It is very sad to me to see the ranks of independent physicians depleting. Sue and I closed the office at the end of 2022, and we are struggling with forwarding records and tying up loose ends for people who are having trouble finding a new "PCP".
So far, we are very happy with the ability to print or send records from Amazing Charts in a reasonable format and with the ability to control what we send, tailored to each forwarded chart. It's a little labor intensive, but the result is a meaningful, hopefully useful record and not the overwhelming data dumps we have received from some practices.
Amazing charts may be unique among EMRs in allowing us to continue using the program (for record storage) after we stop paying the annual maintenance fee. I am trusting my server to hold up for another 7-10 years to meet the requirement for record storage. I have some computers around the place that are still perfectly useable after >15 years, so hopefully that is a realistic expectation. Amazing Charts Guardian Angel has assured me that if the server fails, they will help me reconstruct a new one from backups -- they claim they are intending to stay in business for the indefinite future, and hopefully that is realistic as well.
A colleague was quoted an estimate of $20,000+ for physical records maintenance for 10 years (he has only paper records, no EMR). That would be really painful.
What Guardian Angel wouldn't tell me was whether I could make a backup image of the server and run that as a virtual machine in a new server box without having to get registration codes for a new server from AC. There has been a lot of talk on this board of "virtualization" but I have never actually tried it. Just using a 2016 Microsoft Server Essentials which so far has done the job.
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