Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Survey Regarding Linking AC with Medisoft

One of the biggest complaints I have seen on this forum from providers is the inability to link AC in an effective, inexpensive with a good PMS. Many have complained (rightly so!) about the cost and efficiency of X-Link.

We have an online Medisoft Network whereby providers can access Medisoft via the web. We also think AC is a phenomenal EMR program, but dislike how X-Link links AC with Medisoft. We have spoken with Jon about being able to host multiple AC databases on our servers, and once he finishes the CCHIT certification, he is going to be looking into changing coding so we can provide a hosting service for providers.

Once that becomes functional, we would like to have developed an inexpensive, efficient linking program so AC could link seamlessly with Medisoft. The pricing would be much less expensive than X-Link (probably around $299), but before we would invest in having a linking program developed, we would like to determine the extent of interest in such a program being able to link AC with Medisoft on our Medisoft Network.

Any feedback from providers would be appreciated, including what providers dislike about X-Link, and what they would like to have included in linking program.

Steve

Medisoft is one of the standards in the industry. It is not the most intuitive, but it does have most of the bells and whistles if you get the advanced version, as I recall (havent used it since V8 or 9). I have not used x link so cannot comment on it.

One of the keys to billing is following up on claims that are rejected and collecting money that is the patients responsibility. This is where a lot of billing companies fall down.

I think a lot of people would be interested in your option, but many of us have been burned in the past and are skeptical.

We would be interested in more details about what you are proposing as an add on system.

What we are looking into is whereby the providers can enter all data themselves (saving money) by entering charges and dx codes in Amazing Charts, and have it populate in Medisoft. We offer a claim scrubbing option to scrub claims before they are sent out to ensure that all required fields are populated by the provider's office (such as patient birth date, valid insurance payer number, etc)...In addition, scrubbing ensures that correct HIPAA diagnosis codes are allowed (for example, 839.00 instead of 839.0), that proper modifiers are used, etc.

As for a billing service, we also offer a billing service option, but linking is not required for that. From experience, only 5-10% of claims require follow-up if the billing service knows what they are doing....and then utilizing an online BillPay company to send patient statements helps providers collect more revenue. So, yes, we do offer a billing service option (and have numerous references on our website), but our survey here concerns more of the providers' concerns with not being able to interface with a good PMS...and that's what I'd like to develop.

Medisoft was too rich for my blood.

I work with a company that is also interested in developing a proper link to Medisoft. We have two clinics now that would use the link and would like to add more.

X-link was disappointing to say the least.

I am currently using Amazing charts. I purchased Medisoft with plans to use it for billing. X-link was the interface that I used. The 2 programs did not work well together. I was constantly having patients middle initials changing after doing the exports. I can not remember exactly what else was being changed, but I was spending more time correcting errors that it created than I should have had to do. I finally decided to leave Medisoft alone and things got better.

I have used medisoft in the past. It would be nice if it was a 2 way link, that medisoft could tell AC what the balances were. This would be useful.

It's been a while since I used medisoft. What is the earliest version that is now HIPAA compatable, what would the upgrade costs be and other hidden costs. Of course there would be costs to use the clearinghouse as well.

It does sound interesting.

We are now beginning our Practice Management push - so hold on for a bit as I believe we'll have a working solution sometime this summer or fall.

Users who understand billing intuitively AND agree that most of the software currently in use for PM is overpriced and confusing, should contact us. We are putting together a user advisory committee and a group that will help us build the type of PM software for which we've been wishing for quite some time...

Yippee!!! Can't wait.
We have developed our own database for billing because of the foibles of the current system. Would love to see the PM component actually integrated and functional.

Unfortunately, I can't say that I understand billing intuitively since we don't do it in house. 'Cause I'd love to join

I'm not sure why EZ Claim is so unpopular. It's not the prettiest program in town but we have used it for four years successfully now. I hated Medisoft! Maybe it's changed since then but I found it to be the most cumbersome, non-intuitive, overrated and over priced product of its kind on the market!

I had problems with EZ Claims but then I was trying to connect to Office Ally. EZ Claims does not have good support, they want a fair amount of money for the support. I ran into a problem where data was not being transferred and EZ Claim and Office Ally were pointing fingers at each other and I gave up.

Now had I used EZ Claims for a clearinghouse, it might have been different. But at that time I gave up and went with MTBC.

EZ Claim also lacked some of the reports.

I agree with your comments about medisoft. They kept charging for updates making everything not backwards compatable and not really changing the product, certainly not making it more functional. You adapted to it, it did not flow easily to you.

This was my post-again didn't know I wasn't logged in.

For me, EZClaim looked like a nice program at first, but when claims were being rejected by our clearinghouse (Availity) I started trying to figure out why. Turns out that even though EZClaim does import info from AC it is not ready to be sent to a clearinghouse. I have to manually enter a place of service on every new patient via a drop down box and then set their default place of service on a different tab. On Medicare patients I have to manually add a referring provider, as the one AC uses gets printed on the 1500 form with parentheses, and if I was told correctly, that cannot be used in that box. I have also had some mishaps with ID numbers getting scrambled during transition or lost altogether. I ended up not getting paid for more than a month when I started using EZClaim, and we finally have gotten some help with billing until I can successfully bill and get paid by each insurance. For now though, I find EZClaim to be a program that is set up in a way that is second or even third rate. I may be spoiled, I last used Centricity by GE that was very full featured but required all manual input. It was very expensive in comparison but you get what you pay for. I agree though that had we used EZClaim's clearinghouse things may have gone smoother, but with as much as we had to change and check after importing, we might as well have used a solution that required manual entry.

I have been using Sage, formerly Medware for over 15 years now. It is not expensive, but does not integrate w/ AC. My office mgr still has to do double entry for both databases. I was able to import name, insurance and other demographics fine the first time I got AC going. I really like Medware, but wished it had a 2 way interface. I am used to using it, but am open to another PM module, but it would have to prove itself in the electronic submission area, and ability to generate many different reports for practice analysis, which many of these PM programs do very poorly. Even mine needs some work in this area.

For those who may be interested, with our Medisoft Network, there are NEVER any upgrade fees. I like the idea of AC having a PMS...but for those who would be interested in Medisoft, the program has actually gotten much better over the past few years...thanks to McKesson purchasing the program. And that's why we hope that even though AC will be developing its own PMS, that Dr. Jon can help configure so we can host multiple databases for multiple practices, and then be able through a custom linking program be able to link to Medisoft.

As for the one comment that it would be nice to have balances go from Medisoft to AC, a custom linking program can do almost anything...but it also depends upon what the EMR (AC) will accept.

Our practice had some problems with middle initials time to time. But it is not often.
Price tag of updating X link with every new version of medisoft(it is more frequent than I would like) gets expensive.

We are fairly new to using AC and so far have still been using a paper superbill. I am just starting to play around with using AC to produce a 'clean' invoice which we will batch print at the end of the day and pass them along to our biller. She can then enter them into Medisoft very quickly.

Is this how others of you are doing it now?

Thanks,

Sky

I used to do it that way before going to MTBC (look at some of my other posts). It can work well, but data can get lost. I'm not sure how to avoid that other than to do random checks.

Another way would be to print to PDF (cute PDF or PDF redirect are 2 free programs that act as printers) and get the biller the file.

When you look at say 3000 encounters plus pages for the insurance cards that adds up not only to a lot of paper but a lot of toner as well. Go Green.