Home Forums Discussions General Discussion EHR/PM?

Can someone explain to me what the PM part of the software will do? What is worth the 399 a month or whatever they want to charge whenever it is out? I would still have my own billing company or I myself have to send out the billing correct? So what would the PM part of it give me? I am thoroughly confused and maybe i am very ignorant but please someone help me!

Thanks

Ketan

Same boat. Do not get the function value of PM. Billing is outside of AC.

This is a post I made previously. Didn't get an answer.

I don't get what the difference is between PM software and billing. I sort of feel Medware does everything for us in one package . What is different here?

Billing sends out claims. It may or may not include insurance verification

Practice management usually does everything billing would go but goes further to include scheduling, much more detailed reports and often does inventory management, personnel data collection and may include referral and recall logging.

There are more differences, but these are some that come to mind and that I can readily put down. Hopefully someone else will chime in

So, we already have a schedule on AC, medical offices don't typically have much of an inventory, and small practices are typically on a cash accounting system, not accrual. Medware has all kinds of reports available that I really never use; accounts receivable is about it. My accountant uses our Quickbooks files for her purposes. Isn't this whole PM extravaganza kind of overkill then? Don't we really just need a truly simple system to match the simplicity of AC itself?

Dr. Grauman,

You are thinking about this from the standpoint of your needs and not the standpoint of AC's goals. They want new business as well as maintaining old business. If you want to bring new, and possibly bigger, customers on board, you offer a solution like this. The "old guys", like yourself, most likely already have a solution and aren't going to move (Medware, in your case).

Fortunately, AC is also offering interfacing with other PM systems, it's just a question of when.

JamesNT

So i outsource billing so i don't have medware or anything really. I know my billers will provide me all the reports i possibly want.

I know that I use excel for inventory.

Accounting, yeah i am not great at it but used quickbooks this year and will see what happens with that.

I guess we will see what PM will give me that is useful...maybe i am missing the boat...but i don't know if it is worth 399 a month or whatever...

If you have a billing company that you trust and that treats your patient questions the way you want them to, then you're doing fine.

A PM module will allow you to export your claims in formats much "better" than AC. There's a standard that I just can't recall as I type this. The PM module will also allow you to import the EOB file (835) and update your records. Saves a lot of time.

Many programs let you track the usage of supplies, etc... if you care to enter their usage. Most people don't, I think.

$300/month is way overpriced. Even half of that is too high. Should be no more than $50/month in my opinion.

I think most of us are used to separate PM with double entry of pt and superbill data. It ain't pretty, but it works and there are wide variety of relatively cheap & proven vendors.

We are hesitant to bet the farm on an untested PM - medfx no one has heard of nor can find any actual products. AC, while we love them and want them to succeed, unfortunately has a mediocre at best track record for rolling out new features on time and bug free. On top of that, if the price is more than we currently pay, it's just a non-starter.

Lastly, ICD10 is coming and most of us need to plan for that now. We'd love to go with AC for integration, but the above factors argue that our safest choice is to skip tight integration, maintain low-cost/proven PM.

AC has to beat 2 of the 3 criteria (price, reliability/known quantity, integration) to get us to jump. Currently they are at 1 (integration promised).

Larry W
internist solo
ohio

About $298 times provider per month.

I don't know, when I do the eye ball test, I would think that the EHR would cost more than the PM. But AC is nowhere near $298 per year. And, THIS is not the integrated version, which will likely be higher.

There is a blog on Company Posts that talks about the reasons to purchase a PM. But, it is only about five paragraphs. The strange thing for those who haven't been over there, is there are about 20 posts from AC users that should be on the board.

It's ironic, and I guess it depends where in the cycle AC is, but two to three years ago, I thought AC would go under because it DIDN'T have a PM. Jon was building one from scratch, and the users couldn't wait until the ACUC to see it unveiled. Then it seemly didn't come to fruition, which with the time expended, was a major blow to AC.

Now, it is completely turned around. With many users stating why even have a PM. Not that it is too much (which it is), but why do we need one. We don't. We never did. AC got where it got because it did one thing right: Amazing Charts Light. Inexpensive, fast and lean.

The other thing that keeps coming up are these huge price increases that keep coming up. There has been one price increase in about 2.75 years. If you are already a user, your support cost goes up $200 to $1,195. You never pay for your license again. For new users, the initial license fee went up. They can decide if they want to pay. And, yes, some will take on new providers. But, for a user (by definition already owns AC, yes owns AC), their price went up $200 in almost three years.

PM means different things to different people.

There are elements of PM in AC now (Scheduling or example and some rudimentary financial summary data) along with the necessary demographic and billing data.

I think what most of us want, certainly what I want, is a program where, at the end of the day the employee (biller, receptionist, ect.) can review the data, press send and it's off to the insurance companies. Errors will pop back up in a day or so and those are corrected. ERAs come back and are posted (hopefully automatically, if not, then manually.)I then have summary data to show what was produced when and by whom. Having insurance verification would be nice.

The original AC V7 was close. It had all these elements, but I suppose, it was not totally reliable on the financial end (I did not use the billing side extensively.) It was a lot more complete than I expected but then the devil is in the details. I accept that having an add on integrated solution was a faster solution, too bad they had to abandon the other road. (This is not entirely true, because some of the V7 features such as check in and out, the separate insurance tab in demographics and such moved down to version 6.) It was planned that they would partner with a clearinghouse for submission, verification and ERA return and the cost would be about of a third to half of what the current option is listed (this is apples and oranges though, because I think the new option has more bells and whistles.)