Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Our price is going up (a bit) on Dec 1, 2010

Do I understand this to mean that the license, which I thought we had been purchasing every year, will be only $1995 one time forever? And is it true that the support or recurring charge will be 995 per year after the first year? If so, I think this is a bargain.

lfcook: That's correct. You have always simply had to buy one license and it lasts forever for that version of AC. That has increased from $995 to $1995 and includes your first year of support.

What you pay for each year (and have been) is support/upgrades which is up from $500 to $995.

I too, think its reasonable as long as the upgrades are continuous and the program continues to improve and close in on the "big boys" in the aspect of features

Please, please, please Travis...be careful for what you wish. Competing with "the big boys" would ruin AC. AC began as a perfect EMR solution for smaller practices. Please don't encourage Jon to change it into a NexGen. The most recent changes have been far too snooty as it is. Let's urge Jon to fix the core of the program before doing anything more fancy. Bells and whistles will not drive the train if the track is not solid.

With the price going up, will we be getting the PM module soon?

I don't think one has to do with the other. Last I heard it was going to be first of the year.

Not thrilled about the price of yearly support nearly doubling but understand the need (we are anxious to start seeing more rapid improvements and bug fixes!). Cash-flow wise, $995 is getting to the point where a monthly payment option would be preferred over a yearly charge. We are due this November for renewal and only budgeted for $500 and things are quite tight for our struggling practice (which is one of the main reasons we went with AC because it is so affordable!!!)

- Sam K.

I agree with you, but I think he worded it poorly. I think it is more of a yearly service contract which includes ALL updates/upgrades and support.

Please don't get me wrong. I understand your point.

I am kind of confused with all the complaints about AC and with it's price going up. Seriously guys, do you think you can get better at even 5 times the price? As a refugee from a much more expensive piece of s***oftware, I can tell you that AC is very robust and has functionally surpassed vendors at much higher price points. I think any frustration on AC's delay with updates should be met with a reminder that "meaningful use criteria" is still nebulous.

Oh yea, one more thing. Those folks at guardian angel support bend over backwards for us. I can't tell you how many times over they have save my a-55. They are friendly, knowledgeable, and almost always IM back on the ping, and if not, they write back and call on the next business day.

gmhmd,

I think you want to go back and view the posts again. I don't see a lot of complaints. I am reading a lot of users who have good ideas and opinions about AC in general. Most of the users of AC who have used it in the past, have agreed that the price is far to cheap.

There are practices with five or six doctors where the new pricing will add up.

While most of agree with the new features and increase in support, a cost increase is inevitable. What frustrates some of us is that AC has never really gone back and fixed minor and major issues that would make the price increase more palatable.

Updatess such as ICD-9 codes and CPT codes that are not enough and frequently inaccurate don't make those updates worth it.

On the other hand, I applaud you for your comment and see exactly where you are coming from.

I assume it will be provider, but will the new annual charge be by provider or practice?

I think it's per provider.

The license says per provider. The support says per year. It doesn't say per provider/per year. Does anyone know the answer for sure?

According to tech support at 12:55 pm on September 20, it is going to be $995 per provider per year.

I purchased AC several months ago for a small satelite home office. Still learning it and because of the small numer of patients I have seen to date, not very proficient. I haven't even purchased the $500 support and hope that I can still do so before November 1st. I wish I could import docuemnts in any format into the template sections of the chart and hope that someday this is fixed. I too was attracted to the price and the company since it provided me an inexpensive way to slowly try an EHR. If PM will be inculded for the same price, that would be great. I do have some concerns, however. Even though I am not very proficient in AC, I have used computers in my practice since the late 1980s. I started with Medisoft back then when it was still a DOS program! The program was simple and great. Support was personal and there was a useful manual. But over time the program became more complex when it became a windows program. Then the compnay was sold to a larger company and then sveral times again to publically traded companies. Now I think it is owned by McKesson. The business model has become one in which new versions are created that are expensive but offer very little improvement. The support shifted from the company to the vendors, there were no longer user manuals because they wanted you to have a yearly support contract. Money is made, not on the intial program fee but by selling services to physicains that involve yearly renewals: support, claim submission, data storage, etc, etc. Gone are the days when you bought the software and you were done. It is a kind of medical industrial complex planned obsolescence. The governemnt will keep making changes that will require a new text or numeric field that needs to be transmitted and the EMR/PM companies will change one line of code and charge you$1000 for the new version of the software. This has been my experience for more than 20 years. The business model for small companies is to grow a business and sell it to a big corporation.The big corporations love it because they don't have to do risky product development but can buy a known brand with a customer base. The small company gets a big payoff and the founder can then retire and move onto the next project. I have seen it over and over for more than 25 years. I fear that's where AC is heading. I am not angry - it is just a fact of life.
What I did was move in the opposite direction. I got off the merry-go-round. As fee for service in a low volume alternative practice, I stopped getting new versions of medisoft, stopped submitting claims for my patients (I never participated in any insurance plans) and opted out of Medicare. I even contmplated going back to the old paper receipts and appointment book. I know most of you guys and gals are not in the position to do the same and I am hoping that the PM module will allow me to move away from Medisoft completely but I pretty much assume that in less than 5 years, AC will go the way of Medisoft. So my AC solution is a temporary improvement because things in medicine will change continually and change often. Sorry but that's just how I see it.

I hope you are wrong.

Not sure what you mean here. You can always cut and paste into a section in the chart. Once in a chart his alt and right click and you can create and save a template.

It was never intended to import other documents, creates a level of complexity that would probably cause issues. Cut and paste works.

I just got off the phone with support about 3 minutes ago and they assured me that they are NOT going to fix this issue - EVER.
Too bad my days with AC may be numbered now. What happens is that if you try to cut and past anything that is formatted, it destroyes the formating like paragraphs,etc. You can never have check boxes because it won't support that either. You can't create a paper check box sheet for the ROS in the waiting room and have your staff scan it into that scetion of a new patient's chart to save you time! Another way to say this is that YES you can import a template but the template itself doesn't support anything other than simple text. They also just told me that the receipts I print out for my patients (I don't submit claims) will NOT have my ein # or NPI #. I have to add that every time with a billing note. Totally useless fo me. I don't know why AC advertises in Holistic Primary Care Journal. Readers don't have typical conventional practices and I think AC isn't a good fit for alternative docs.

Dom, take it easy. Seriously, I am trying to help, please don't take offense.

First, this is not a support issue, it's an Amazing Charts issue and, as such, I would take it up with Jon directly. Call him and discuss it with him and get his take. Ultimately, he is the only one who can make decisions on this.

There are two programs that may be helpful. One is Instant Medical History as it does allow your patients to fill out everything on a computer and then import it (I hope in a good format) into AC.

Second, there is the PM. I know we don't know when it will come out, but my guess is late December, early January. I am sure this will have the EIN and NPI.

IMH isn't free and the PM isn't right around the corner. But, as we all have to remind ourselves, AC is an extremely inexpensive program and, as such, will not have the same features NextGen has.

Dom...
check out JBS comment on the thread superbill format....he has a solution for putting NPI and tax ID on the claims or receipts right under your practice info.

Simple text is the issue as opposed to RTF (Rich Text Format.) I have been told it would take a significant rewrite to change the program to RTF.
Ultimately you have to decide whether the program works for you, or another fits the bill. If you make your templates to the default response " "NO vomiting or diarrhea" you only change it if there is a positive. I double click and put a ++ to indicate that.
Is it a workaround? Could be, I've been doing it so long thats just the way it is.

Ultimately all programs have their downsides, you have to decide whether this issue, along with the EIN is enough to make not only a significantly large outlay of cash and learning curve. Not having a PM program is probably the biggest, IMHO for AC, and that will soon be resolved. But Bert could care less about a PM, everyone has a different priority. You need to be happy that your investment is providing you what you need.

Dom,

Wendell hit it on the head. If this program does not fit your needs, find one that does. If you scroll through the boards you will see that all of us at one time or another have had unfavorable things to say about AC and have expressed wishes for improvements. In reality though, I would not hesitate to say that AC is far and away right for us. It suits our styles and budgets much better than the "big guys". For the others, they have left and gone elsewhere. That certainly is your prerogative. You need to be happy with your EMR. You will spend more time with it than your spouse.

The other thing that helps (I think) is throwing these things up here. Others will have the same issues. It may not get fixed, but venting helps. Plus, as JBS pointed out, there are workarounds.

Hey Guys, if I had the $$$ to spend on a more inclusive program, I'd switch to SoapNotes or something like that. I will try the workaround for the superbill to see if it works for me - StLawrence, thanks for the tip. AC was and is an experiment to see if I could handle an EMR and its learning curve. I don't use it in my main practice, only in a small satelite home office. In my main office,I use an old version of medisoft and paper charts. Support seemed to intimate that PM is a year away. I think this forum is great but I haven't drunk the cool aide yet so allow me to differ on occasion and vent. I did post this issue in the problem section as well. Also, just found out that if you print an encounter note as a text file, it puts in the date you printed it NOT the date of the encounter - now that's useless!

Just switched to AC 5.0.29 a week ago and it is working great with no problems so far.
1. I use the AC front end and not the New crop to send my electronic prescriptions to the local and long term pharmacy from my pateint's exam room and it work great even with my wireless connection.
2. Heath maintainence section is another good addition
3. My faxes still come in as PDF files through Zimbra
4 still using the SUMMARY sheet to keep track of my PAP, MAMMO,HEMMOCULTS, COLONSOCOPIES etc
As far as printing encounters here is what i posted
just tried to print both ways
1. Selected patient from the pt list. right clicked , selected encounter note and it printed the date of the actual note
2. Selected the encounter note and hit PRINT PREVIEW and saved it as a TXT fie and printed it again and it printed the date of the encounter. I am using version 5.0.29
Both notes printed the actual date of the encounter
Grenville

That's the point.

Wow. Great comments, insights, and concerns. Let me address some of these.

First, the new pricing is $1995 per provider for the license. This is a one time charge for new practices (and includes the first year of maintenance, updates, support, and eRx). The $995/year after the first year is per provider. We are in the process of enhancing our payportal site to allow folks to pre-purchase at the current price to thus "lock-in" the older price for two years. This adds protection for the client, as well as the Amazing Charts company and ensures that users don't experience sudden and unexpected price increases while ensuring Amazing Charts can afford to get updated certification and add the features and enhancements demanded by our clients, as well as those required by the government.

In terms of the issues raised here (and elsewhere on the board). First of all - I understand.

I understand the frustration with the letter writer, with the lack of enhanced fonts and report abilities, and the other issues that have been noted. These issues will be sorted out and fixed - with user input. They are not being ignored. Their delay, however, is due to the rapidly changing EHR landscape including new rules (new certification requirements, DEA changes, etc), new money (stimulus $$$), new requirements for improved interoperability (RECs, Hospitals), and the rapid growth and dynamic changes that the EHR industry is experiencing.

The reality remains that Amazing Charts is a work-in-progress. (All EHRs are - they just don't publicly admit it.) While we have come a long way since our first version, we still have a ways to go to make this work great for everybody all the time. But that is absolutely our goal, and we will get there.

Our biggest assets (low cost and simple usability) are also our biggest difficulties (limited resources and figuring out how to make complex certification requirements easy to use). We must set difficult priorities and implement them in an order that sometimes changes based on government and third-party changes, and sometimes means we don't get the perfect solution the first time around. For example, we had to delay PM to allow for CCHIT certification, Surescripts certification and improved eRx. We have held the letter writer and making order tracking and immunization entry easier as we strive to ensure that we can support the PCMH and meaningful use requirements since money from these is imminent and delaying these means less money for the majority of our users. Amazing Charts must be eligible for every extra penny that may be available to help supplement the lousy reimbursements that most physicians experience, even if this means some users will be frustrated with certain features they know could be done better. And while I understand that not everybody agrees with these priorities, they are the tough decisions we've had to make to ensure we will be around for years to come.

So let me outline our current priorities. Our goal is to get the new ONC certification for meaningful use done by the end of the year and PM complete within that time frame (or very soon thereafter). These are currently our top priorities based on many of our users opinions, as well as the reality that the money is only available for a period of time starting in 2011 and ending in 2016.

Getting the promised features done in a time-frame that is promised, and with minimal bugs, is also something you have demanded and is absolutely a reasonable expectation. To that end, we have hired a bunch of developers, added a QA department to minimize the risk of bugs in our releases, and painstakingly attacked annoyances found in prior versions. V5.1, for example, (due out this month) literally has over 200 fixed "bugs" and other issues in addition to the major features of improved electronic refills and Surescripts certification. But these priorities trumped fixing the letter writer and other items that may seem easy to solve, but actually "touch" a lot of other areas of the program and will be quite programmer-intensive.

We have also added many new Help desk folks, and the learning curve of training these folks and getting them up to speed with our product, services - and most importantly, our corporate culture of fairness, honesty, hard-work, and dedication to our clients - takes awhile. (We have also had to fire folks who just couldn't get the standard corporate bureaucratic mindset out of their head.)

I couldn't agree more with the general sense I get from this discussion that it is critical that Amazing Charts recognizes the contributions and essential nature of our existing clients. Our existing customers are absolutely the reason we remain competitive against companies like Allscripts, eCW, NextGen, and other overpriced systems. These companies - like the vast majority of EHRs - charge many thousands of dollars more than we charge and generate millions of dollars in profits for their shareholders. They spend tons on sales and marketing campaigns and work behind closed doors with local governments, hospitals, PHOs, IPAs (and some of the RECs) to get their product disseminated to unwary physicians who end up paying a lot of money for software that makes documenting notes frustrating (or so I'm told by many clients that have switched to us from other EHRs - see some of the testimonials on our website).

For those who have been with us the longest and witnessed our steady progression, I would hope you are confident we will get there and end up with it done right. It may sometimes be slower than you would like (it certainly is slower than I would like), and there may be some hiccups along the way (remember the frequent Microsoft Access database crashes back in '96?), but we learn and adapt and step by step, Amazing Charts will continue to strive to provide the absolute best tool to help run your practice - and do so at a reasonable price.

Jon,
Do you mean paying two years in advance or pre-purches now regardless of when we started or prior to expiration of your current support year. In other word if i started in 5/10 , do I have to pre-purches now or in April 2011. I would appreciate an answer.

November 1st isn't that far away. Our annual support would be due in April. I too am wondering what the details are. We are fortunate that in just over 18 months, we have only needed support twice.

The time you need support the most is when you don't have it.

Jon,
Thanks so much for the update! I can't tell you how much your episodic posts mean to many of us.

First off, I want to say I am happy with AC over all but i do have an issue with support lately.

I don't have an issue with the price increase, but I have to say that lately I have been very disappointed with the support. There is a report a bug function, but I never hear back from them on if the bug is a valid one or not. If you report something that is an issue, you don't always hear back and have to continuously call to get answers and everytime you talk to someone new so you don't get the answr you want.
if you ask about updates and suggestions, i get a different answer from everyone.

They tell you to use the wishlist, however when you do, i don't hear "hey that is a good idea" something so basic as most of us see al ot of kids, in the demogrphaics section it would make sense to be able to put both parents names down in case we need to get a hold of parents. the parents don't always live together.

I am not bitching for no reason, I would just like support to to be more responsive. Or if they say they will get you an answer, please get back to us even if to say "hey we don't know what is going on with that issue right now".

I tell all my friends about amazing charts os it isn't that i am not satisfied with the program overall.

Thanks!

I hope Jon Bertman can see Ketan's comments as very important. Amazing Charts as an EMR is at a crossroads.

Most of us who frequent the boards will weather AC's quirks and work-arounds. But the growing number of new users (driven to adopt an EMR by the incentives) are going to be easily frustrated by AC's limitations and lack of clear documentation. I don't think most of us would spend several thousand dollars on software that makes our job harder (not saying this is true of AC, but it has some rough edges).

The way to leave users with a feeling that AC is above the rest, despite some limits, is with superb customer service. The little things that Ketan mentions, such as receiving a response, even if negative, gives one a feeling that the problems will be addressed, even if its a week, a month, a year.

I hope that 5.1 squashes a lot of bugs, my life will be easier. But even better if 5.11, 5.12 and so on show an increasing commitment to quality, and responsiveness to user comments. Most of the recent updates have been all about features needed to meet government mandates.

I haven't been able to use the new Pay Portal to pay in advance before the price goes up. There seems to be no way to renew an existing account; everytime I add the support charge it adds in the software purchase price.

Has anyone successfully renewed?

I tried to do the same with no success. We need an explanation from Jon. May be it is not ready yet. I hope it will be clear by next week.

Yes, it is being tested currently and should be ready for use tomorrow.

Jon

I just wanted to say that thanks for looking out for the guys that have already been with you and allowing us to be locked in at the $500 a year for maintenance.

I'll second that. -And having had to work with orphaned software a few times over the past 20 years, I'd really prefer not to repeat the experience!

Hey, i just tried the new Pay Portal , and it works! Thanks, Jon.

The pay portal is not working for me for American Express as of 19OCT2010. It says "please pick a card type from the drop down list." Maybe this is because American Express is first on the list? Perhaps the first choice should be "Choose Card Type" or a null?
...KP