Home Forums Discussions Problems a suggestion (not a problem, nor a wish)

A member posted something about marketing AC. It occurs to me that many many medical conferences are sponsored by pharmaceutical companies.

It would seem like a good way to market AC, to either sponsor or simply have a table available at CME events/conferences/meetings, and at teaching hospitals' residents' meetings.

Actually, I would guess that more than ever (ever in the past twenty years), young docs are completing residency, and considering opening small practices. Getting them aware of AC as a viable alternative, early in the game is a good way to actually encourage them that they can make a small practice affordable.

You know the way to do it. Make AC able to communicate via the Internet. Then see 300,000 copies to the government for $300 each. Make them supply support. 30 of us could travel around the country at the government's expense and troubleshoot systems. Of course, I would run the division known as Mighty Mouse Medical Management.

Joking, but you know, it would work. Why force 300,000 (guess) offices to buy NextGeneral Motors at $40,000 a pop.

Bert and I will happily travel the country for AC. Selling and demo'ing to tons of people.
If they just pay us a large stipend, we'll sign up so many docs, it will be ridiculous. Of course Jon just needs to ask if we'll do it, and pay us a giant salary. Right Jon?

Actually, Jon spends a lot of time at Pri Med. I have met him at the meeting in Chicago a number of times (in fact, the first time I met him was at Pri Med). So, he is sort of, doing this. I have noticed that other AC users have referred potential clients to the booth during the conference (including me). I have even helped talk to a potential client once when his crew were busy. Actually it was fun to talk to someone who doesn't quite know what they need and is trying to figure out why AC is reasonably priced.

I would love to start a business in advising small docs in installing AC and other stuff ( fax system) and hold thier hands till thye comfortable.

I am sure we can wrap things well under 5K(assuming 1 doc, 2 staff and 1 extra machine).

I think there is probably a huge need for exactly what you suggest, technical support and installation/training support. Some of this has to be "on the ground" and some support can be remoted in. My experience with NextGeneral Motors installation and training was very expensive ( charged for travel,lodging,meals and per diem for their employee). I don't think this kind of expense would fly with the type of Doc who uses AC. But, I would gladly have paid for someone to directly answer my questions about set-up, and " hold my hand" or be a mentor ( even now I have been using AC for 5 months and have a lot of insecurities and dumb questions) I cannot always find the answer on the users forum.
Anyway, I don't know how you could staff the" on the ground support". ? Establish connections with local tech support companies so that they could be "authorized" service providers? I googled for technical support options when my first tech support person quit, I didn't come up with anything much in the way of technical support for a small medical office and just lucked into the guy who is doing it now.
I think there is room for more support than the Gaurdian Angels are providing.

My staff is constantly asking for an expanded wiki or FAQ section covering common tasks on AC. I am embarrassed to say it took us a week to figure out how block out a group of appointments for a meeting time.

I also think an expanded wiki or faq would be wonderful. However, we get excellent results from using the chat button on the AC help page. Someone answers whatever goofy question we might have within 5 minutes. And they don't treat me like an idiot, which I always appreciate.

Well, I certainly agree that the chat support is extremely helpful and certainly you pay for that. On the other hand, they clearly try not to overwhelm the support crew with every "goofy" question. Of course, no question is really goofy, but if a question is covered in a wiki and is not urgent, certainly getting answers for ourselves will free up the support crew so that when you have a serious or urgent issue, you are not on hold or have extended wait until they can call back and they will probably remain more cheerful.

Why don't board members have access to the wiki? Perhaps after 200 posts? If there is anything specific that isn't covered it might have some threads covering it and the thread could be reworked as a single article. We could put the Brother MFC white paper there. We would just need a naming convention to indicate things like that which are external to AC. That's the power of a wiki, otherwise it is just one or two people doing it on top of their other work; that's a website.

EDIT: It's quick to get on the wiki. What is missing from it?

This was written on the Wiki. Uhhh....no. This is just my opinion, but I have looked at the Wiki a few times, and have never really gotten much out of it. The forum, however has allowed me to learn tons about AC, life, medicine, everything.

Again, my opinion, but I don't think a Wiki works well as a user guide or a FAQ. For that you need...ummm...a user's guide or a FAQ.

If you look at Wikipedia, it has a topic. Say....the Chicago Blacksox or Blue Whales. People continue to edit and contribute and soon sort of like a bell curve, it gets better and better. That doesn't work the same for questions and answers and user guide.

There are just too many ways to do the same thing and different setups. Or it is obvious how to do it. But, just look at the question on how to network. How many times have we gotten into that? At least 50. So, someone writes this wonderful networking wiki. Then, Adam comes along and edits it by changing the peer to peer to client/server. Or one person talks about faxing from their desktop. George comes in with Snappy Fax, I talk against the Brother fax and Adam talks about Muratec.

I don't know...I just don't see it as being useful. I love the interplay on here and enjoy spending hours helping others. Someone can ask me a specific question on here or by PM or even by email which is in my profile, and I will get back to them that day. I'll even remote into their computer.

I doubt we will ever have a great Wiki. But, we will always have a great forum.

Now, don't get me wrong. A very detailed user guide would be helpful. I know a lot of companies allow you to download a Quick Guide pdf and then an Admin PDF.

Am I missing something here? Who doesn't have access to the Wiki?

No Bert, I was under the impression that the wiki was restricted to AC staff.

But, you are missing the possible usefulness of the wiki. Your idea of a user guide and my idea of a wiki are roughly the same. The only difference is that many people can edit the wiki and only the staff can edit it official user guide. In my mind it's only a supplement to the great forum. If things have been discussed 50 times maybe they should be put in one place, then linked to. But if there isn't much interest, then you're right it wouldn't be helpful.

Each practice is a little different depending on the layout and staff so unless there were too many posts a day to keep up with then it probably wouldn't be helpful. So maybe a couple years out it will get used.

i frequented another board which did the following, and it worked really well:

a subsection of the board was devoted to "How to...", wiki-type tutorials. Whenever a board member put together a really great tutorial regarding a certain procedure, the moderator put it in the tutorial section.

this works best if users can reply to the thread in the section but cannot start a new thread there. alternatively, the moderator makes those pearls sticky.

It's kind of like a hybrid between a wiki and a user guide.

Benjamin, the wiki is open to all users. Peter has a good idea, but I just have to agree to disagree. This site is what I call a good support site: http://www.acronis.com/support/index.html

It pretty much covers everything. I don't seen a Wiki being the user guide of the product. To be honest, I think Jon has somewhat missed the boat on this.

I think a lot of the problem stems from users asking questions without searching first, but I tend to do the same thing at E-E. I do search a lot there, but when I have a real problem, I just customize my question.

I guess it is all a matter of opinion, but I am not much of a Wiki guy for this type of thing. I love Wikipedia.

Back to the original suggestion:

marketing.

Put an ad in JAMA or some frequently read pub like that. How was I able to go so long without hearing about AC? It's not "out there."

Where is it?

Amazing charts website-->support-->help me now! page

toward the bottom there is a list of orange links. one of them is "amazing charts wiki encyclopedia".

Or type: Amazing Charts Wiki

in Google and click on I'm Feeling Lucky.

Thanks, got it.

How do you block out a 'group of appts"?

I've been doing it one provider at a time.

You can do a block but it has to be one provider at a time.
click on the individual provider. Click on a time, it will turn green, shift click on the other time and the button on the top will say BLOCK (actually it says this when it turns green) click on that and it will ask you to name the time off (Conference or such) and Voila, there you are.