Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Farewell, Chris Conrad

I learned last month that Chris Conrad, the director of development for AC (and a number of other Harris EMR's) is no longer at Harris. Before posting here, I was hoping to read an official communication from Harris about this change in direction. Perhaps it is fitting in a way that no such communication has been forthcoming. I also hoped that Chris himself might come here to say goodbye personally to some of his friends here. I will encourage him to do so.

This seems like a very disturbing move on the part of Harris. I don't know any more details, but I do know that Chris has been devoted to improving our EMR for about a decade. Sometimes this commitment came in the face of strong headwinds from the parent company. Of course when he worked to improve the EMR, he was working to improve our own personal quality of life, and for that we owe him a world of thanks. This is not to say that we always agreed on the appropriate path for improvements, but that is to be expected. He always seemed to have the interests of the users at heart, and generally wanted to help us. His willingness to communicate with some of us "off-line" is a reminder of the company philosophy back in the days of Jon Bertman.

I think when Chris joined the company, we were back on V6 or 7. There have been a ton of regulatory requirements that have been met with upgrades since then. In addition, though, there have been some major improvements to the program that clearly directly benefited us as users. For example, it is sometimes hard to remember how much better V9 was than prior iterations.

Anyway, I feel like I am writing a eulogy, which is most assuredly not the case. Best of luck, Chris, in future endeavors. Please feel free to come here and post on this non-company run site, as an "honorary emeritus" member. We will create that category, just for you, in appreciation of all your hard work.

Thanks for the update. Hate to hear he has left the company. Would really like to hear why he is not with them any more..........Makes me wonder if Mark is still with them as he has not posted here in a while either???????????????

Chris was the best (although I don't think he felt the same way about me, lol). I get the feeling he won't post, because except for the "awesome Chris" who was VP when Jon ran the company and I spoke with her after the "great support walkout," I think Harris has some type of legal restriction on their making public posts or communication. Not sure if anyone on the Clinician's Advisory Board (Jon, Wendell, me, et.) remembered Trish but she was the director of customer service and a VERY close friend of mine with the company. She disappeared when Harris came in, and I never heard back from her although I tried. I did hear a little when I talked with Jon Bertman.

Sometimes I wish Harris would tell us AC is through, so I wouldn't have to make the difficult decision myself. Only problem there is we probably wouldn't get a communication until the day after.

Bert-
I am very sorry that Chris Conrad has left us and that Harris doesn't seem to to be at all interested in what AC users think or need -- but it comes as no surprise.

This Friday will be my last day as a physician. The office will close, and I will have to figure out
how to keep access to the last 10 years of office records for seven years. I am assuming that AC will continue to work when I stop paying the annual fee -- I just won't be able to e-prscribe meds or add new data to to the chart, but I should be able to read the records and pass them on to my patients new physicians. At least, that is what I hope, otherwise I don't know how I'm going to be a record custodian.

I feel the same way about AC as I do about medicine as a profession -- it has been taken over by non-medical "managers" and administrators and private equity funds and is a very different landscape from the one I entered in 1971. People haven't really changed, but the way they are "managed" certainly has. AmazingCharts fit nicely into the old cottage industry, private practice model -- but since that no longer exists, and has been overtaken by a corporate industrial model, and there is no place for AC except in a museum.

The only road to sanity goes forward into the unknown. You can't go home again.
I am looking forward to retirement and will be curious to see if I can adapt to new circumstances and expectations -- I have always believed I was adaptable, but now the rubber meets the road, and we will see.

Wow. We will miss you. Although you still can post on the board.

I saw a letter a week ago of a practice closing and they said they would be responsible of records for one year, then everything will go to a business who handles records. Also, not sure how this would help but JamesNT has a system of getting all practice notes out of every patient into PDFs (for a fee) but it may be well worth it.

Thanks Bert.
The problem with James' method is that it creates a huge number of PDF's that predictably will be almost useless to the receiving physician. You may have received some of those giant compilations from other practices that closed -- I don't know how James does it, but I have yet to see any kind of index, and I simply give up scrolling through those charts.

Another issue is that we have about 10,000 charts -- but only a about 3000 of them are really active patients, and of those, only a fraction (who knows how many) will actually request records.
So which ones to convert to PDF?

We will have full time help for about a month to tie up loose ends, help patients who claim they didn't know we were about to retire to find a new doctor and transfer records. After that we should have some idea of how to move forward with what I imagine will be a diminishing request for service.

I wilsh I could have found a doctor to take over the practice -- but these days you can't even give away a private practice. No one seems to want this job.

I thought I'd stop in and say goodbye to all my old acquaintances on the UBB. It's been a journey, almost 9 years for me at AC/Harris. I believe we made some significant improvements over the years so you feel as if you're in a little better place than when we started. I wish I had more version 9's for you. I enjoyed the times we spent together. I realize our interactions tapered off over the past couple years but I still checked in every week to see how things were going. I'm limited in what I should comment on here but let's just say new management had plans that didn't include me and leave it at that. I'm too damn old to start over on a new product somewhere and it's about time anyways so I decided to just retire. Don't think of me in a rocker on the porch, not my style. I have a beautiful woodworking shop, 3 acres and a passion for golf so something tells me I'll have plenty to keep me occupied.


Take care and good luck!

Chris

Thanks for stopping by and saying HI. Glad you can just look to this as a retirement and enjoy the wood working. Post some picture sometime. You may not be able to comment on here but continue to stop by to read our gripes while sipping a beverage of your choice. It will probably make you feel better with a good laugh. Like the fact that Version 13 was an accomplishment for 2022, according to the new EVP, but none of the users seem to have this version!

I remember a few days after Chris was hired, he gave me a call and we talked for an hour about the direction AC was going and what I thought he could do. From the first day, one could tell there was a new leader at the helm for development. Things turned around quickly and new features were added and bugs were squashed. As we found out on the Clinicians Advisory Board which met monthly (where Chris had to sit there for an hour and listen to all of us and especially me recommend things as well as complain, most of Chris' day had to be spent on government mandates.

As the annual winner of the complaint award, I would like to take this chance to apologize to Chris for being a pain in his side all this time and hope he knows I was just trying to give him ideas for the best direction of the company.

We will miss Chris. But, I am sure he will be happy to be in retirement soon, although I think golf and woodworking will not be enough to occupy all his time and he will soon be working for Epic.

Thank you Chris for letting my practice try the Beta Versions and then taking time to learn about the problems and looking for the fixes before the final release. And the best with your future plans!

I'm sad to hear that Chris is leaving, but happy that he has more time to devote to other loves of his life.
He worked very hard at AC.
I didn't always agree with him, but did most of the time but I trusted he had our best interests in mind.