Home Forums Importing data to AC's from another EMR

To Sandeep or any others who may have experience in this area....I am soon to use AC's and have started entering patient data such as demographics,etc. I am moving from an office that used NextGen and going back into solo practice where I will be using AC's. I have a significant number of patients to transfer to AC's. I'm told the price to import from NextGen will be about $10K. I would not pay this amount if all I got were demographics. However,I would consider paying this if ALL of the data can be exported such as histories, meds, allergies and so forth. So my question is has anyone done this before? If so, is the information transferred to the appropriate sections of AC's from the prior EMR. Is it done smoothly? Easily? Alot of issues with this process?

Dave,

Do you own the charts that are entered in NexGen? Are you forming an entirely new entity with your solo practice? If you are leaving a group, have they told you what your access to the patient data will be?
As I am basically a cheapskate, no way would I put out 10K to transfer patient info. If I were to have unlimited and ongoing access to the info in NexGen I would simply wait until a patient from that practice came into my new practice. Entering the demographics is really no big deal and once there you do not have to do it again. Plus, it is always a good time to make sure that info is UTD. As far as the actual medical records, I would "print" them to something like PDF Pro or (in my case) to the Paperport desktop and then import them into AC as a bulk file or, if you wanted to cull out some of the more important labs, xrays etc you could import those reports into AC separately. It would really be no different than if you were just now converting from paper to digital and were scanning in charts.
If your access to these records will be limited, I would get what I could and then ask the patients to request their records from the old practice and deliver them to the new. If there is a fee, so be it. Not your fault the old practice will not provide their info free of charge. But then again, I am cheap.

Leslie,
Yes, I am leaving a group. I entered the group couple years ago and brought my own patients and will be leaving with my own patients. I had converted paper to EMR when I joined the group (and remember how long that took) and now will be going back solo. I have access to my records but did not want to print-scan-and enter again. Thought I could just import the records directly into AC's (couple thousand charts) rather then spend the staff time to scan all over again.
Thanks,

I wonder if the scans are still available as individual files. If so, your older info would be there then just request the newer info from the group.

Rather than pay 10K I would agree that they would fax out of Nexgen the record to you then you just import the PDF of the old record. Pain on their part to fax out records, but puts the onus on them, and really should not be that time consuming and no paper is involved.

As far as mapping the individual Nexgen fields to the AC fields, I would imagine this is doable and 10K might be required (it would probably be time consuming) but I agree with Leslie. Start out fresh, get the old records as PDFs and have a clean record moving forward.

Thanks Wendell,
But I could have the files put in PDF or faxed to me and have them available but that's very different from having the data imported directely and mapped into AC's. $10K would be worth the latter but not the former. I have still not found anyone that's imported into AC's ,however. I am curious if this has been done or even possible.

Is NextGen like AC? Is the data held locally or is the company holding your data in some sort of cloud-based solution? You should PM JamesNT, this is right up his alley.

Sandeep,
Been waiting to hear from you. haha
NextGen is server based and we have the data at the office. Just need the groups IT people to perform the IT part of it. They are wanting to know EXACTLY how detailed the data is that I want, that sets up the time involved and the price. Just not sure I'm getting cooperation in this area. I don't know JamesNT or how to reach him on this site.
Thanks,

Let me take a look at NextGen and I'll get back to you. I'll forward this to James in the meantime.

Thanks Sandeep, I'll see if my IT people will look at your suggestions on this site.

First, I agree with Wendell and Leslie. I guess I shouldn't even say it given you have made it clear you don't mind but $10,000 is way over my budget. I guess I didn't look at it the way you do when I left my other practice with 1500 patients. I had a hard enough time getting them to give me records at all. And, we used AC.

I simply set up AC, put in my patients when they came over and asked for records. Scanned them and burned them.

I THINK YOU ARE ASKING THE WRONG PEOPLE. The only ones who truly know would be AC. I would call them.

To find JamesNT, go to User List | Enter NT into the search field | Click on Search

If you can't get it done, I am sure there is someone who will scan the records for less than $10,000.

Thanks Bert,
$10k does seem like alot of money, but if it means being able to see a full schedule from the beginning rather then a major slow down plus staff time inputting the data, then it might be worth it. I did the scanning thing before and there is no doubt about the revenue drop and long hours for my staff in doing so. (By the way, my staff isn't able to save the histories they're entering unless they make a message and have me sign off on it. Any advice here?)
I am certainly keeping my options open at this time and will definitely try to reach JamesNT.

Well, I must admit I am not quite sure if I have your question correct. But, if I do, your staff, MAs and such, would enter histories, ROS, etc. then forward the chart to you for you to open, read, add to and sign off. They will not be able to sign the chart.

Ten Thousand Dollars? Clearly, the world will not be ending on December 21, 2012. I don't think it can wait that long.

I would do this in steps:

Step 1. Get demographics in. Take a good look at that and sign off on it. If you like what you see, pay for that part.

Step 2. Get the front desk scheduler over. Take a good look at that and sign off on it. If you like what you see, pay for that part.

Step 3. Bring over encounters. Take a good look at that and sign off on it. If you like what you see, pay for that part.


And so forth. This way, you pay only for the work you like and you don't worry about the work you don't like. The reason for this is that some things just have no clean translation from one EMR to another. Or you may change your mind. Or something (choose your own poison).

I haven't laid eyes on NextGen in a long time. To answer your original questions:


Not from NextGen. If anything, we should get demographics over with little issue. Demographics are almost always easy. I have rarely seen the EMR that screws up basic lastname, firstname, addressone, addresstwo sort of stuff (*cough* Soapware *cough*).


Yes. And you verify all every step of the way.


That depends on the quality of data and how big the differences are between NextGen and AC. There will be a few issues here and there. For example, NextGen may allow you to enter a patient without a birthdate. Amazing Charts REQUIRES the birthdate. You have two choices:

1. Give all patients that are missing a birthdate a false birthdate of 1/1/1800 just to get them in and promise yourself you'll fix them later.

2. Leave those patients out.

You'll have to make decisions on stuff like that. Bottom line: Things that don't work right or come over right, you don't pay for - and it gets taken back out of AC.

It's late. Almost midnight my time. I'll have more tomorrow. Until then, feel free to ask additional questions.

*Tips hat to Sandeep and Bertimus Prime.

JamesNT

I think you have it correct. They enter the patient information but can't save it unless I sign off on it. I am not there to do this as I am working at another office for 3 more weeks. They are trying to get the info put in for my opening day there in 3 weeks.

Thanks JamesNT, Going to have my IT person follow this thread with me.

Dave,
The question you ask is multi-faceted and the answer depends on a lot of variables (e.g., how many of the 2000 patients do you think you will continue to see; how long and complex are the charts, etc). If it helps, I can tell you that we scanned in thousands of paper charts using inexpensive labor and the final cost was about $1.25 per chart. This did NOT include breaking down the information into text boxes in AC; they were either batch scanned (into one Imported Item category) for older charts or broken into several Imported Items categories for newer ones. So it is a bit pricey, but may be worth it to pay about $5 per chart ($10000/2000) to have the information entered into the individual fields in AC. That's if your IT people can really do it well. Of course if you estimate that you will only see 500 of the patients, then you are paying $20 per chart and that may lead to a different conclusion.

As to the sign-off question: to enter the information into the fields of a chart, you must create an encounter and that must be signed-off. You could give some (or all) of your staff "provider privileges" in AC, which would enable them to sign off the chart as they put the information in. (Of course you would want to take away that ability once the transition process was complete).

Thanks Jon,
Thats a good thought about having my nurse sign off the chart in my absence and it did dawn on me as I was typing my last reply.
All of the 2,000-3,000 patients are my long term patients and will be staying with me. Have had some of them for many years. That's why I would consider importing the data rather then just scanning into another document that would be a nuisance to look at during each encounter.

When NextGen talks about $10,000, can they guarantee the information will transfer to AC? I don't know how they could.

This may be silly, but have you looked at some of the Import/Export tools in the admin section? For instance, if AC can import all the demographics from an Excel sheet, I am sure NexGen could do the same. Not sure at all if they would be compatible.

I think James is talking about SQL to SQL.

Again, before you do anything, I would talk to AC. They may tell you that if NexGen can export the demographics into an Excel sheet, AC could match the columns of data to fit AC's. I don't know, but it is certainly worth a try.

Hi James,
How about Importing patients from one AC Practice to another AC Practice? We are in the process of merging two practices under one name. Both practices are using AC. One practice has about 3500 patients and the other practice has about 1000 patients. I asked AC if they can help me to merge these two practices together. I was told that this can not be done. Can you or any one else hlep me in this regard? Thank you
Qaiser Jawaid, MD

Qaiser,

To be honest, I'm not sure why AC would tell you this cannot be done. I can think of only two reasons why they would say that:

1. They do not have the expertise to do it themselves.

2. There is a special thing about each AC database that makes it unique.

You should at the very, very least be able to get demographics in. I'd like to work with you on this. Send me a PM sometime.

JamesNT

Not to take away from James' offer to help with SQL, and it may be that is the only way to go, but have you even tried exporting to an Excel sheet. It is very clear that they have a tool to import demographics from an Excel sheet. This is one of the things Excel is used for. Also, if they have this tool to import demographics from one EMR to another, I imagine they would need to be compatible. Last time I checked, AC was exactly compatible with AC.

Again, not trying to step on any toes.

Bert,
This utility works great for exporting and importing Demographics. Is there a way of Exporting Entire Record of the patient from one AC and then importing into another AC? I tried exporting CCD and importing it but import comes back as Import Item as PDF file and not get into the patient's chart with meds, allergies, diagnosis etc.
Any help??
Thanks.
Qaiser

I don't think AC has the tools in its program to do that.