August 18, 2009
Evaluations of AllScripts EMR
Written by: Dr. Jeff
I just ran into a Urologist who purchased an EMR. His group decided to get Allscripts because they knew Urologists who liked it. They also heard that Allscripts had very good support.
I have heard that Allscripts’ EMR is not very user-friendly. Their ePrescribing solution is well liked, but from my reading of the blogs, their EMR is not well liked.
Does anyone use Allscripts EMR? How do you like it?
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Allscripts, like many EMR systems, has it drawbacks. On the plus side, our providers do like the simple-to-use e-prescribing feature as well as the document management module.
I really don’t understand why systems have “drawbacks”!!!
This is completely unacceptable. Practicing medicine is no joke and our main tool (the medical records) has to be efficient, easy to use, simple to learn and effective! If it does not make me more productive, then I don’t want it!!!!
Zach, what are the drawbacks? Are your providers more efficient and more productive? Does Allscripts slow them down or help them do their work more efficiently and effectively?
I’ve used Allscript’s EMR, albeit breifly, and I concur with Dr. Jeff. It’s got some nice e-prescribing features, but beyond that, its not very practical.
The user interface is clunky, the system is generally slow, and it makes data entry a chore. I wouldn’t recommend Allscript’s EMR solution to anyone.
It’s a shame that the AMA partnered with Allscripts just because of their e-prescribing. Although Allscript’s has a good e-prescribing system, it’s benefits don’t compensate for their lackluster e-HR system.
E-prescribing is just one small aspect of the EMR solution that you implement. Don’t let it be the only deciding factor in your EMR selection criteria. I agree with Dr. Jeff: Allscripts’ EMR isn’t that good.
There may be some interest in reviewing a variety of videos of Allscripts users. A couple dozen of these can be found at http://www.ehrtv.com/category/video/ehrtv/allscripts/ as these were taken at the Allscripts Client Experience this past month.
Yours,
Eric
I thoroughly agree with S. Sheinfeld, there is no need for drawbacks. All physicians deserve an EMR/EHR that does it all and does it in a way that is easy, fast, efficient and helps the practice. Is that asking too much?
If everyone practiced alike then there might be a chance of no drawbacks for EMR, but when you calculate the variability of one provider to the next then inevitably “goose and gander” trade offs begin to occur. If there are 1 million providers in the US then there cannot be 1 million configurations of EMR. But that is what is implied by “If it does not make me more productive, then I don’t want it!!!!”
At some point a reality check needs to be made by our so-called “leaders” of health care.
Jesran,
You apologize for mediocrity and you accept it. If everyone throught like you, there would be no innovation and everyone would be average living in huts and huddling around wood fires.
Jesran, you have no idea what you are talking about. Are you an employee of Allscripts and is this how you explain its un-usability?
The main thing a physician has to sell is TIME. The reason his/her time is valuable (and should continue to be protected and considered valuable) is becuase they invested their time in themselves at that age when most young people are trying to figure out what to do with their lives or partying at college or any number of things besides spending their nights and weekends with their noses in books (and accumulating large debt to boot). Now for the rest of us (EMR vendors especially – if they are honest) want to capitalize on that investment the physician made in his youth, and continues to reinvest throughout his/her career. Whether it is a patient that is suffering, a political entity that would like to get reelected or a vendor that sees an opportunity – the nucleus is always the physician that will ultimately deliver the goods. Saying that – any company’s platform or process that intends to profit from a physician’s peronal investment should have as their main focus DO NO HARM! Meaning, the physician should not have to see fewer patients while they learn the platform or process. The process should not negatively impact patient care, but should improve outcomes. Ideally, any platform or process should allow the doctor to see more patients without more staffing (preferrably less staffing) and improve outcomes at the same time. To me, this is what is meant by “NO drawbacks.” Granted, physicians are different, just as the patients they treat are all different, and I’m sure if you polled patients they would list drawbacks some physicians have that they perceive other physicians do not. However, each physician ultimately respects the code of ‘do no harm.’ Something the EMR and many policies that push EMRs have not yet aspired to. I also keep wondering when physicians lost the power they once had? If you could picture a political cartoon 20 years ago, it might picture an 8 foot doctor conversing with an 8 inch hospital director or administrator. Sadly, now, that picture has become more and more reversed.
I stumbled upon this forum doing a google search while WAITING for Allscripts eRx to process a task at 5:30 pm. The system is unbelievably slow so I cannot imagine spending a dime for their EMR.
I love all the comments from the “all but brief users”. I have used Allscripts. It is very powerful and the remote app for the iphone works great. The upgrades are free…yes….free and are pushed out as they are released. I believe when it comes out for the ipad that it will be a welcome addition to the entire office staff. If the eRx is slow it may be a bottleneck like any broadband at 5:30. I have used it and had several eRx sent in microseconds.
Keep up the complaining and stop toting the 7 years of school and all who try to benefit from it. Not everyone in life has an agenda to make money off of doctors. Some truly want to help and I have found that the service and support as well as the program are well in the top of EHR programs.
Try getting a human from GE and try getting free upgrades from them or many others. We love the free tech support and free upgrades and ease of use (2 screens) that Allscripts provides.
Why do you think the Urologist loves it!
We get immediate funds from the stimulus package by using eRx from allscripts!
Not sure why the dig on allscripts. Call your local rep…call the company….get a demo….they will even help walk you through the Hitech act and how this can be a wash for your practice if done right.
We love Allscripts and have looked at most of the EHR programs. We also love the Allscripts remote for the iphone.
I am interested in which Allscripts EMR you are talking about as they have 2 versions – Enterprise, which they sell to large practices of 25+ and Professional, for practices less that 25 providers.
Thanks
@DJW – It is possible to access Allscripts from iPad if you are using remote desktop and not local installation. You can get a Windows remote desktop app for ipad and access throught that manner.
Dang, I guess I should have kept a better eye on this thread. The comments were getting emailed to someone who posted here for a while.
The question about which Allscripts EMR people are using. Since, after their most recent acquisition of Eclipsys, they now have 8 EMR software. See: http://www.emrandhipaa.com/emr-and-hipaa/2010/06/10/allscripts-acquisition-of-eclipsys/
It’s going to be really interesting for EMR vendors as Allscripts handles this merger and no doubt has to sunset some of their EMR products.
If every physician had the same expectations, needs, and style, it MIGHT be possible to build a solution that takes no time to learn and provides all the necessary features only one click away.
In my experience, there are millions of physicians, each with a different expectation, need, and style. It is impossible to build one solution that satisfies the needs of a variety of specialties and the range of generations providing care at any given time.
Two providers in the same practice treating the same patient demographic for the same diagnosis can’t even agree on what they need.
I am in private practice and in the process of looking into Allscripts for my EMR needs however I have heard a lot of criticism of the program. If I understand correctly, there are a few concerns:
1. Multiple companies were purchased but at the micro level they are not integrated and require costly add-ons.
2.The data is hosted in a portal form by the hospital.
3. Allscripts is not a true EMR because it’s components are not integrated. (scheduling, paperless records, E Prescribe, billing, and SOAP etc.)
4. Although I haven’t used it much it seems very complicated and is a mix of multiple companies products.
I would appreciate others thoughts on these points.
IMT,
You point out some of the challenges. One big one that I think you missed or maybe are just misunderstanding is that Allscripts has 5-10 different EMR solutions under their umbrella. I did a post a while back with the list of them, but the exact number doesn’t really matter.
The issue with having so many EMR solutions that they can offer is that you can’t just ask someone what their experience using Allscripts. In fact, this post done by Dr. Jeff is a little misplaced in this regard. For example, if you ask someone’s experience with MyWay vs. the Allscripts Enterprise EMR, they’ll have dramatically different stories. Rightfully so since they go after different markets, but in many cases they have products which could be used by the same market segment.
Confused already? That’s part of the problem.
Of course, ask Misys users (Misys was bought by Allscripts) about Allscripts EMR and you’ll get another perspective I’m sure.
Point being that this mixture of entire EMR software packages causes plenty of confusion on top of your description of many of their products being 2 products that were kind of merged into 1.
I hope this helps.
IMT: Your questions are very good and quite valid. Don’t take anyone’s “sorry that’s just the way it is” attitude. It’s your practice and your money.
I have used their freebie e-prescribing module. The only reason I STILL use it is that pharmacies keep sending me refill requests through that portal. In retrospect I should have used RelayHealth, maybe. Why? the interface sucks. It looks like it was built in the nineties. It pauses for no good reason. It’s slow. Pharmacies send me erroneous refill requests that waste my time like spam.
When I can, I still print prescriptions on paper. I believe its safer for the patient that way. No duplicates, I have more time to do other things, like talk to them, for example. Of course the pundits will say different.
Disclaimer: I do NOT work for RelayHealth.
Another example of the confusion. Many people see Allscripts as synonymous with SureScripts ePrescribing.
We rolled out Allscripts at UMass Medical Center over a year ago. As have others, we find the e-prescribing feature very easy. What has been very frustrating are some of the things we can’t do:
our IT support for problems is cumbersome: we have to phone in a question or complaint to IT, who then calls the provider back a few minutes or a few hours later, so there are no real-time answers if we get stuck.
1) we can’t change the default setting for weight from pounds to kilograms, even though we prescribe based on kg weigh rather than pound weight (this is a setup for dosing errors); we are told that only one default setting is allowed per institution.
2) we are told that there are no pediatric growth charts for children with special needs such as down syndrome or achondroplasia; standard of care is to use specific growth charts for these children; we haven’t been able to get an answer about moving to the new growth charts recently recommended for children under age two years
3) there is no way to differentiate a height versus a length when measurements are entered
4) we frequently get spurrious warnings that ADHD meds should not be prescribed for children – even those who have been on stimulant meds for many years. This could lead providers to disregard drug warnings that are important.
5) the system works VERY slowly; frequently there are 5-15 second pauses going from one screen to another; not much if it happens once, but when it 4-6 times for each patient, it can really mount up by the end of the day.
6) immunization dates are recorded in European format (day/month/year) instead of american format (month/day/year); the institution has just figured out how to print our immunization forms with american dates.
7) developing specific forms for patients such as school physical forms, excuse notes for school
9) flow sheets are cumbersome or expensive to design and our institution has limited our development of these
10) we hear great things about the potential for “data mining” in allscripts but there has been little support for this function (not sure whether this is institutional or product-specific)
I would be interested in hearing from any pediatric groups that are using Allscripts.
Aside from the e-prescribing aspect
Dr. Moriarty,
Thanks for providing such detailed information. I love when doctors provide their perspective on a specific EMR. I did want to ask which Allscripts EMR you are using. I imagine it’s the Allscripts professional? I bet you barely even knew that Allscripts had other EMR huh? I think they have 7 of them right now if I remember right.
we have allscripts V 11.1.7
Hi all – This version would be the Allscripts Enterprise EHR. The current version of Professional is 9.1, with 9.2 coming out in Jan.
what is the difference between allscripts professional and allscripts enterprise?
Richard,
I’d say a 6 figure price tag:-)
To be honest, I get confused by the slew of Allscripts EHR products. Hopefully someone else can provide a more detailed answer. I’d assume the Enterprise is more customizable and has extra modules. I usually deal with the Allscripts MyWay product since I mostly deal with the small doctors offices and that’s their small doctors office product.
Allscripts Professional is aimed for offices less than 25 docs. Allscripts Enterprise for greater than 25. A lot of installations for Enterprise seem to be within hospital physician organizations.
Professional is very customizable and revolves around the Clinical Module. It does integrate well with Allscripts Practice Manager and is becoming even moreso in the last 2 years so that users don’t have to toggle between 2 applications.
As a Stand Alone, It can manage demographics, insurance, scheduling, but does not have an integrated billing and practice reporting.
Check out the newly designed web site @ http://www.allscripts.com
As a disclaimer, I do work with Allscripts, but in Implementation, not Sales.
Best Regards, Heidi
Nice redesign. I’ve always liked the EMR Stimulus section of Allscripts site. It was informed and straight forward (minus a bit of sales info which is to be expected).
How is it working on the implementation side at Allscripts? Is there a backlog? Do you work on multiple Allscripts EHR or a specific one? I’d love to learn more. Even off the record.
does anyone out there know whether ANY users of ANY allscripts programs have specific growth charts for children with Down syndrome? We are stating a Down syndrome clinic at UMass and need to have the down syndrome growth chart incorporated into our allscripts product.
Richard,
Hopefully, HeidiAH can help you since she works at Allscripts. I’m surprised there’s not a user group or user forum for Allscripts users where you could ask this stuff. There are some of other EMR vendors.
You might also ask on this EMR forum: http://www.emrupdate.com/forums/
Hi All -
Richard, you are not alone in your need; however, from what we are told, there isn’t a DS growth chart that has been published/accepted/validated/? that can be included in EHR. If Allscripts could find one, they would be more than happy to know about it, so it could be included.
Allscripts clients, please be sure you are signed up with the client web site as the company is setting up a more interactive user community with the web site design.
Best Regards – HeidiAH
Thanks HeidiAH.
Good News – I reviewed some emails and they have located something for DS they can adapt, so you should have something sooner than not.
For current clients, be sure to review the ‘release notes’ for any updates available. They are also available through the client site, when any new version comes out. You can also subscribe to client news letters.
Best Regards, HeidiAH
Heidi, thanks for looking into this – more help than I have gotten from our local allscripts staff. The American Academy of Pediatrics has set standards for the care of children with down syndrome – published in Pediatrics 2001;107:442. In the article, there is reference to a growth chart for down syndrome children that was originally published in 1988. hopefully this would be the growth chart that would be used. How do we go about getting our allscripts team to incorporate this into our version of allscripts? Any center or practice that follows children with down syndrome should be using this.
The client website has a link to request enhancements. I would start by logging in and making an entry of the above information with references.
Email me at heidi@citdone.com and I will research how to get your information passed along to the right department. Thanks.
The interface for the free e-prescribing has improved substantially the past few weeks. Could still use a few fixes but overall much snappier. Thank you.
I have found the training for allscripts professional to be beyond bad. We have mysis currently and are “upgrading”. From what I can tell this upgrade will result in 1-2 minutes more per patient due to increased clicks and such. How sad. Our go live date is in a few weeks and I have done all the training and feel more unprepared then ever. I now have to spend thousands of dollars on a trainer coming out to train me.
I signed up to use the “Free” version of ePrescribing by Allscripts but have not been able to reliably send prescriptions to pharmacies. When I attempt to send
a prescription, an “Urgent Message” appears with the following explanation : “Your account is currently not enabled for e-prescribing. You can only print Rxs at this time. Please contact ePrescriber support for Allscripts Technical Support.”
I have attempted various methods ( e mail, phone etc. but have been unable to resolve this problem ).
No sane doctor, patient, institution or government should recommend Allscripts as advertised due to their unacceptable support for users.
James Gammon,
I’ve heard a number of people tell me about the issues of getting ePrescribing help from Allscripts. It’s unfortunate that they have such a lack of response.
I use EMR EHR whatever it is and I HATE it. It’s slow, clunky, inefficient, counterintuitive, the coding for billing is a pain, and the system is unacceptably unstable. I get kicked off the program or it freezes 11 times in a clinic. Yesterday it slowed me down so much that I ended in excess of 2 hours behind and was late for a SURGERY.
Kenneth,
Which EMR software are you using? That’s a shameful description of how an EMR software should work. Do you work in a hospital or a clinic?
We have been users of the EMR with AllScripts – went live in June 2005 with it when it was A4. The first five years were great – service, upgrades, interfaces, GREAT! In the past six months the service is degraded to the point I hate communicating a problem with AllScripts. The “case” ends being handled by “techs” from India that don’t understand the program and don’t understand or speak clear English. At this time, I would not recommend AllScripts to anyone since the service is so bad. Things that used to be fixed in a matter of minutes now take days, and days have become weeks. Service is HORRIBLE!
Terri Johnson,
Thanks for sharing your experience. Can you tell us which Allscripts EMR you use? Since it started as A4, I think they transitioned most A4 users to Allscripts professional. Is that right?
@John, you are correct, we are on AllScripts Professional. We are an ENT practice, with audiology and allergy. We have developed our own flow sheets and testing modules – so the ability to “build” the EMR to meet our needs has been great – however, with all the upgrades, some things are not interfacing correctly and we are having to reinvent the wheel so to speak – in the meantime support on our issues is really bad. As I have spoken with “english speaking Americans” at AllScripts I have expressed my frustrations – they seem to share these frustrations as they too have to deal with the “techs” from India. It seems that if you are upgrading programs and/or migrating to new servers, the service is provided by Americans in America. But all other things must go through India. HORRIBLE!
I run a solo IM practice with Medisoft. Is Allscript the best emr system out there? And which system?
Hi Robert,
Which system is the right question when it comes to Allscripts. They have so many under their umbrella it would be hard to give you a proper recommendation. Not to mention, other than the info that you’re an IM practice with Medisoft, we don’t really have any idea of your practices needs and environment. So, anyone that answers your question probably has something to sell.
I’ve heard every recommendation imaginable about Allscripts. Although, based on all those recommendations, I’d put them about middle of the pack. Worth a consideration if you have some compelling reason to check them out. They’re definitely a big player in the EMR space and will be for a good time to come.
With this size of practice, the recommendation would, most likely, be MyWay or, if EHR only Allscripts Professional.
Best practice would be to approach Professional organization or regional or state health information exchange to see what is working with other practices your size, then have 3-4 companies demo their programs. Do your research, talk to others in your community/speciality.
Best Regards, H
TEBW – We moved from Allscripts professional to Centricity (GE). With Allscripts every major update cost us money. Custom templates – more $$$ . With Centricity our updates are free. We have not paid for anything other than support in the last 3 years. It’s much more customizable and the learning curve was a lot easier.
Richard- Centricity has Downs Syndrome growth Charts. I’m very surprised by Heidi’s comments.
Long story short- I will NEVER go back to Allscripts.
I have purchased this product, and subsequently have stopped using. I am an Ortho Spine MD, and consider myself very computer literate.
Implementation staff was very poor. We had to have a repeat implementation visit 3 months after the initial due to lack of proper training.
Hardware issues were constant. We tried to use the Signature Add-on, with hardware of exact specs recommended by Allscripts. They were unable to ever get this to work properly. Therefore, I have a unit that is useless.
Fax software never worked. This was the deal killer. After spending 9 months customizing my modules, my office staff could not receive faxes. Therefore, we would receive electronic faxes on one computer, had to print them out and scan into the EHR. No direct input from fax.
The Remote solution is not provided by Allscripts, but eTransmedia. This remote source was frequently “down.” 5-10 minutes a week doesn’t seem a lot until your charts back up. Additionally, if you scan or print, then this data spools from your desktop to their server and then back to your scanner/printer. Initial installation did not take this into account. We had print times of single-page docs as long as 3-5 minutes. Scanning was all but impossible. They had apparently never considered this prior to my office installation. It took a couple months to resolve.
My dissatisfaction hit a peak during depositions for work comp cases or similar. My records were boiler plate. Since I am not a transcriptionist, I am not going to spend my clinical time typing patient notes myself (still cheaper to pay a transcriptionist even though you can say with sweat equity you saved $800/month in transcription). I tried Dragon 10, but it was buggy with the Allscripts system. It wouldn’t recognize edit commands after the note was dictated. FRUSTRATING!
Upon my wholehearted attempt to make this system work, it didn’t. The support and understanding from Allscripts was nil. eTransmedia told me it was Allscripts fault and vice versa. I was unable to get a refund, credit, or ANY acknowledgement of my problem. I would recommend close scrutiny of your agreement with this company.
Incidentally, I have returned to my Allscripts Electronic Documentation (aka Impact MD) and ePrescribe without issues. In fact, the tech support is phenomenal with this product. Hard to believe it’s the same company.
Douglas,
Thanks for sharing your experience. I’m sure that others will benefit from reading what you experienced and can plan appropriately for the issues you discuss.
We are in the process of an Allscripts enterprise 5.5 installation and it has been a painful process. Make sure you read and understand the contract. Hire a good independent well trained Consultant to be YOUR advocate because their management and most of their onsite employees are obnoxious and arrogant and need to be kept in check. I have worked with a few helpful Allscipts employees, but it has been a very painful ride. It seems as if they could care less and blame the client for issues. I dread go live and beyond based on their persistent bad attitude and lack of compassionate support.
Wish us luck….
I work for a large company that is using Allscripts EHR and also PM. I am not thrilled by any means. Is there any blogs, discusion boards or other resources that anyone knows of for us who are forced to use it, but want to try to fix (work around) the issues we have?
John I,
To be honest I haven’t seen one for Allscripts. I would have thought that there would be, but I haven’t seen it. Maybe there is and I’ve just missed it? This thread is the most I’ve seen unfortunately. This thread illustrates that there’s a need.
Did anyone ever use ANY ID scanner/Insurance scanner with MyWay Allscripts- so it can scan patient”s info directly to EMR??
Heard Medican OCR True Parse Scanshell 2000 compatible. Also one ending in 3000 is compatible but more $$$ since 3000 copies both sides at once- Allscripts says buy from them- but if you do they charge a monthly fee of $12 for “possible upgrades”. – No Thanks— will buy on my own or forget it-
Julie,
I’ve never heard of Medican, but I’ve used Fujitsu and Ambir scanners with great success. I can’t imagine they have some major advantage if you buy the scanner through them. At least they shouldn’t have an advantage.
I have gotten allscripts myway for my practice. Small practice two physician group. It looks like hell. We are stuck with allscripts for the remainder of the contract lease. The system is very slow. Not that user friendly. A lot of bugs in the system. Tech support is very horrible they have a 800 number and that goes to one of the Indian call centers. Support is at times very lousy and hard to understand. The suport is very lousy and takes up to 48 hours to reply back. They are understaffed and working on a skeleton staff like the holidays 24-7. With all problems in their software they don’t want to accept it and thus try to blame the problem on you. Training is very lousy for the system. All on the computer and one day in office training for both the physicians and all staff. And again there are many complaints and concerns with this software. Company headquartered in Chicago and CEO was on Chicago’s failing Olympic bid and on current administrations health law advisory committe. In the end I will not recommend allscripts to my other associate doctors and will not keep allscripts after my lease is up. It is a horrible product. It takes 6 months for them to make a lab interface connection for our practice and making us miss on on EMR incentives…. Do not buy allscripts…..
Allscripts stinks. It does not use logical medical terminology. It is cluttered, cumbersome, unintuitive and slow. eScribe is slow, slow, slow! This system obviously serves the billing aspect while ignoring the actual end user. It does not follow the flow of seeing a patient. It does not make a pretty document. It is embarrassing to send things to specialists. Actual pt care plans are nonexistent. Way way way too many clicks and drop downs and going back and forth. Centricity is a better product that deserves more attention.
Allscripts is the most inefficient, nonsensical, clearly created by computer IT personnel who have never cared for a patient or series of patients in their lives electronic medical charting software I’ve ever had the complete displeasure and daily horror of using. If you enjoy stress and a verrrrrrry slow and cumbersome charting experience then this is hands-down your best choice. If not, I would run far and hard and fast toward ANY other program.
We have Touchworks v11 now and it is a complete and utter disaster. V10 was not far behind. The number of bugs are incredible and make it all but unusable. With what others are saying it appears that these products are alpha versions at best. In any other industry Allscripts would be litigated to death.
Tim,
I think it might be helpful for others if you describe the bugs that you’re experiencing so that they can look into those problems when they look at Touchworks.
Interesting points, I had always heard that Allscripts was the leader in this field?
I don’t ever need to see a cardiologist. I have an exhausting “stress test” every day. It’s name is Allscripts Enterprise. I actually have nightmares about it and this is 1 year into implementation. Dragon in the Allscripts environment is worse than buggy- commands don’t work. I must have excellent mental health because I have survived this long. Productivity down due to this horrible EHR. I would rather repeat medical school again and my worst night of residency 10,000 times with my finger nails pulled out. Did I tell you Allscripts is not very good?
We use Medflow for our EMR, but Allscripts provided the equipment and installation quote for Medflow and I can tell you, you’ll want to look at EVERY line they bill to your company. We have been billed for equipment that we never received and interfacing that was never launched. I have spent hours explaining to them what services they have billed us but didn’t provide. I am extremely grateful that we did not purchase their EMR and/or Practice Management product!!
Diane G,
Great advice. I’ll have to do a post so others can read that advice as well!
[...] a post done in 2009 that’s still getting comments, Diane G. offered some interesting commentary that [...]
Allscripts is terrible. Really, really awful. Not user friendly. Complicated.
I came from the VA system, so I may be biased (or expect too much)… Don’t know why these companies developing these systems don’t try to model from the VA system, which is fantastic. Oh how I miss CPRS.
Michelle,
What’s so much better about the VA system vs Allscripts? Since the VA’s Vista software is open source so there are some (mostly hospitals) that are using it.
Has anyone used both Allscripts and eclinicalworks? How would you compare the two in terms of their IT support and usability ?
CPRS VA emr will not allow for discreet data entry into the clinical chart so it would not be a good choice for anyone that wants to attest for meaningful use. Mostly free text areas.
We are looking at using AllScripts EMR data as a data source for our internal systems and in this regard have a few questions that I would like to request the team on this forum for feedback.
1. I am in particular looking for information on the medical insurance information at the time of the visit / appointment, and I don’t think that is available. Any guidance would be appreciated.
2. I was looking to see if there was a influence of the formulary at the time of prescription of the medication by the physician. Is this availabel?
3. I was looking for the expected or desired outcomes of the mediacation but did not find any such attribute. Is there a way to determine this?
4. Does the data offer insight if the visit involved surgery?
Any guidance or thoughts on how you may have handled would greatly help.
Thanks
ramana
Have had the WORST experience with Allscripts!! Their marketing dept. keeps sending us offers that are BETTER than the one we got through a reseller in north carolina!! The reseller never delivered ANYTHING that was promised, Allscripts took over the contract, and then emailed us an offer that was better than what we had contracted for.. when I inquired about why they would send us that they said they didn’t have a way to take out current clients with contracts from the emailing… and then they had someone from marketing call me who said that there were some “hidden costs” so in reality it wasn’t a better deal….
I believe that this type of marketing is bait and switch and they just said it wasn’t better to get us to stop asking for a the best deal…THEN.. we get a phone call from Allscripts saying that we had been approved for the NC PATH program… at 1/15th the price….All of this just goes to show that they are disorganized and not interested in what is clearly best for the client! AND…. we have been a MEDIC/Misys/Allscripts client since 1998!!!!! As you read this, please remember that these other offers were SENT TO US by Allscripts… Not sure this is who we should be doing business with!
Jane,
That’s pretty insane to think about. Allscripts has always been really strong at marketing. I think this is an illustration of how strong. The way you describe them they’re basically relentless in their effort to capture market share it seems. It’s amazing to think how many pricing options they must have for EHR software. I’m sure they can’t even keep it straight.