Thanks for the responses. While Updox has its value, it does not address what I have in mind. Only a tiny percentage of the docs we deal with have (or will ever have) Updox. The same is true for AC.
Because of how hospitals operate, their entrenched vendors actively resist any new technology [that they don't bring].
This is an issue for us right now: we work in an environment where most doctors are now employed by the hospital and use the hospital EMR. By default, this makes communication and transfer of reports and records easier with the hospital-employed GI group. Some sort of interface between my EMR and that of the primary care providers (which is Epic) would address that.
We have multiple clients who would desire an interface with hospitals running Epic, The hospitals in turn have been unresponsive to unsympathetic for the most part. Two of the clients are having more success; one operates out of a hospital facility, and the other is an independent group that are also hospitalists.
I also see this as a much broader issue for the future of AC; which means it will impact all AC users. How is AC going to prosper or even exist 3 or 5 years in the future? I don't see AC gaining tens of thousands of users like Practice Fusion, Epic, or even eClinical. If the company survives it will be with a relatively small user base, and that group will need to be able to communicate more efficiently with the mass of physicians using the "big" EMR's that surround us. Perhaps this is more of an issue for us as specialists, but ultimately will apply to the primary care providers as well.
How will this communication occur? An interface with AC seems like the logical way. As Travis points out, Epic is spreading like wildfire. It surprises me a bit that no one at AC and none of the 5,000 or so AC users has tried to set one up.
Any thoughts?
What AC currently has on offer in support of Epic is an import-only function that will bring in plain text via a radiology interface.
Our clients want/need more, and so we are investigating alternatives that hospitals will support
