Home Forums Discussions General Discussion New member - starting practice soon ( Feb )

Pulmonologist planning to start practice in rural TX.

At this point do we have a better idea of the ETA for V5?
People who are using officeAlly, do you have an in house full time biller?
Anyone familiar with technet membership, and whether we can use software obtained through that membership in our office systems?
thanks

Have only seen "December" bandied about for Version 5, pretty consistently. No knowledge regarding your other questions. Regards,

thank you Doc.

The December date was based on some vague pieces of information, if you search through the forum. I think someone from Phressia mentioned it as well as perhaps someone after a tech call. There has been no further information on availability from AC central.

It will probably come out in beta. Jon's betas tend to be rock solid but I usually play with them for at least a month off line until I am comfortable that they will not cause havoc in the office. Thus then you are looking at January for the release (if the December date is accurate).

What are you looking for in the hold for V5? It will have preventive maintenance which may not be that big of a thing for a pulmonologist. It will have some other improvements (like a working search engine, see other posts), but it probably will not be radicaly different.

Yes , you will need to reinstall the next version, I suspect, but this will occur periodically. Realistically plan on V4 and consider V5 for the spring once you are convinced the bugs are out.

Technet subscriptions, I believe, cannot be used in a functionng environment, but don't hold me to this. Action Pack subscriptions on the other hand, can be used in a business environment "to determine applicability" or something to that effect. I think they cost the same. You may need to do more research on this subject.

thank you. My issue is about billing/PM integration. I would like a working integrated solution which V5 may be providing(based on my reading the board) Once I sign up with medicare and other payers it can be a pain in the neck to change, I am told.
Also e-prescription is supposed to get better in V5.

It seems now that the billing/PM portion is pushed off to V6.

V5 from what I have read will NOT have PM. (Too bad, I would like that too.)

You need to sign up for payors anyway, because it sometimes takes some time to get numbers and such. January is not that far away. You will still need the numbers and to log into another billing system, which can be changed when V6 comes along.

I would not wait for V6, note that V5 is several months behind schedule, which is typical for most software. It seems everything is finished and then, BAM, something seemingly simple bogs down the whole process.

PM is a whole other topic, review what you can here. Office Ally seems popular because it is free, but we have had some difficulty transitioning to it.

E-prescribing would be nice, but get the other stuff down.

Again, I would not wait for V5, unless it drops in your lap next month and seems perfect. Watch the board for details, but plan on V4.

thanks. I am waiting to have a physical address for my practice(expected next week) then all the credentialing headaches start.
Already playing with V4, I like it. Looking at office ally for PM/Clearing house.

Let us know how the Ally works out. I may need it too!

Also, The exporting issues AC had with office ally, are those fixed?

exporting issues with Office Ally have not been fixed, We have had to go to office ally to have information "hard coded" into our file. Support(AC) says that the issues will be fixed w Version 5. we'll see.

That being said, after one month of following claims ad making correction, we got office ally to work well.

This is just a stop gap until the pmr is up.

I hate double posting and entry.
Good luck.

We have been working on our export to Office Ally. Version 5 will have the issues we are aware of corrected. Our development team has been in touch with Office Ally to facilitate these fixes. We are working on adding PM for the first quarter of next year.

Claire

So the way to make AC work with officeally/PM would be
1)Enter basic demographics in AC
2)Enter complete demographics in Officeally
3)Appointments done by officeally - check in pt - create visit-
4)Do the progress notes on AC , export the bill to Officeally with needed corrections
5)Bill via OA/PM
6) Scripts via ?????

What do you think? Is there a better way?

We like the appointments in Amazing Charts, and use Office Ally only for billing. In fact I don't even know what the screens look like in office ally. A few employees have access and enter data in their down time. One full time biller does the majority of it. (We are three Docs)

After using Asarum (formerly AcerMed's product, now Abraxas Medical's product) for PM, billing, we have switched to AC and just this month to EZClaim. EZClaim has been easy to use, support is always helpful and friendly. The sign up process was simple, didn't take long to test and then go live to send claims. There are some little problems when exporting claims to EZClaim, such as modifiers don't copy over and you have to go through and verify ICD-9 pointers on each claim in EZClaim. Minor inconveniences really. Refiling claims is easy. Both products are working well for what we need in this small family practice office.