G & The Greater Gang,
I'm really going to do my best (ya I know) to repond to this in the most sportsman like manor possible. Quite a long time ago I spoke with a VAR about Altapoint which is one of the X-link supported, works with AC practice managment programs. They were offering a very unique service combined with the product AP, that I was researching.
They the VAR themselves, not AP, was offering to host AP for their customers in a very ASP type setting. But here is the ethical difference and catch. Instead of never owning the vprogram itself, as AP can be definitely purchased on disc as well as downloaded, it was their agreement with AP that the customers still had to purchase and were entitled to license copies of the AP program itself! What a concept! So now you own a real working copy of the program that your data was created in and the program and the data are always designed to work back on some average office's system, so your data is no longer in a hostage like situation.
I loved it and almost jumped on it as a solution to wanting to build a database of our own, of Nancy's PM and billing, all while allowing us the ablility to hava a small private contractor do our billing for us, mostly off site and in her home ala cottage industry private contractor. For other reasons at the time we didn't move forward with it, mostly because we were having other issues and were knocking around solutions, but this concept stuck with me and I shared it here on the board a long time ago too.
So, I emailed Jon and Carlos half joking that they should make me the VP in charge of marketing because I had the ultimate idea for marketing AC. Jon should directly do the same thing with AC and market it in the same way his does AC now. That were are the nice ethical company that will never allow your data to be held hostage. We will host for you if you care to avail yourself of the services, but we insist that you purchase as many legal licenses as you would normally, so you can always own and control the data, the charts, the encounters that you create in AC.
I never really heard anything back from AC or Jon and soon after all heck broke loose in AC ville as the numerical issues I found in the financial section started up and things got hot and ugly. This is when the EULA debates started and Roy and I especially were quite worked up about it as it seemed AC was moving away from instead of embracing an opportunity to build upon and grow further and into their reputation as the small, highly ethical, vendor that does not ever take advantage of their customers/users.
So I totally understand where you are coming from and there is some merit in your ideas, for none of us here are the first to suggest them or come up with them. I just want us to have those needed discussions, ground rules and even laws that govern these things in the favor of fairness, privacy of the patient and the doctor and not to simply serve both our corporate and governmental masters in enslaving us all for their own low valued self interests of power and greed.
Heck I still wish Jon would go ahead and create a great PM module accompany AC the EMR, and implement exactly what I have laid out here again, at least a year later. Please sell me and let me have an hold as many legal forever licenses as I have providers to license them, and insist and we shall gladly pay for annual support if we care to call or ping what so ever, all while hosting it on your servers and backing it up in that great enterprise multi-site high security way, and allow us access to our data from multiple sites whether is be because we want to use an off-site private contractor while others here need to build a single database with multiple sites and offices.
It would be glorious and I still think after all the posts I have read lately about, two distinct databases, housecalls, multiple offices and all the rest it would be such a wonderful and needed service that Jon would have a ton of present and new users beating a path to his website and business. And I would modestly and humblely accpect a small percentage as the guy who really cared about his business and it's growth to give him an idea that would serve both his users and his own bottom line.
G-Money and I say that in the most affectionate of ways for it was the character name of one of my favorite actors from one of his (mine) favorite shows, Yaphet Kotto as the Captain from Homicide, Life in the Streets. It was his affectionate nick name him by his troops at the station house. Loved him in Live and Let Die too.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaphet_KottoSo ya see Gee I was only down on you because I made one of the worst mistakes of all, I "assumed" (and we all know what happens when you assume, the odd couple???) that you were a vendor type like that guy who was stalking Vinny here at just about the same time. I will say it again and I don't think it'll ever be enough, I am so sorry for making that terrible mistake and flaming you here so....
"When one "assumes" they make an "@$$" out of "U" and "me". Sorry G-money.....
