Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Report on ACUC 2016

A few personal observations on the 2016 ACUC, now that it is behind us. I would describe the ?feel? of the conference as ?just like old times?. The sense of a shared purpose and of camaraderie was everywhere, as it was in meetings in years past. We networked, re-connected with old friends and met new ones both between and during sessions. AC was represented by a sizable staff from all levels of the company, and to a person they were friendly and all-about helping and teaching. The meeting should end the worries of those with lingering concerns that the purchase by Pri-Med might end the personal, physician-friendly culture at Amazing Charts. Conference content was an excellent mix of sharing from experienced users and updates on what is new in the program and what is to come from the company. The ACUC fostered the sense of community that many of us value as an important added benefit of using the program.

A common expression heard this weekend was ?Wow, I didn?t know you could do that?. In fact, that was a major theme; the pleasant surprise of users as we recognized new ways that the program could help us to be more efficient and even provide better patient care. The company is discussing ways to spread the word about some of these features and ?tips and tricks?. I encourage people to post about them here.

V9 was previewed in detail by Chris Conrad, the head of product development. It is still not the ?official? release, but the links to download are available from support on request (and it will be official soon). Beta testers have been holding back, but now that they are free to speak, there seems to be a strong consensus that this is a stable, speedy version with a number of fixes as well as worthwhile improvements. The expectation is that one can upgrade from almost any version to 9 without any significant drop-off in performance, and in fact most people will find it to be faster (for some, significantly so). The V9 release notes clearly detail the changes, and as people become familiar with them I expect that we will be discussing them here.

If we want to continue doing things with V9 the same way we did them in V6-8, then that will work fine. On the other hand, I think the accumulated improvements will cause us to rethink some of our workflows as the EMR may now permit some more efficient ways of getting things done.

We owe a big thank you to John Squire, Charlie Schacter, Chris Conrad, and the rest of the team at AC who put this conference together and pulled it off so well. We have gone five years without a national ACUC, and it would have been easy for them to let us go longer...perhaps even indefinitely. They deserve credit for ?green-lighting? the conference, organizing and supporting it, and doing it right. Oh yeah... and the food was terrific.

Jon,
Thanks for the update & sounds like a very good time, wish I could have made it but just couldn't get it to work out this year. Maybe next year

I'm jealous. Sounds like is was fun. I'd would love to meet all the "famous" people from this board. Maybe next year.

Please keep doing these every year so I can go next time. Also maybe not right after spring break?

I echo Jon's description - I've been an AC/UD user for over 10 years, but still learned quite a bit over the wk-end.

for me one of the high-points was the hands-on lab which was staffed w the techs you've all talked to off & on for years. The hotel was quite nice, almost too much for me, being used to simpler lodging - but that's just me, it was a well-run event from the technical pov -

altho they might have run power cables under the tables, since battery life can be shaggy on our favorite work-horse laptops.

I'll certainly go back to any AC conference that has the IT-staffed hands-on lab - it's so much easier to have the live interchange w this highly professional & congenial IT crew.

How about having the next one in the center of the country, say Kansas City in the spring, or Chicago ( def before the summer ! )

ricardo ortega MD
Geriatrics & Hospice

solo home visit practice ( made possible by having great softwares - AC & UD )

Jim,
Sorry you couldn't be there.... you would have enjoyed it and we would have benefited from your input.

And to Jim, Larry, and Ricardo... rumor is that the next conference may be closer to all of you. And perhaps at a different time of year.

As a 'newbie' of 5 months I found this conference to be outstanding. The info gathered here was priceless. Although I must say my head is STILL spinning from all the tips tricks and info shared. I agree that the hands on lab was invaluable to me.
Thank you to the entire team for such a wonderful event. The hotel and location was perfect (and at a price point that was unbelievable!) the food terrific and everyone was friendly. I hope that another conference would be considered right here.
Again, thank you for an AMAZING time

Jon, EXCELLENT ! And thank you, sure would have been fun to see you, Wendell & Marty giving out your secrets
Hello to Larry, Ricardo & Immediatemed. Appreciate hearing about the conference & interest in continuing them yearly.

Does anyone have any notes from the ACUC session on Most Frequent Time Savers for Primary Care?

I saw the presentation online, but since it was one of the sessions I had to miss, I was wondering if anyone took detailed notes to go along with the presentation. Thanks!

Would love to see the top time saver tips and other high yield info/strategies. Only a small minority of AC users can actually make it to the conferences.

Please share.

Ditto

I started a new thread titled: Tips & Tricks from ACUC 2016

I too thought the conference was outstanding. Again to echo Jon's voice, it was like the old times.
It was indeed great to meet up with old friends as well as meet with many new ones.
The hotel was HUGE, I got my exercise just going from my room to the conference rooms.
I learned a lot and hope a taught a thing or two.