Hi Folks,
I'll contact him privately this week. Just a few parting points, however, as we hopefully put this to bed:
1) It's not that the software didn't work FOR ME.. it was BROKEN. I do NOT want to harp on this - but I could post screen shots with error messages and demonstrate the bugs.
2) Investing THIRTY HOURS into evaluating a piece of software I think is well enough to know if a piece of software is going to work or not. It didn't. That doesn't mean that the code that they ship to their "regular clients" didn't then or doesn't now work. It also doesn't mean that the bugs we found at that time haven't been fixed. IT DOES mean that the software was given a reasonable evaluation, and it had a lot of problems. These aren't problems that would go away with training. These were BUGS. Not being able to close an encounter and put the chart away to complete the transaction cycle isn't a training issue. It was a MAJOR bug. We were told it was "fixed", but the question of why WE were sent code with this bug still there when the "other users" had had this "fixed" still hasn't been answered, and I found the situation to be a bit odd. THREE DAYS later we were offered a patch, and the downloader for the patch was broken as well because the downloader wasn't tested by their developers. Again, I'd be happy to post screen shots of the error messages.
Did it take three days to figure out what existing code we didn't have so that they could send it to us and how to package it to send? Or did they have to scramble to fix this bug so that they could try to save the sale? I have no idea, and at this point don't much care. It proved to be a deal breaker for them, though, and precipitated the "It doesn't look good" phone call.
3) While there was a conversation that Saturday telling him it "Doesn't look good", there were quite a number of OTHER calls, both with "how do I do this" questions as well as "why is it doing this" questions. As he puts it we were given their "time, software and support" - this wasn't just the one phone call.
Yes, he got "nothing in return". If the product had actually worked, they would have made a few thousand dollars each year in an ongoing, mutually beneficial relationship. Their current out-of-pocket costs are a total of a couple of hours of telephone support, and one overnight envelope via UPS. Minimal at best, which I've offered to reimburse him for. We ALSO got "nothing in return", as the software did not deliver on its promises.
Hopefully, they've fixed their bugs and moved on, and will do well with other potential customers. In NONE of his posts has he addressed the points I've raised - all he's done is complain that we weren't fair and that I stiffed him out of $350. The software issues are over a year old, and I'd be surprised if they HAVEN'T been fixed as one major bug affected core functionality. It does not mean that at the time we evaluated the program it wasn't broken.
If there weren't issues with the software, they were in a PERFECT position to flip us from AC to Medtuity. We just couldn't go from one solution where we were having issues to a brand new set of problems. We were not going to stake our practice on the hope that once we were up and running they'd deliver a working version of their program. In retrospect, this turned out to be an excellent decision.
They have a lot of good ideas. The original point of the thread, having to do with EMR granularity, being able to report and track on health measures, etc, raise a number of valid issues, which should continue to be discussed. This is an area that Medtuity does do a reasonably good job.
I'd be happy - now that this detour is completed - to discuss and debate thing like keyword parsing of free text vs storing discrete data fields, front-end granularity vs back-end processing for reporting, template organization and the like, from either a theoretical standpoint or as it applies to Amazing Charts.
V.
