and protects this basic form intellectual property rights that reaches beyond and behind any given private contract such as this one. I as a private citizen, a husband and a father want such protection for those I love and their private medical information, their PHI.

And lets take any and all bad stuff off of AC's and Jon's shoulders. God forbid some day something terrible happened to Jon on a snowy day on I95 and AC fell into the hands of a less than well intentioned 3rd party, it is only our contract here and now that protects us on that horrible, hope it never comes day. AC is only as stable as it founder without Jon AC could quickly loose it rudder. I know I am not the only Gateway fan here, companies are bought and sold all the time. Without warning, Gateway sold all it's commercial business to another company, some new off-shoot of the old Micron company who I thought was now only Crucial the RAM company. They used to be really good back in the 90's but now??? The only thing I've got left is my original support contract on our newest laptop that at least protects us for about another year or so. This is what contracts are for to protect BOTH parties on the day when the honeymoon is over. Both sides and the more one sided a contract is, and the more resistant that party is to evening things up (off setting minor penalties, both teams still skate 5 a side let's say), then it says something about that other party now doesn't it?

May I ask where this change in sentament over the last few months has come from my dear old friend? I seem to remember you feeling a little bit more supportive of provider and patients rights of free access. I'm not beating on you, but I'm sure I remember you agreeing with the intellectual property of the provider and patient.

The longer this issue hangs out here like this, the longer it will continue to errode that sense of trust between AC and many of it's users. It's just so silly. Give provider users a strong sense of protection and belonging, of that good old fashioned AC guiding principles, and let's be done with this already.

The ball is on their side of the court now... We shall see.