Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Patient Portal

I haven't been on board for a while, so I may have missed this discussion. Is AC offering (or is it already available & I'm missing it), a patient portal for secure conversations with patients, exporting lab results, etc. I understand that this is a hot item, especially in the context of patient centered medicine. Also, when will the 6 level upgrade be available?

A portal is not (yet) a component of AC. Updox has a portal which you can use with AC.

Are there any companies other than UpDox that has a patient portal that can be used with AC? We had UpDox, and while I *loved* it, the doctor and other staff hated it (they aren't....tech savvy). Or any other way to set up a patient portal, even if it doesn't integrate with AC?

www.avado.com offers a non-integrated pt. portal - I have talked with AC about possibility of interfacing and they said they would look into it. Their basic portal is free.

Avado sounds very interesting. Even if not integrated, it may meet the requirement of portal access. Depends on how it is done.
They appear to have their own EMR, so it will be interesting to see whether they want to dance with AC as well. Success is built on volume and AC can bring some volume, but profit is with their EMR and AC would not help in that aspect.

I'm actually surprised to hear about the issue of difficulty with UpDox. We've now had it running in one my adult side of the practice for 3 weeks and my most technophobe staff members are using it without issue. We introduced it to the pediatric side and they've taken to it even faster within a few days. My partner's other office has also picked it up really quickly too after their webinar and a quick demo in my office.

I was a big advocate of having Pri-Med pick up Updox and roll it into AC at the Baltimore Pri-Med and plan on pushing it again down here at the Ft. Lauderdale Pri-Med. I love the portal aspect and haven't even started using their schedule component of it yet. And my patients LOVE the portal access so far too.

Shankar
Family Med
Lawrenceville, NJ

I don't know. Updox is pretty darn easy to use even for the technophobes. Print to Updox. Find patient. Send to patient. BAMM! Its done. There are some things that I wished they did better, but for the things that it does it was a nice improvement over our previous portal platform. AC Integration helps with that too.

Greetings from the PriMed/ACUG (which is now technically over)

AC is now trying to set smaller conferences with the users at the PriMed conferences. This makes sense and the small group (60-70) atmosphere is condusive to discussing things better than the larger group discussions. Also, it is one day vs multiple day conferences.

As usual, I feel I gained more than I gave at the conference.

V6.5 was shown. Many of the good features that were in 7.0.10 were moved into it plus a few others. They have officially put PM on hold to look for better options and to work on cleaning up more long standing issues.

6.5 is based on SQL 2012 so it should be compliant with Server 2012 and Windows 8.

V7 porting gave updates to prescriptions (formulary checking, pharmacy telephone and fax numbers) as well as new check in and check out screens that allow input of copays and procedures (such as immunizations) before the chart is completed.

In the admin section, the practice licensing requires that you include not only the zip but +4 digits for 5010 compliance.

It has not been finalized when V6.5 will be out. A couple bugs were noted during the demonstration but were comparatively minor. They are loosely anticipating in a month but refused to be pinned down further. I think they have been burned by creating expectations they could not meet.

AC iPhone app was pulled until it can be compliant with iOS 6. They are looking more broadly at "mobile apps" in general (think Android) but again would not commit to a time frame.

As is the case with all AC conferences, they covered areas from basic AC to advance over the one day time frame.

The weather here is lousy, mid 70's and partly cloudy with a gentle breeze. No snow, no chilly breezes, nothing to complain about. Oh well, can't always be exciting.

Of course the best part was all the people I met or re-met. It's always fascinating to see how many different ways AC is being used.

Wendell,
Are these AC/Prim Med conferences advertised or promoted somewhere? Do they have an email mailing list to get on?

I have no doubt that the small AC meeting was good and educational.

But, I really enjoyed the big meeting format, with the ability to meet folks from other geographic regions. And, being there for several days allowed enough time to really get to know others. I will miss that aspect if there is not a national meeting, and only the regional gatherings.

It seems we have hijacked the patient portal discussion.

Back to the portal issue, I pinged tech support last week in regard to the portal issue. I asked them if V7 was going to have a portal and would it be smarter to wait for it to come out as opposed to setting up a portal through Updox. He suggested going with Updox. Still looking forward to V6.5 and hopefully V7 soon.

Steven~~Thank you so much for the information, I really appreciate it!

Everyone else: I personally *loved* UpDox and have been begging to get it back ever since. We tried it for two weeks. The staff (and doctor) hated the .pdf manipulator for Rxs. They are pretty averse to change and just didn't want to try, which I understand...still.

I thought it was great. I still cry a little.