Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Which practice mgmt program do people use here?

We've switched to AC from Abraxas's Asarum. We need a practice management program. What is being used in conjunction with AC? Is there a thread for this somewhere already?

I can't help directly, but there is a lot of discussion about EZClaims OR Office Ally. You might find some info using that search.

There is a thread for just about everything. In the past the above as well as Lytec, Medisoft and eMedware. We use the latter. Very good and very cheap.

We use medisoft without the x link - makes double entry, but I want my billing person to look at the card and make sure it is done right. Even I might put the wrong number in the wrong box - since that is the only way you get paid it is important.

I think Jon will eventually make a good PM program, but it will take a while. I have been using AC for many years and have seen it evolve - it is still great and getting better.

WE use Practice mate from Office Ally.

Double entry, but much better than having an outside billing company, and far less expensive.

But it's not perfect.

The AC PMR would save us a lot of time, I hope it gets here soon.

Who makes eMedware?

I'm using CollaborateMD. $149-$199/month. That includes McKesson's clearinghouse. Easy software, good support. Able to check Eligibilty, electronic claims (of course), have real time adjudication, electronic remittance, they'll do your patient statements if you want for something like 63 cents a piece. It also has more reports available than should be humanly possible. Nice code viewer where you can review the CCI edits

They are in the process of getting my interface. It goes through X-link and should be ready in a week or two but right now we're double entering everything which is not near the pain that I though it would be.

I like it so far. Well worth the money.

I use Emedware from Sage also.

Does anyone use the Allscripts PMR, know if there's an interface? We're trying to find PMR so that we have A/R functionality. Not to sound cheap, but there's got to be a good, inexpensive PMR or just an A/R program that interfaces with Amazing Charts.

Allscripts and the word inexpensive are two mutually exclusive terms.

We are still using Offce ally but the export program from AC to OA is not clean.

We have had to have OA "hard code" fixes into the system to get it to work. They have een responsive in doing this but we are 3 months in and I'd love to get paid.

The problems have occurred with the provider name and npi forbox 17 and 17b. In addition npi was showing up in the shaded area (24 E).

Supposedly fixes are coming with Version 5 of AC.

AC's PMR won't be ready until first quarter 2010 I was told.

We need it sooner.

For everyone who can't wait and depends on the new PMR program, please forgive me. This is just for my needs.

But, I am sooooo against AC coming out with a PM program. From my perspective, I have already seen versions coming out with more bugs than ever before. AC was built on being a lean and mean small EMR at a good price, which is worth twice that.

I doubt any other EMR program has a user base that comes up with as many suggestions as we do. I would much rather see small updates like Firefox does with a yearly major upgrade rather than trying to do so many things. And, when the new updates come out they have to be installed on each computer where I tend to uninstall and reinstall. Not sure that is necessary but I do it anyway. I love the way Firefox just shows an update and automatically incorporates the changes into the program.

I fear that the PM program will take precedence as it already has and the EMR portion will become the stepchild.

No objection to keeping a lean & mean EMR. But let's get an interface with some lean & mean PM programs.

If we can get both, that would be awesome. I have no idea how AC programming is done, but it would probably work well if there were two teams, one devoted to each. Then you have no internal conflict of interest if the entire group is trying to bank out the PM. But, I am not privy to that and certainly shouldn't be.

I have gone through enough "finger pointing" in the last few months between Office Ally and AC.

I would hope (and believe) that John will provide a good product consistent with his AC philosophy in the PMR world. If I didn't believe that, I would not have spent an hour with a local cardiologist doing a demo on the product in my office last week.

As a small business owner, I need to see where the money is and who isn't keeping up with our agreed contracts (not paying at 100% of Medicare, etc). This, without giving 8% to a billing company who still wants to collect that 8% (because I have to document that in the AR Dr.Paiano, just add it on to the fee you charge your patient to make up for it)when I collect a self-pay fee or co-pay.

Don't worry that I have discounted my fee to my patient's to make it affordable for them to continue to receive care. I felt like I was dealing with Pauly from Goodfella's. I don't care what your problems are, give me my money.

We selected Office Ally as a stop gap until the PMR would be released (coming in Summer, 2009, no it's coming Fall, 2009, no it's coming possibly first quarter 2010). As I've said before, it's tough to plan for the future with incomplete intel.

One aspect that lead us to select Office Ally was the specific export utility from AC to OA. We only found out after wards that there were "bugs" in the export. Requests to correct these issues has lead to the infamous quote "That will be taken care of in version 5".

Possibly, if I had done my "due diligence", I would have opted for another option (Ez claims or Medisoft).

I'm a small and struggling IM practice and my staff (one person) and I can't afford to spend the time struggling with non payment due to computer issues.

As I have been told, version 5 should correct the issues between AC and Office Ally. Only time will tell. Double entry at 9:30 PM at night is an exercise I'd like to terminate.

Sleepless in Leesburg

I agree one hundred percent, I too face the same issues, I am waiting for Version 5 and ultimately PM software, but I am disappointed we are approaching October and no Version 5. We were supposed to have PM software by now. Inexpensive and useful is advantageous, but things may look more attractive (although) more expensive) ie... ECW if we are waiting much longer! Sorry, I do not think it is fun to have all these glitches especially since it is so hard to make it and get paid by insurances already!

Here are my thoughts, and I know I have received these in the past.

Since you have to have an email address to have Amazing Charts, why not have an email newsletter way more often than we get them now. Plus, I have heard from users who don't even get them.

I would recommend an every two-week email newsletter than addresses things like: new users, EMR news such as CCHIT, etc., what suggestions have been made that are good, what suggestions may be implemented in the future, what may not be implemented and WHY (such as code restrictions).

The main thing would be to address future updates such as Version 5. I think talking about it every two weeks is better than going three months and then finding out why the target date has been pushed back.

I think communication is the key between corporate and the users.

Bert said "But, I am sooooo against AC coming out with a PM program. From my perspective, I have already seen versions coming out with more bugs than ever before. AC was built on being a lean and mean small EMR at a good price, which is worth twice that."

I'm in line with Bert on this one. More features = more bugs, esp if it is not your area of strength. I believe office ally, ezclaims or another PM provider should come out with a practice mgmt add-on to complement AC. If they could rely on an SDK that opens up the AC internal tables, it would be a done deal. No double entry required.

i completely agree, they will send a email announcement/newsletter when the new version is done, they have occasionally to let us know something new is on the horizon. Since they are behind their original schedule ("Summer 2009") it would be useful to have an idea of where they stand as well as what's new in the field. Some of this occurs naturally on the users board, but most of the time it is not official. Perhaps they could have a section of the board where they make announcements, then do not have to worry about changed emails or such.

Thanks Wendell,

I think an email newsletter would be more professional. Plus, everyone would reply on the board, and it would kind of turn into crazy threads.

I don't think the entire topic would need to be about what is going on with AC, it could be about EMR in general. As the owner of AmazingCharts.com, Jon has to be in the know on all of the governmental regulations and stuff.

I also think people get frustrated when they post their bugs or frustrations and ideas, and while they may, it just seems like they aren't heard.

I'm using Medisoft without Xlink also. I agree with Steven about the double entry part. We have had our own issues with Medisoft 15, but I think we are getting the hang of it. We use RelayHealth (McKesson) as our clearinghouse. I can't really complain at the moment.

Hey Y'all!

I just started using TotalMD as PM and Gateway as a clearinghouse - neat set up, my billing staff like it.

TotalMD $2200 for networked version (onsite)
Gateway about a grand.

Great feedback, easy to use

Gerald

Hi Gerald,
I had worked with totalmd last year for the interface problem for 6 months without success. Glad to hear that they finally make it work and I will give it a try again. Do you input pt schedule from AC or totalmd in this case? Do you need to make 2 backup files, one for AC and one for totalmd? Thanks.

Byron

Our office uses Medisoft with X-link. The X-link was pretty easy to set up and it does save us from having to do double entries. One "downside" to x-link is that it doesn't continually update automatically so when I get a new patient, the information is entered in medisoft first and then you have to go through several steps to transfer the data to AC.

Marty

Total MD for PM and Gateway for EDI has worked for us

We use EZClaim for billing. It's not really a total PM program. I wish they would update it. Overall you get what you pay for and it works well. I have had very few problems. My biggest complaint is that you cannot assign users and or privileges. You can only have one user and they have access to everything. If you think about it, this is insane.

Practice Mate by Office Ally
Free
Customer Support nice and available 24/7
Fine until AC gets a PM piece.
Their scheduler is great if you only have one person to schedule.
If you have more than one person (like a nurse doing injections/labs), then the schedule is confusing.
We schedule me on OA and the nurse on AC to keep things straight.
That way we can create the claim from my visit.

We bit the bullet Literally due to cost and bought advanced MD but didn't link it with AC. McKesson is the clearing house. We brought billing in house the beginning of this year. It is web based and we double entered the data. It is nice from the fact that the secondaries go out automatically once the original claim is posted. Billing (my office manager wife) likes the fact that it is very customizeable and she is a techophobe but set it up with the help of the company. She is doing well now. Our nightmare was the our outsourced biller sat on the months worth of billing before she left as she knew she would no lnger be billing. This stopped our cash flow. I guess that would be my caution to all no matter what program you choose if it means a change.

We use AMD and also the X-link to AC. I do not really know if the X-link is worth it, there are frequent glitches and it has been expensive. I am close to concluding that double entry would work fine, my staff seems to spend time fixing a X-link problem too often. I don't think I will continue the X-link the next time it would cost any money to do so.

What newsletter?