Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Practice Management for AC that doesn't need X-link

Does anyone have a practice management system that is integrated with AC that doesn't need x=link? and they are happy with? and who use Gateway? We use Gateway EDI and found that it more than paid for itself very quickly.

We are hoping 6.5 will make Med-soft easier to use-prevent double entry of demographics. Also considering purchasing a different PM or different integrated system altogether.

Thanks in advance if you have time to answer.

If you use Gateway, how are you now sending claims?

Or you could make your own interface. I did. Not to hard to do.

JamesNT

We use Medisoft to send claims to Gateway.
Any suggestions?
Hoping 6.5 will make a difference.

The problem with interfaces provided by OEM's is the lack of customization. For example, for our clients that use Amazing Charts, I was able to put in the G8447 code for them into our PM system if they forgot to enter it into Amazing Charts - and they always did. There are other various customizations we did as well.

The issue with making your own interface is you have to have the skill to do it or know someone who does. You can certainly build an interface between AC and Medisoft using SQL Server Integration Services. SQL Server 2012 is $1200. If you do it yourself, awesome. If you get someone to do it for you, you'll need to discuss long term maintenance as a newer version of AC or Medisoft may break your transfer because of changes in database schema.

There is no real easy way to do this. And there is certainly no free way - which is what a lot of doctors are demanding based on the attitude I see a lot of on this forum. However, if having an interface saves an employee 2 hours a day, then a $2000 interface will pay for it in 83 days assuming your employee makes $12.00 per hour.

JamesNT

I think James gave the honest answer.

We use Altapoint version 8. It's old, but I've been waiting for AC to get their act together.

We've been using an AC "approved" billing service the past year+.

Now, I'm working with someone to convert the AC preferred 1500 output to the format we send to Gateway so I can go back to using them directly. I was planning to offer you our solution once we got it done. Since we use a different program altogether, though, me sending you a copy of our script won't do you any good.

I also hope 6.5 actually works.

I am willing to develop another interface between Medisoft and Amazing Charts if we can get someone to work with us on it.

We currently have an HL7 interface for Medisoft called Vigor that we developed and I can send over specs on Vigor.

There is also the new Mirth-based interface that McKesson developed that is a drop in replacement for the discontinued Communication Manager. McKesson has only done a partial job of documenting this interface but I would be willing to share what I have if you want to develop this in Mirth with us. We have the ability to massage the data in Mirth by adding our own channels.

So Mirth or Vigor we just need to exchange HL7 specs to see far off we are and what it would take to develop the interface.

So when you do these links are we talking about demographics only (that is what I assumed from previous discussions).

See James talking about codes... can this be done for other PM software?

You are right.. there is a price to be paid, expensive, but maybe worth it. Can someone do this, with codes?

How much are we talking about?

While I too await V7, not sure if I really want to change my expensive long time PM for a newbee...

tceg,

I have done demographics, encounters, and scheduling. Data is data, man. All you have to do is figure out the database you are coming from and the one you are going to if you are doing direct database access. If you are doing HL7, you negotiate with the other person you are doing HL7 with. This is a fancy way of saying you are on the phone with a tech guy for a few hours going over a file spec.

I use SQL Server Integration Services for all my data work. It makes things easy and is easy to maintain. Others use some type of other pre-built package thing or they do all the works themselves in raw C# or VB (or other language).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_Server_Integration_Services

JamesNT