Home Forums Discussions General Discussion When are you updating to v5?

So I haven't done it yet. Except for eRx which I doubt I use as often as my primary care colleagues, I'm having trouble seeing why v5 is worth the trouble of upgrading.

So, what will make you guys pull the trigger to update? v4 is so stable in my office right now. In fact, it has NEVER crashed/shut-down/failed in 7 months. Tough to change with that track record.

Bert? Leslie? I'll upgrade when you two upgrade since my system is based off of Leslie's and my "go-to-guy" for trouble is Bert.

We started with version 3, updated to version 4 without difficulty and now are using version 5 with only an occassional bug. No crashing ever.....knock wood.

Travis,

I have not yet updated and feel no pressure to do so except for one thing. I need the search function to work which it doesn't anymore. It used to. Now I just get gibberish data. As far as the health maintenance module, I have no interest. I still like to think I am a highly trained professional and that using my education and my time and grade and my brain is superior to practicing by protocol (but, perhaps I am wrong). I still worry about the times doctors may be caught without their computer or their IPhone and not have the foggiest idea how to manage a patient....but, I digress.

Being able to send messages to groups seems nice but I cannot assign specific people to specific groups so I am not sure that would help me. I am quite content using fax mode for sending scripts and, at this time, see no reason to change what took me a long time to motivate to do.

I suspect I will eventually bite the bullet but, right now, I am happy with my little AC.

I love V5, it does have some bugs, but eprescribing is great! I am a specialist so do not prescribe too much, but still nice feature, patientss like it too. Their prescription is ready when they arrive at the pharmacy. The HIM and lab tracking, I honestly do not use, but the one thing that is nice is reports which I can generate an excel export of all email addresses for a newsletter, etc... Really nice!

Version 5 is awesome. Is it still trial version? I updated very early as it was released. Many major changes as V3 to V4. Easy to install, but keep in mind that all computers need to be updated to V5 before you start to see patient. I upgraded only server computer but no all client computers, and all connection were lost. That morning I was very scared with only one computer working with many patients at waiting room already. It took a while troubleshooting myself to fix installation problems which has happened with V4 also. The most difficult one was fixed with complete uninstall and reinstallation. But... I still could not solve this. My Win XP Dell vostro laptop goes blank with permanent error when this computer installs server installed. I tried to use this for synchronization. I have to format this computer each time the bug happens with server installation.
Otherwise, V5 has been working much slower than V4. Maybe systemp speed issue? Or V5 issue?

Generally, I love the features V5 is providing. I love V5.

Alan Kim

I also love Version 5 and have been using since its earliest release - e prescribing was turned on very early and it works great. Still looking forward to DEA finishing public comments and approving Scheduled drugs (probably even II) and that will make it GREAT. Medication interactions and allergy checking is also good - easy to write a scrip for amoxicillin to a pt. with 13 allergies including PCN - helps to monitor that.

I do use HM and lab, radiology ordering, but not tracking yet. Many good features and helpful in that I can pull up HM and see when I last counseled on smoking, when I did medication reconciliation and reviewed all their meds (I made this HM in my charts and try to do at least every 6 months - amazing how often pt. forget to tell me about ones they stop or a specialist adds). Although some is clunky - many features are great - I even use the letter writer to generate letters to pt. when they request refills and I want them to come in (I know people hate the letter writer, but it works okay for lab results, followups, etc).

5.0.24 is pretty darn stable - I hardly ever experience any real errors (knock on wood, hate to say that).

I love 5.0.24, e-prescribe is such a sweet feature. We are using the tracking for outstanding labs and orders, this lets us dump a bunch of paper lists and clip boards.
I guess the most GRRRR.....OUCH to it is the run time error that happens too frequently when sending an order. But, when I bring AC back up the chart is still there and the order will send without the runtime error. Sometimes the program seems to run a little slow, but I don't know if this is related to the physical setup in my office or to the program itself. I think really, there are very few glitches and not very many work-arounds are needed.

I don't know, with the report of slowing and certain errors, I better wait to upgrade.
Is version 5 in beta or is Final?
Why I could not find information on when and how to upgrade to version 5?

I am not sure about the run time error - I have got no errors with 5.0.24. I have been using it for some time and the last time I got errors was with the old version.

I get a "run-time error-object cannot be found" (and AC crashes) every 3rd or 4th time I used the order section. I haven't found the order section particularly useful, so it hasn't stopped me from using version 5.

I am much more annoyed by the partial incompatibilty between Adobe Acrobat 9 (not Reader, full Acrobat) and AC as far as viewing PDFs in the imported items and sign off windows. About once every 10-15 times, trying to view a document will "freeze" AC or display a blank window instead of the PDF document. It simply doesn't happen on other office computers, using Adobe Acrobat 7 or any of the Adobe Reader apps. It happens to both computers using Acrobat 9.

I reported this on the board almost a year ago with version 4, and also a bug report. Adobe is likely not going change their product to improve compatibility with AC. So I hope its somewhere on the AC techs "to do" list.