Home Forums Discussions Problems provider frustration

so i am dale, a paramedic in a small urgent care in grayling michigan,i work as the ma, but also review charts, send out the charges and maintain the computers. i work with a nurse practitioner who is a great guy and a great provider. he found amazing charts 6 years ago and until about the last year, has been happy with it. since then he has been very frustrated. his computer, really only when he is on it (other temp providers, never seem to have issues). he complains about having to restart 5-6 times daily because of slow response or freeze up, he is convinced that it is in his ac user only and is ready to throw in the towel. so we have several issues. 1. i think he may be a premature clicker, clicks very quickly way to often, i have tried to slow his mouse speed down to accomidate this to no avail. 2. how do i convince him that it is almost impossible that whatever the problem is it would only effect one person on one computer 3. if their is a problem, how do i fix it. any suggestions would be apreciated. oh yeah, he has a brand new computer, and we have a brand new server, and when i am in his user reviewing charts, i NEVER have problems. thank you again

Dale,
Sounds like you have done a great job of identifying the issue. A few suggestions come to mind:
1. Targeted assassination seems to be a popular technique these days and is quite effective.
2. If your provider is right-handed, arrange a fall on some ice (Michigan has lots of that, right?) onto his right arm. If these approaches seem too drastic, maybe just convince him to cast it. It sounds like he will no longer have this issue if he has to work left handed.

Sorry....sometimes my sarcasm gets the better of me. You can either reason with him or try to find a technical fix. It sounds like you have tried both, to no avail. Maybe some of the IT gurus here can help with a technical fix. On the reasoning side... instead of trying NOT to replicate his problem, try to replicate it. Hit the mouse repeatedly and try to freeze the program. If you can do this, sit him down and show him: "this is what you are doing to make it freeze. You see, it is under your control. Do you want to continue to have the freezes or not"?

Give us an idea of your setup
How many computers, how much memory, peer to peer or server based.
Are you using gigabit LAN?

Hi Dale,

I believe him.....

For the last few weeks or so, my PA has been having intermittent error messages, and occasionally AC will shut down completely. These are very intermittent, they may occur 6 times a day, most likely to occur when sending a message or forwarding a chart. IT ONLY HAPPENS TO HER, NOT ME. It may occur on her laptop or desktop.

AC tech support suggested going to v 6.1.2 (currently using 6.1.1)

So yes, it is possible one user is "singled out."

Gene

If the v6.1.2 upgrade does not help, I may try setting up a new user account for my PA. (I probably would have done that already, but then she would probably have to be recredentialed for erxing.)

Gene

Dale:
DOnt give up the ship. I like Grayling. Maybe I can come up and take a look when the snow ends. Get the 6.1.2 and get some fast hard drives...I know others have said some things about the Solid State Drives, but I love mine....AC appears much faster. As I speak I have 2 browsers open, streaming music over Spotify, typing this....running AC report....and nothing is chugging at all. Quad core, 12mg ram, 128g solid state drive with additional drive as back-up (carbonite, external drive, and thumb drive for back-up as well). The database has 4,500 patients, but not alot of imported items.

Dale,
First off, hello. How is Grayling? I was born there and my family is from there (my grandfather is the house with all the license plates on the garage). Anyway, I had a similar problem with a provider here. I too blamed mouse-clicking and though I still believe it was part of the problem, it appears it wasn't all of it. We ended up having her brand new computer repaired and got a new motherboard and many of the issues resolved with that. Anyway, do remember that just because it's new doesn't mean that it's perfect. Good luck, whatever the issue may be.
So excited to see someone from Grayling on here!
Amber

Hello Dale,

It's been awhile. Are you on 6.0.10? If so 6.1.2 may help. I think you should also look at his deleted mailbox. When logged in as the Dr. go to messages then from the drop down for inbox look for deleted messages. Does he have a ton of messsages clogging up the system? If so delete them. If they do not delete or if this doesn't work shoot me an email and I will look at it with you.

It's almost Dells time.

Claire
Tech Support

This is an ideal example of where an SSD is useful.

Do you have a gigabit network?
Does his new computer have an SSD?

I have never seen any program crash due to mouse clicks. This can be adjusted in the software anyway.

I have. Going too fast can cause a program to seem like it crashed when you don't wait long enough. I've done with VMWare workstation when I'm trying to run several VMs simultaneously :P It seems like it crashed, but it just needs time to respond.

You should have him replicate the issue in front of you and perhaps we can offer a better suggestion. SSD sounds like a nice upgrade for him.

Anyone had task manager open to see if it is AC at all? It'll tell you when it's not responding (freezing/crashing).

In our office we have several laptops and several desktops. It freezes on two out of five of the laptops due to the processing power on the two being lower (they're both the same model). The desktops function at peak efficiency. Also AC sometimes just logs people out (it happens about every day, we just learned to deal with it). Honestly, it's not a miracle program but it is a very good one. Every program is subject to hardware issues as well as software.

Trying to replicate the issue should gain some insight on how to deal with it. Or e-mail tech support at AC. They're incredible!

@Jill Are you using wireless?

Seriously?

OK, here is my experience:

When we upgraded from 5.029, I started to experience a bunch of crashes. I finally figured out that they all happened when I was printing something using Crystal Reports, like orders. Crystal reports was not used in 5.029. Once you select the printer and hit "print" the document stays on the screen until the print job is complete. It looks like you can close out of it, but if you hit the red "X" more than once, the program crashes. The answer is to learn to be patient, and when the print job is done, the window closes automatically.

This made me nuts for a week or so until I figured it out. See if this isn't the problem.

See, that's how I crash my Virtual Machines sometimes ha. It has to do with the speed of the computer. Get faster computers and the issue will likely disappear.

Sandeep, speed can be achieved two ways: faster hardware or better programming. Our machines are fairly high end and new. It's time for the programmers to get back to wok.

^ That's true. The VM case is understandable as that's running several computers from one computer. But simply printing a report should crash AC.

Just out of curiosity: How high end?

Correction since I can't edit: But simply printing a report should NOT crash AC.**

It's not the printing; it is quitting out of the crystal reports window before the print job is done. Try it.

Dale,

First of all, bottom line: Yes, Amazing Charts needs a complete overhaul. Will that ever happen? I am not counting on it. We are most likely going to migrate from Amazing Charts to Athena because, just as you said, AC "used to work better". My doctor has been pulling her hair out over AC issues that started a little over a year ago. I only entered the picture after she started losing her hair, so I don't have any experience with AC working swimmingly, but I am willing to believe that it used to.

I am leaning heavily toward your initial hunches. It is almost certainly NOT his userid (his login) that is being targeted for "malpractice" by Amazing Charts. It IS almost certainly the case that, if everyone else who tries the same computer does not have these problems, then it is in the manner in which he is "moving too fast" for Amazing Charts. I have certain users in my group who do the same thing.

However, although you say that you do NOT have his problems, it sounds like it is also true that you are using AC in a different way. You are "reviewing" what has already been input. A lot of the crashes or stupid "Type 13 mismatch" boxes that I have heard reported by my users come about when they are entering data, not when they are simply reviewing it. Yes, it is true that it happens when they click somewhere, but they have also already entered data somewhere else ... I think.

So, your best bet is to make sure that someone who "clicks the same things that he clicks on the very same computer" does NOT have the same problems that he is experiencing.

But it is a fact that AC, all the way up to v6.1.1 crashes (completely goes away) way too often; and sometimes on quite fast machines. I recently upgraded to the v6.1.2Beta over a week ago, and I have not heard of any problems, but I cannot be sure because my users often refuse to report each such problem throughout the day, because they "just want to do their work", which is understandable too.

If you really believe that other users are performing chart updates to perform the same tasks that he is performing, then you would have to ask them to perform those tasks for the entire day on the same machine that he is complaining about.

If you have already done that, and if they swear that they simply do not have his problems, then it is almost certainly the speed with which he is clicking all over the place, and/or it could also be the case that not only is he clicking fast but that he performs the operations in an order that is different than any other user.

I am 99.99% sure that his Amazing Charts userid is NOT the cause of the problem.

From everything that I have seen that goes wrong with AC, I would not be at all surprised if, by clicking fast, the server "can't keep up" in the following sense: Your first click sent a message to the server, and to perform the task for the first click, the server had to "lock a resource", probably down at the SQL level. The second click came in so quickly that the resource was still locked, and when the server attempted to execute whatever it needed to do, it got an error from the SQL server saying that the resource was still locked. One microsecond later, and everything would have worked just great.

The tough part of "debugging" this (and I have done it before!) is that you would have to put a "packet tracer" like WireShark on this machine, and simply allow it continue monitoring packets until his error occurs. Just like everything else, WireShark is "easy if you know how to use it". But it is remarkably tedious to examine the packets afterwards, and there is no guarantee that, with all the details that you find in the packets, that you'll find the problem.

If anyone knows much about examining problems on the server side by viewing whatever logs get logged by SQL, it would be helpful to see such a post! That is pretty much all that the "AC Server" is; it's just an SQL server that maintains tables specific to AC.

Greg

Hi everyone,

As mentioned in post #42115 above, we were having "single user" problems with v6.1.1.

About 3 weeks ago, we upgraded to 6.1.2. All the single user problems disappeared. The user did not change anything she was doing.

So I believe a single user problem was present, and fixed by the upgrade.

BTW, 6.1.2 is very solid. Its only quirk is a 2-10 second delay printing orders, during which time the "Print order" screen remains displayed. Other users have reported that trying to x out of this screen causes problems, so be patient and wait it out.

Gene

I'll never understand why people say that about any software.

JamesNT

JamesNT, I agree. A complete overhaul = it isn't AC anymore.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it: don't mess with what does work.
But at the same time, DO fix what doesn't.
Also be prepared for about 2 bugs for every feature enhancement, on average (an maybe reduce that by half with extensive QA).
In my development experience, I've see critical bugs arise in code that I went no where even remotely close too. Inexplicable.

I have the same experience. It is amazing how many places a section of code can be used that I have totally forgotten about, and that suddenly don't work because I "fixed" something. Worse, they often don't show up for weeks or months because that part of the program only runs every once in a while, like quarterly billing. Much better the devil you know than the ones you don't.

Happened to me in my former life also. 5 lines of code caused a small delay that only showed up after several hours of continuous use on a specific job. Hell to debug.