Home Forums Discussions General Discussion AC updates

I see that amazing charts updated the splash screen to add a bit of the old green. (Mind you my ancestors from Ireland tended towards the orange)

Anybody else a little concerned about the general announcement for mandatory upgrade?

It is the 90 day verbiage that tweaked me a little bit

It is something that we have heard from several clients about already. I would not describe the response as glowing.

I haven't spent too much time on the boards recently.

Does this mean that once they release version 8 for general consumption, we have 90 days to do the mandatory upgrade?

The problem is that ICD 10 becomes mandatory is just about 6 months. AC 8.2 will the the completely ICD 10 certified version.

AC has over 10,000 installations.

That would theoretically mean something in the order of 50-60 installs a day for the next 6 months.

Now, some of those will self installs. Some have purchased AC but are not active.

But even if you figure 1/2 that number: 25 installs a day is a pretty heavy schedule.
Procrastination being what it is, that number would probably triple to quadruple in the last 2 months.

So, MANDATORY... It might upset some folks, but it gets everyone moving, then they can stay on some kind of schedule.

If they don't, on Oct 2 there are going to be people who are even MORE upset because their system is not up to standard and billing cannot go out. Now you have a TRUE emergency (in their minds)!!! (or as the sign in my office reads: Poor planning on your part does NOT constitute an Emergency on mine)

Understood. Thank you.

I assume that using version 8 would only be pertinent if you use AC for filing claims. So the number of mandatory upgrades for claims filing users may be less. Or maybe even a trivial number.

True, but the majority of folks use AC in some way for billing. Especially with the change to ICD10, it will give you the codes faster than looking them up if you paper bill.

Even still, there will be a lot of upgrades in a short amount of time. Get in line, folks, unless you want to do it yourself.

did the 8.02 myself over the weekend on 4 machines went without a hitch albeit I'm on a peer to peer network so maybe easier.
See better functionality as compared to 6.6.5 (I know a vague statement) and so far the added delay seems bearable.
Cheers from the DIY crowd.

Koby,

What are the specs for the machine that's hosting the data?

It's a machine I put together
ASUS Motherboard M5A99X EVO
AMD FX4350 Quad-Core Processor @ 4.20GHz
16 Gb DDR3 Ram @ 800MHz
Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB
Windows 7 Pro 64 bit
External Buffalo USB3 500 GB Disk for backup

Do you know when AC 8.2 will be available?
I don't want to upgrade to 8.0x then to upgrade to 8.2

Their email stated sometime in April. I have no further information than that.

What version are you on? I would probably wait, otherwise it is 2 upgrades in fairly short succession.

If you are on V6, it would be useful to get used to the additions on V8 and see the speed difference (not huge but present.)

If you are on V7 there are no speed differences, but V8 adds a number of improvements.

It may be good to download on a personal computer just to check it out so you know what you are getting into, but then I like to tinker and see what's next. You need to ask still about a download. The one in the portal is still V7.1.3

Having had the opportunity to talk with the senior folks at AC, the use of MANDATORY was a poor choice of words.

From their perspective MANDATORY is from the {Payer Perspective} applies to those practices where the Doctor/Provider does all the coding themselves, and does it exclusively inside of AC.

Because our client practices represent more diverse configurations, several of them have already gone the route of coding outside of AC, or having other staff/outsource code the encounter and forward the complete chart for review and sign-off.

This may seem like a minor distinction, but I believe it is essential to taking a hand in the future of independent medicine.

Ever since my earliest conversations with Physicians and Providers, the complaint is that Payers, and the Government in particular, are infringing on the practice of medicine.

Rendering to the Payers what they will need so that the practice gets paid is NOT EQUAL to the Physician/Provider must now do MORE work (either during the visit, or after hours).

As a career systems guy, that is fundamentally the wrong approach; it can, and some cases, will be done, but at what cost to the Physician/Provider? At what cost to the quality of care?

I'll be doing a series on this subject, along with what practices are doing to excel in-spite of increased Payer interference.

/rant off - SMH

This sounds like a pretty capable machine. With version 8, how many concurrent users does it handle comfortably?

We are a small office 2 users on it at a time seems fine opening charts no lag, the delays (a few seconds) seem to come when going into demographics and now drug interaction checker when writing a new Rx seems slower.