AC has a lot of positives, and I recommended it to others while using it. Foremost:
1. Low Price
2. Ease of use.
However, as government requirements continued to add on, the company did not continue to innovate, but fulfilled the portal part by using another company, which we have to pay for UPDOX, and fulfilled other requirements in a similar way. I used the AC for many years, and we had work around for many things. They continually did slow evolutionary improvements.
What made me finally pull the plug is that I had some bugs in the system that caused crashes and they would not fix this. Ultimately, they told me it was only affecting a small number of practices, and that small dollar figure was essentially not worth their time. They didn't think that I, a customer, was worth the time. This pissed me off, but also made me think that the company was just milking this AC for every bit of tech support money they could get. It's a really cheap chart and they don't make that much money on it, so that;s understandable. IT was the dream and creation of a doctor who care, and now it's owned by a corporation. Enough said.
I now the perspective of a career using EMR's. THe government tried to force the charts to be everything and do everything: portals, unmeaningful use, etc, and all we wanted was the ability to chart efficiently and communicate. Our greatest hinderance was actually the government and HIPPA, so everyone is now afraid to communicate and we are still stuck in the 90's with fax machines because of their rediculous concerns. NO one communicates, I can't get ER reports, and the system is broken.
The EMR field is ripe for takeover from a company like Apple, who could truly make it great. I had someone personally ask Tim Cook, and he's not interested. Google spent a heap of money and failed, so understanable. But imagine a slick Apple like app with all your records on it and the ability for all the doctors to share everything in the cloud with each other? IT could be awesome.
For now, the practice management software is passing the EMR's, providing portals, online payment, scheduling, and even their own EMR's now. What a mess!
