I totally agree-- AC is great, but bogged down by a bunch of useless subroutines to try to keep up with the receding horizon of MIPS/MACRA.
It must be possible to strip all that crap out and give us a streamlined AC that just does what physicians need in an EMR -- not what insurance company and Feds are trying to mandate.
At the same time, we need an integrated Fax program like Updox that is actually part of the AC program -- Updox also tries to do too much, be too many things, and ultimately is bogged down by that.
Maybe it's a violation, but I am reposting from a similar thread:
I couldn't get along without something like Updox -- but there are problems. The ever rising cost is certainly one of them.
It is rather clunky, but the Desktop version is the only way i can sign Medicare documents and certain controlled
substance prescriptions when not in the office -- I am allowed to print to Updox and "wet sign" on a touch screen then fax to Home Health or pharmacy. Some agencies will not allow the "signature" that Updox produces -- it is regarded as a signature stamp, and disallowed.
For some reason the Web-based version doesn't allow touchscreen (even though there is a "draw" icon, and that icon does let a left-mouse drag sort of drawing), but it is much faster and more responsive than the Desktop, so I resort to using both.
I don't use the portal -- most of my patient population has no interest in that nor ability to use it. And even the few that do usually call on the phone for more information anyway, so it's double (or quadruple if we have to talk them through signing into the portal or getting signed back in since they forgot since the last time they used it) work for the office staff.
I really wish that AC could bring out a slimmed down version of the EMR without all the nonsense mandated by CMH -- that is going nowhere despite all the puffery about "revolution in payment methods". In reality, the "Quality Measures" are a huge, tragic waste of time and energy -- and in the end are just an add-on to fee for service.
Along with the slimmed down AC, a fully integrated fax system that only functioned as a fax, and didn't try to be all these other things that Updox claims to be would be invaluable.
If we had that, we would have a tool that would truly allow small practices to survive -- the current system is sort of like Poe's "pit and the pendulum" -- a kind of torture that seem to have no purpose except to drive all physicians slowly insane and into the waiting arms of Big Corp Medicine and we can all work directly for United Health Care.
