AC in the cloud fail
EzeeJim
Yesterday at 11:39 AM
Hi folks,
Long-time user here, infrequent poster. Glad the board is still here.
We decided for several reasons to try moving from our server-based set-up (AC user since 2003) to the cloud. We scheduled the install for a Friday afternoon (yesterday) at 3pm local time. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
By 9pm, I was rolling us back to the server (still ver. 12.3.1 as of today). Some strange glitch appeared inside the Citrix environment when I tried to repeat the install on machines 3 and 4 (of 11 total) that asked me to try and start AC as an administrator, from a menu prompt that looked antiquated. Server install went fine, tech support walked me through all of it, then machine 1 on my desk worked ok, but after attempt on machine #3, couldn't get into VAC at all from anywhere., even the original "main computer".
Of course, tech support not available until Monday morning and I couldn't go the weekend with no access to our patient records. I felt completely abandoned.
Now thinking about sticking with our old server-based version. But I had a few questions that I hoped folks here might be able to answer, if anyone here uses the cloud-based version:
1. How often is the cloud version down/wonky enough for you to hate it?
2. I understand the newest version of AC 12.4 includes a patch for SQL server so it remains supported. I can update the current version of AC to 12.4 this weekend if necessary. Is there a longer-term fix needed for SQL server (a new version entirely?) that will be necessary soon to continue using AC longer-term? How well is a server setup likely to remain viable? It's getting close to the end of my server's life now, I think, which was one of the reasons we decided to go cloud-based. Unclear how committed Harris is to older users like me.
3. We're at that tricky point in one's career where we'll probably be active in full-time practice for 5 more years, but not 10. Maybe not even 7. Trying to figure out whether it's worth it to make major disruptive changes or limp to the finish line. We even considered changing entirely over to Epic - which 95% of the docs in our local hospital network use and which of course can't interface meaningfully with amazing charts, because Harris doesn't participate meaningfully with TEFCA - but that's a huge pain point that my partner (who also happens to be my wife) hasn't been willing to stomach.
I assume someone from tech support will be calling us Monday morning, as promised, to "check in". Looking forward to that.
The joys of private practice! But I wouldn't have it any other way. Thanks for any thoughts, y'all.
Jim
