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Scary Question to ask: AthenaHealth EMR

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Last Post by mrnevetz 10 years ago

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[email protected]

(@talontlcdoctors-com)

Posts: 86

Estimable Member

Topic starter

Okay, so I admit that this question, posed by one of my providers to me during a clinical meeting recently was really scary to consider: "would we consider moving to another EMR?". Hopefully this topic doesn't "blackball" me, but here it goes...

We have been using CPS for several years now, and are quite vested in the product. This provider joined our team a few months ago. He has been very cooperative, maintaining a "can-do" attitude about adopting our EMR. He has even become one of our best-case provider users, diving into CPS with commitment and enthusiasm.

He has, however, politely mentioned time and again how much more user-friendly and bug-free AthenaHealth EMR was for him and his previous team at his former practice (he relocated his family to our area). So, after returning from the recent CHUG conference with information and ideas, and recently adopting version 12 and all it's challenges, crashes and "know issues" (which seem to go on and on as "known"), this provider asked our clinical team if they would even consider abandoning ship for another EMR.

Before this goes any further, and knowing that the grass can always be greener and that any EMR will have it's fair share of dead bodies in closets, I'd really appreciate feedback from anyone who has had experience elsewhere, specifically with AthenaHealth if possible. Has anyone else's practice considered a move? Anyone else feel stuck with CPS and missing another EMR system? Anything we should be looking out for before exploring this topic further?

I hate to sound like a traitor. I am actually trying to be the voice of reason to our providers to consider all potential consequences (and benefits) before we get any deeper into this rabbit hole. I have to admit that I do feel for our doctor's frustrations with the issues they have been facing which are well spoken towards in other threads on the forum here.

Thanks, guys. I will say that the one thing that has made CPS bearable has been the CHUG community. I don't know if anything like it exists elsewhere, and CHUG has been such a support through these challenging waters. Let me know your thoughts!

Posted : November 22, 2014 12:04 pm

acantu

(@acantu)

Posts: 722

Prominent Member

Good Morning,

I don't think you sound like a traitor, we all are probably frustrated with GE by now and all of us probably have considered moving to other EMR's. However, like other facilities, we are also WAY to Invested in this as we have a lot of custom integration with other offices that were paid for plus all the addition cr** that was purchased to meet meaningful use and so on... so to start over would be more of a pain. So i have been just building add-on's and working on a custom overlay for CPS. Also have upgraded all systems to Solid State, which has helped a lot.

Posted : November 24, 2014 5:51 am

[email protected]

(@talontlcdoctors-com)

Posts: 86

Estimable Member

Topic starter

Thanks, Acantu, for the perspective. I definitely hear you on the investment. I just wonder how many more "solutions" we will have to purchase/integrate in the future when the next big/mandatory thing comes along. In that regard, we may consider cutting our losses for something else IF research shows better support and usability.

How do the Solid States help? Do they just get your users booted back up when they inevitably crash? Did you go SS on your servers, as well?

Posted : November 24, 2014 7:05 am

acantu

(@acantu)

Posts: 722

Prominent Member

Solid States helps more on the speed of the application, it does have a performance increase. But stability will not change as this is just bad GE coding...

Posted : November 24, 2014 7:12 am

[email protected]

(@talontlcdoctors-com)

Posts: 86

Estimable Member

Topic starter

Got it. So you went SS on the workstations (I'm assuming fat clients?) but not on the servers, right?

Posted : November 24, 2014 7:14 am

acantu

(@acantu)

Posts: 722

Prominent Member

Correct, workstations FAT client. You might get an improvement on the server side but will cost way to much to play around with it, and still will not fix GE's stability issues.

Posted : November 24, 2014 7:16 am

[email protected]

(@talontlcdoctors-com)

Posts: 86

Estimable Member

Topic starter

I see. I just don't understand how GE continues on with such an unstable product. I feel like we are the beta testers of an unfinished product. I honestly don't think I can think of another program anywhere that functions worse than CPS. Blows my mind.

Posted : November 24, 2014 7:28 am

acantu

(@acantu)

Posts: 722

Prominent Member

I agree.

Posted : November 24, 2014 7:32 am

mrnevetz

(@mrnevetz)

Posts: 104

Estimable Member

We share your frustration. And I agree with acantu that the stability issues almost always come down to poor coding. I will admit the "User friendliness" has improved over the years, and we are hoping to see even more improvements each version. But the stability continues to be a huge issue for us. Our last upgrade experience was horrible one, all because of 'bugs' in CPS.

About a year ago we seriously considered switching to a new system. We looked at going back to our old EMR, Nexgen, because we liked the PM portion so much better. We also figured that it wouldn't be terribly expensive because we still own it. We decided against it that idea because we have been off it for so long that they were going to make us buy the whole program outright, again. We also hated the EMR side of Nextgen.

We then looked at and began the process of changing just the PM side to ADP's AdvancedMD product. We signed a contract with AdvancedMD and got a new quote from GE to drop the PM from our maintenance agreement (but hadn't signed it yet). We switched our clearinghouse and re-filed EDI agreements. We even had the HL7 interface completed between AdvancedMD and CPS's EMR. Then we changed our mind and dropped it all. I honestly can't even tell you why. A lot of it was politics. Our billing department wanted to change but no one else did. Another big reason was that the EMR side of AdvancedMD was seriously lacking so we would never get away from having two systems.

We also got a quote from Greenway and like the demos, but in the end we decided to stay with CPS, mostly because of the huge investment we have already made and the work that would be required to switch.

I'm not really promoting staying or leaving, I'm just sharing my experiences. Definitely let us know what you end up doing and why. There is always a possibility we will repeat this whole process in another year or two.

Posted : November 24, 2014 7:53 am

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