Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Practice Fusion Joins The Rest: Time To Start Paying

Practice Fusion has always been a major competitor of AC, primarily because both were far cheaper than most other EMR's. After years of touting their business model and their number of users (which was almost certainly tremendously exaggerated) they sold to Allscripts for a surprisingly low sum.
Soon after the sale, they have now announced that they are going to a subscription model, at $100/month. Does $1200 a year sound familiar to anyone? A coincidence... I think not.
PF was never nearly as good as AC. Now that the cost is comparable, there really is no reason to choose it, in my opinion.

I'm already hearing the howls of disdain and anger of the various practices I've seen dump AC and move to PF over the years over how unfair it is that they now have to pay for PF. These are the same that I warned for years that PF can't stay free forever and that their business model was not sustainable. Now they want their data back from a datacenter that, again, I warned was probably in another country or something.

I can't tell if I'm happy I'm right or sad I'm right.

JamesNT

James, have you (or Indy or others) handled any transitions from PF to AC? What is it like getting charts out of PF? Please tell me that you don't have to print everything....

The biggest issue will be the bill to export data.

I have a friend who joined another practice and the cost to export the data was something like $10-20K.

I think James can easily move data from our SQL as he can access it. I think PF would easily accept it if it is doable.

But, I am not so sure that PF would make it easy to access their databasses, which are online.

I recall when Logician Encounter or something like that was online and the offline version became Centricity. The only version was very good for that day and time, and to this day, made the best note ever.

JBS,

I have not had the pleasure of dealing with a PF conversion to another software as of yet. That being said, I don't expect it to be pretty. And, as Wendell points out, expect PF to charge some serious coin - bordering on criminal - to give you an export into a format you may or may not be able to use.

JamesNT

PF always seemed sketchy.

But, I have been evaluating another solution. It includes the possibility of EMR, practice management, clearinghouse, ERx, all integrated, for about $50/ month. Cloud based, no maintenance hassle. So far, excellent training and support, all included. And support easily accessible, unlike recent reports from AC users. Add on real time eligibility checking $10/ month and automated reminders for another $30. Too good to be true? Maybe, maybe not....

$50 a month for all that has my "to good to be true" alarms going off. Just like with PF.

JamesNT

Mine too, James, that is why I am evaluating carefully. They have been around for a long time, appear stable, and have a source of revenue from insurers as their base for profit. At some point, I am going to switch to them for PM, not sure about EMR as yet. AC may push me in that direction with escalating fees for things that I am not using, and substandard support. I am non-par with Medicare, exempt from MIPS, heck, I could even go back to paper! What a thought!

I'm interested in anyone who has run Praxis. I think that is the other major competitor that has very high reviews. I gave particular attention to the survey that asked people how satisfied they were with their NEW EMR *after* changing from a different one. People that changed to Praxis were happiest of all, but AC was also good. I like the idea of AI helping to population my note, if you've watched their video.

I've setup Praxis before. It's not cheap. You're usually looking in the neighborhood of at least 20K (usually 30K) for basic hardware and setup. It's been a while since I've set them up. The other downside is that it takes months of training for the AI to work properly.

This was circa 2013.
$10K per provider licensing + $4.5K for each additional provider.
Server - Dual Xeon 8-Core Processors, 32GB RAM, SSD Storage
VMWare vSphere
Oracle DataBase $5k+

They also recommend some decent desktops or another server with the same specs as above with RDS. I wasn't crazy about them because I thought they overspec'd the hardware quite a bit. They also insist that you use VMWare.

That's not including the cost convert AC which is MS SQL based to Oracle. 5 Users in the cloud used to be about $500/month.

It was a much easier pill to swallow when you get $18K for your first 90 days of MU.

Oracle. I've always hated that overpriced database. Yet companies I've dealt with keep kneeling before the alter of Larry Ellison with their wallets open wide.

JamesNT

Oh, Donna...so mysterious! What EMR are you looking at?

I don't want to advertise for them, I'll message you.

I really would like it if AC simply split off the cost for ERx from other support.
Let me know what it will cost for an essential service, all of us will prescribe.
But, not all of us will use upgrades or support.
To me, it is illogical to have it all bundled at this point.

I'm new to this board and considering my options for a new EMR. I'm curious about the one you mentioned for $50/mo. Could you message me the name?

Judy M.

Capterra says that it is $259 for a full cloud system deployment, training, and 24/7 support.

There are two different trends in SaaS, a chinese menu with a low base price point, and a "All-Up" price that includes the entire suite. AC seems caught in the middle right now.

Is that per Provider, per month?

In a galaxy far away we were an Oracle Partner. After that whole expensive, painful process, their internal consultants stole the 7 figure services deal we did the lead-in development for almost a year to close. My professional loathing of Oracle is on par with M$.

It says per month for small enterprise cloud license

When they are pressed, there is a way to extract data, after a fashion. We did a sample, and knowing what we know about loading AC, it can be done - the fidelity of the conversion would require at least one full run through to accomplish.

It took a couple of months to get NextGen workable, but they have 7000, YES SEVEN THOUSAND tables to work through. Almost like they didn't want anyone to get their data out.