Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Confusion on 6.5 status

We had received an e-mail about upgrading to 6.5. I understood that it was the final release version, but the release was being staggered due to support issues. The Status post yesterday, however, still talks about it being a beta version.

I don't want to be too anal about this, and realize the issue is perhaps one of semantics, but I really want to change only once the company can give its full assurance that this has been tested to all reasonable expectation of working without flaws. So, what is the consensus? Is it still in beta, looking for a really broad base of testers who can't whine when it breaks because it is in beta, or is it the full release where the company is comfortable saying "This works, all the time, without exception"?

This would be the release candidate which is basically the final version. They just want to be 100% sure on this one. This is the very last step before the RTM/Final Version.

The answer you are looking for is going to have to come from someone @ AC. Since we are regularly testing third party software and systems, we will have our opinions, but we are constrained from offering those in public.

The standing joke in the software world for the last 20 some years is that you never want to be on the X.0 release, because that is otherwise known as the Uh-Oh! release. Development and release management has come along way, but it is wise to not be the first penguin diving into the ocean unless you have a pressing need. We have all seen the pictures of "Shamu" waiting.

That said, once it is officially released, we will be doing upgrades for clients that desire it done, and after some of those are completed in their [or our] production environment, we'll have a more educated perspective.

@Sadeep,

Nice post. The problem is no two companies do their betas the same. I have never seen a company do Beta testing so transparently as AC.

That's true. But they follow the same general pattern. Yet all signs point to an official release coming in a few weeks. You'll get a notification in the main program when it's ready. My guess is that pushing out the beta, it's much easier to go from 6.5RC1 to 6.5 Final than from 6.3 to 6.5 as SQL 2012 would already be installed.

True, but I still don't know why they are advertising this as a three-hour install which may require support. I haven't done it on the server, but I have installed it twice, and it took about 20 minutes including the restore.

Lol I mentioned it in an email. But there are some people, even on the board, who are using Windows XP/Server 2003. The whole idea of migrating data (non-AC stuff), Amazing Charts, restoring the database, etc. can be overwhelming. AC must be worried about users messing that up on their own.

Hell, I'll probably mess it up.

It is still in beta.

How about Practice Management software Kareo and AC?

Anyone using Kareo?

Rajesh Patel MD

I do not know why there is so much hype about V6.5. I went to Primed in Atlanta. Talked to marketing person. He looked very lonely among long legs drug reps. He is quite knowledgeable, but he was not able to hide the fact that there is not a lot of improvement over 6.3 to justify this hype. Some features are just frightening. For instance, much lauded Check in button. Nurse does check in and puts CC, HPI and vitals on her "dedicated" screen and forwards chart to doctor. Lets say doctor now wants to use previous visit as a template (lets say something simple and repeating, like sinusitis, refill meds on stable pt, etc. Doctor can not use " prior visit as stepping off point" feature because it will delete what nurse just wrote. Bug? Rep did not know.
Refill requests from pharmacies still will be saved under addendum and clutter the chart. I was told before that it was "known bug" by Tech Support. Not fixed. Rep did not know anything about this problem. I brought up List of 82 (or 81?) suggestions, he did not know what I was talking about.
I did not check new letter writer in depth, but I noticed that it was slow. V6.5 looks more complicated, less intuitive, and slow (because it does more, I was told).
Overall, I had quite bad impression from the whole experience. I have been attending PriMed sessions for many years. This year was the worst. I was told that they were owned by Bain Capital and they ran it to the ground. Now some guy Tooney came and everybody saw the light. Reality check - I had to wait in line for 25 minutes to get registered, because they had only four people at check-in tables; no tables in the room anymore - everyone sits shoulder to shoulder very closely, had to smell people. Stale bagels for breakfast first day and muffins on second day. People were mad. At least 10% people skipped first hour of talks to go out to have more decent breakfast on the second day.

I would appreciate anyone working with v6.5beta to share a few of the improvements in this or another thread that could encourage me or others to get it sooner than later. Especially, I would like to hear of any changes that improve workflow and time spent charting.

Otherwise, I'm waiting until after Jon.

I am playing with it, but usually at the end of the day on a standalone sandbox computer, so I am tired and not really using it daily.

There are some new features (maybe more), which I didn't find particularly helpful. One can integrate more with billing during the note. Not sure how helpful Check in/Check out is.

The two things I like the most are the fact that it generally says "Electronically signed by (doctor's name) for labs and radiology and stuff. No big deal, but we have to use that for x-rays.

The letter writer is a vast improvement over the other. I guess everyone's computer is different, but I found it to be very fast. It has a lot of bells and whistles for templates, etc. These are drafts, not the old templates, although you can import them. But, it is using an RTF file so you are editing in a Word environment. I find there is a lot of emphasis on templates and clicking on icons to get data. While this is helpful, there is a small learning curve. With regular Word, there is a lot less of this and more bells that can be used to create the letter. But, it's pretty good.

eRx is quicker and has a few gadgets that I couldn't figure out. Anyway, that is all I can give you for the moment. You can log in any time and give it a test run.

Dan, Jon Bertman doesn't usually tell us which version he is using.

Bert, if you have saved a letter and then find an error/typo, can you correct it and save, or is it the same "once created, locked in stone" as the rest of the record?

David, it is just like Word. You can open it, edit it, and resave it. Or you can open it, edit it and save it with a different name.