Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Harris

Any thoughts on AC being acquired by Harris?

Two garbage trucks collided.

TORONTO, Sept. 05, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Constellation Software Inc. (?Constellation?) (TSX:CSU), today announced its wholly-owned division N. Harris Computer Corporation (?Harris?) has acquired the business of Amazing Charts, LLC (?Amazing Charts?), a business providing Electronic Medical Record (EHR), Practice Management (PM) software and Medical Billing services to primary care and specialty outpatient practices. Amazing Charts is an affordable and easy to use solution for independent physician-owned practices. Nearly 4,000 medical practices (20,000 clinicians and office staff) are using Amazing Charts throughout the U.S. and abroad to enhance patient care and improve practice operations.

Jerry Canada, President Harris Healthcare Group, commented, ?The completion of the Amazing Charts acquisition represents another step in our efforts to expand our outpatient focused software business unit. We are excited to add such a large number of general and specialty practices while increasing our internal team of knowledgeable healthcare professionals.?

About Constellation Software Inc.

Constellation Software acquires, manages and builds vertical market software businesses that provide mission-critical software solutions.

About N. Harris Computer Corporation

Since 1976, Harris has focused on providing feature-rich and robust turnkey solutions to Public Sector, Schools, Utility, and Health Care agencies. Harris? focus is on creating long-term relationships with its customers and ensuring that it meets the changing needs of its customers over time. Further information about Harris may be obtained from its website at www.harriscomputer.com.

I wonder what happened to Pri-Med.

Wonder when the End-user/customers/us will get the notification email with the "White Paper' speak to assure our collective insecurities???

I guess we did not sign up for enough CME :^)

Greg

The notification email came

I have to say, something about the email did not leave me feeling warm and fuzzy... It left me feeling very concerned about the future of AC.

David Lee, MD
IM
Dallas, TX

Going to Pri-Med Boston next week, AC usually is there, wonder what the corporate speak will be?

I ran into a colleague who also uses AC at the hospital this AM. I asked if they had seen the e-mail. They replied "Yes and I guess that means it is time to start looking for new EMRs." I can't say I completely disagree.

I share Dr Lee's concern about the notification from Harris. Perhaps it is semantics, but sometimes semantics matter. It is pretty clear that AC has not been making the internal investments needed to keep up with the evolving demands of an EMR in a current day practice. The promises of PriMed never came to pass and end users never saw the improved product they wanted. Evidently PriMed didn't see the return it wanted either. Maybe Harris has great things planned for the AC community and it is all going to be sun and roses moving forward, but I didn't get that feeling from the initial e-mail and I must wonder how long AC will even be a viable practice choice.

I see the EMR getting better over time. But I also see your yearly maintenance costs going up.

JamesNT

I see the product improving slowly. I see the cost increasing more aggressively. Speaking only for myself ... one of the rationalizations for continuing to use AC despite the fact that it has more and more difficulty keeping up (e.g. PCMH etc) was that it was dramatically less expensive than its better equipped competitors. We saved money with AC and spent some of that savings on work-arounds. Today we save much less, but still have as many or more work-arounds to get by.

There were items I was told would be released Q4 (like automatic lab result sending to Updox) that I hope doesn't fall to the wayside. Fingers crossed.

David Lee, MD
IM
Dallas, TX

I'm glad I'm closing my practice in three months. Now all I have to worry about is keeping my current version of AC running on a computer for the next five years, so I can provide medical records as needed. I may end up printing formal medical records for all 22K patients and storing them as pdf files, rather than keeping AC running.

More likely I bet they force everyone to the cloud subscription plan to save on support issues.

I think InLightEHR went with Primed. I am trying to google this but not sure, but don't see InLightEHR on Amazing Chart website now. Hoping for the best with this transition. Any one know if InLightEHR is still part of Amazing Charts/Harris?

Jimmie, I don't know, it wouldn't surprise me if inlight is being sunset.

I found this post below on twitter (not sure what "it's been dropped" means)

Matthew Mintz, MD‏ @drmintz Aug 11
Don't know if any Direct Primary Care or other physicians were using #InLight #InLightEHR but it's been dropped. #DPC

Apparently, Harris uses similar verbage in their acquisitions:

from their acquisition of "Caretracker" http://phasisgroup.com/news/harris-acquires-caretracker/

"We are pleased to announce that on December 29th, 2014 Harris completed the acquisition of CareTracker. It is with great pleasure that we welcome you to the Harris user community ? a dedicated & knowledgeable group of 2,300+ employees & 10,000+ customers.

Harris has been serving its customers for more than 30 years. We are a software company that is focused on providing software solutions that empower people who serve their communities. We currently do this in utilities, local government, schools, public safety, US and Canadian health care. We are a company that is focused on enabling our customers to deliver essential services, safety and care to their constituents.

Harris supports CareTracker?s goal of assisting healthcare providers in improving productivity, ensuring regulatory and legal compliance, and enhancing the quality of patient care and safety.

CareTracker with Harris? support, will work with you to keep the commitments we have made, deliver upon the product road maps we have developed together and continue to work together to build upon our mutually beneficial long-term relationships. We encourage and welcome your input and feedback and look forward to moving forward in partnership with you.

We are very excited about our future as we combine the skills, dedication, market knowledge & solutions of CareTracker with the long-term ownership values of Harris.

Ultimately, our success comes from helping you succeed. We take pride in what we do and we look forward to earning your loyalty and support as our newest Harris customers."

Jim, InLight is done. Users are being transitioned off it.

Will be interesting to see how AC blends with GEMMS an EHR they currently own.

Oh by the way I tried to send an email with questions to the email address that was provided in the Harris letter, guess it isn't set up yet as my email came back as undeliverable , feeling warm and fuzzy.

Hello AC Users,

If anyone is having issues sending inquiries to the Harris Questions email, it looks like there is a period (.) at the end of the address itself. If you are copying the address to compose an email, make sure you don't include that period. We have confirmed the email is working properly on our end and want to be sure that we receive all of your questions and concerns.

harrisquestions@amazingcharts.com

Thank you!

Stefan@AC

Thanks, Stefan!

I just reread the email. I have to say it just wasn't reassuring. The fact they work with schools, local governments, etc, doesn't reassure me. It makes me think, do they have any idea what it takes to produce an EMR and make it provider friendly? I've always loved AC because it was starting by a practitioner who knew what he needed and translated than into a great product/EMR.

If I were to have written the email, I would have said, "Don't worry. We are fully committed to the future of AC. AC will not be undergoing any unexpected changes aside from the continued improvements you've come to expect. Employees you have to come know will still be here to assist you." Honestly that did not come across to me. It came across to me as a templated form letter (as was sent to Caretaker EMR providers above) with no assurance as to the future of AC.

My two cents...

David Lee, MD
IM
Dallas, TX

Oh and the email does not work.

"Your message to harrisquestions@amazingcharts.com couldn't be delivered.
The group harrisquestions only accepts messages from people in its organization or on its allowed senders list, and your email address isn't on the list."

David Lee, MD
IM
Dallas, TX

Chat is not working already.

my email to harris did not have a period at the end of the address

I have to reiterate how worrying these developments seem. AC is a product in crisis. As users, we deserve more than we are getting from this company. I have been on AC for over a decade. I can remember a time, when Dr Bertman was around, that this was a dynamic community. The company was very responsive to questions and input. This user board was a hub for great discussions. Today none of that is true. AC and/or Harris should be bending over backwards to make us feel safe in our choice to stay with them. Looking across the posts on the entire user board, you can see that this forum is struggling to survive. While this is a valuable and interesting discussion, the number of participants is small relative to the community size and many of the categories for discussion beyond this have not been used in months. It suggests that there is apathy in the community. The choice to change EMRs is not a trivial one, but many of the physicians to whom I have spoken feel the time might be here. What can Harris do to convince us to stay?

They don't care. The last person who cared was Dr.Bertman until he sold us out.

Remember Ringadoc?

wonder when we get to be on the allowed senders list to Harris?

Hello again everyone,

I wanted to inform you that we are receiving emails to the harrisquestions@amazingcharts.com address at this time.

Please continue to try sending us your messages and if the response gets kicked back, try again in a short while.

Your input is valuable and we want to hear from you.

Thank you for your patience and consideration

Stefan@AC

3rd time appears to be the charm at least no failure notice

And remember that your input is valuable.

Re post above -- CareTracker is used in my nursing home.
This doesn't give me great confidence in the future of AC.

We were just about to transition from Medware (which is essentially toast, after 20 great years with the program) to AC PM.
Now I am really worried.

I decided to work on my HDL with a little CROWN and will let the dust settle a bit...it is sad because Mr Squires had such high hopes and said just that in Orlando last Spring...also the reason this board is light is because when you have to see 30 patients a day, make computers work, do CME, go to hospital meetings and start CPC+ then there is just no time...thanks to all who support this board as you have taught me...OK Indy...I see you smiling...

Tom,

I have not read good things about AC PM.

If your old software can "print" a claim, you can keep it, and use Office Ally for a clearing house to submit. They can take your print file, a simple text .txt file, upload it, convert it to electronic format and submit. The cost is nominal $19.95 per month. It has worked well as a solution for me, I am using an old version of my PM software, and hope never to upgrade.

Office Ally also has a free or low cost PM solution although I have not used it, and don't know the details.

For AC, there are those who scoff (you know who you are 8-)) at the fact that I am using 6.3.3, but it works for my needs, and requires none of the BS approvals to install. If I have to, I can prescribe with free Allscripts, and sever my maintenance with AC.

These are my fall back plans to get off the continuous upgrade, headache, worrying path.

Thanks Donna --
We are on 9.4 now -- it was only a moderate hassle, but I couldn't do it all myself, finally had to call professional IT.

There are some improvements over 6.3.3 -- but not dramatic -- and in some ways it is slower (though reading ImportedItems is enough faster that it is probably worth it). I still have the 6.3.3 install files, but I don't suppose there is any way to roll back the database.

Medware works find -- they just aren't updating it any more. So it will be useable until Medicare does another number on us.
We currently use Office Ally -- it works well.
Maybe we won't hurry into AC PM after all.

Fear of the unknown is a normal reaction. I suppose I should state from the start I have little information that is not general knowledge. I felt it was worth commenting on some of the items posted above.

I do not think Inlight was profitable but suspect that AC was probably viable on it's own. I don't know why PriMed pulled the plug but suspect they needed capital.

AC has improved under the aegis of PriMed, perhaps not as much as we would have liked but much of that was due to government requirements. While it's easy for those of us who had already purchased AC to ignore Meaningless Use, it's a reality they could not afford to ignore.

It would appear that Constellation has a lot of different companies under their umbrella. That would then mean they might have resources that PriMed did not or that they could destroy AC if they wished. I'm not familiar with GEMMs as an EMR but it is client server like AC and seems to be aimed at Cardiologists. The Caretracker software also has 2 EMR (one for Ob/Gyn) and a PM side. How much interaction is their between their "divisions"? My suspicion is that AC's user base is larger than any of their 3 EMRs and possibly the only one aimed at general outpatient medicine. It could be a good fit (or they could be buying the competition to destroy it). Only time will tell.

If AC without Inlight is profitable, as I suspect, it might warrant benign neglect: Allow it to move forward as it has been doing without a lot of interference. But then again, what are their goals and motives?

After I finished the above post, I found this on Constellation's website about acquisitions: http://www.csisoftware.com/about-us/being-acquired/
This does sound encouraging.........

Here's hoping.
I am just so put off by the business-speak and the lack of transparency that I can't even bear to look at that stuff.
We have to see real patients in real time and document the encounters and get paid.
Lawyers and hedge-funders have different time frames and different priorities.
The interface isn't always harmonious, despite the soothing words.

It is business speak. They are a software company with hats in many areas, only a few are actually in medicine (Constellation not Harris). They are in the business of providing software.

The real question is what do they expect to squeeze in terms of profit out of AC clients. We are less expensive than most others on the market. Most revenue, I suspect, is generated from existing clients.

The EMR market is nearly saturated. AC could pull a lot of docs who are not happy with their current EMR but if the price is not reasonable they will loose the current base. It then becomes a gamble with price increases risking current clients vs marketing to attract new clients who accept the increased prices.

Only we are stuck in the middle. It does seem as if they want to grow the business, the question is how!