Evaluations of AllScripts EMR
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?
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:
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
8) 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.
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.
Jane and all the others that are not satisfied with Allscripts,
After much thought and what our practice assumed to be careful consideration of using Allscripts we signed on in December 2011. We are not happy due to the disorganization and lack of communication with project managers and sales reps to accounting personnel. We were even furious when the ePrescribing was not functioning properly, to our dismay we found out Allscripts had not renewed their contract with dr first, which is considered a third party vendor. We want out, is there anyone who has cancelled their agreement with Allscripts, please HELP. We have not yet started implementation, or given any dates for implementation. Currently using MediNotes, which is due to sunset December 2012; and wish to cancel our subscription with Allscripts! We have been given the run around on (bait and switch), I am disappointed that my sales representative is unreachable, however she was not during trying to negoitiate the sale. After reading all of your posts, I am not surprised. HELP
I also Joined Allscripts but want out too!!!!
In process of reviewing contract- has anyone gone through that- any advise?? with me the Allscripts format I requested was not what I received. I gave them a chance to fix it but they have not- so I am done.
I have over 40 practices using the various Allscripts EHR products. Remember, Allscripts is NOT and EHR product. Allscripts is a company with multiple EHR products including: Enterprise, Professional, MyWay, Medinotes, PeakPractice, MisysEHR, Eclipsys EHR and Amicore. A number of these products are no longer sold and there are many happy clients transferring over to one of the ONC certified EHRs offered by Allscripts. Therefore, when talking about Allscripts, please let everyone know WHICH Allscripts EHR product you are talking about. Think about the big car company GM. GM sells a number of different cars. Some people like one while others like another one. Same with Allscripts. The best Allscripts product for you maybe a different Allscripts product for the next practice.
To Julia who commented on February 12th, 2012: I have rewritten the Allscripts contract with five of their EHR products. There are a minimum of 40 changes/additions that need to be added or amended to the traditional Allscripts Contract. That said, I have also negotiated over 500 other EHR contracts with 47 different vendors and on average, I have a minimum of 70 changes to each of those contracts. In fact, my average contract addendum is over 9 pages long – sometimes longer that the vendor’s actual contract. Let me know if you need any help on your EHR contract and anyone out there, you can contact me if you need help on contract reviews. If you want out of your current contract, I have been successful getting 82 practices out of their current contracts with nice refunds from 12 different vendors.
Remember, it’s a buyer-be- where marketplace and 90% of the vendor contract provide NO guarantee that the product will work. The only guarantee is that you have to pay them.
Thanks for commenting Mark. I knew you’d done a lot of EHR contract stuff, but didn’t realize you’d done that many. I hope you can help a number of people on this thread and likely more to come.
I’m interested to know EHR vendor’s response when you send them 9 pages of addendums to their contract. Do a lot of them send it back and say, sorry? Or do most of them want the business and after some negotiation sign it?
Every vendor that I have submitted a revised contract has approved over 90% of my requested changes. Sometimes it takes weeks, but once we are done, contract changes for the next practice is must easier. I 1 or 2 provider practices does not have a lot of power to change a contract. However, when you work with 25,000 providers over 10 years, you have a little bit more pull. Overall, the vendors agree with the changes and I have not experienced a vendor that complains to much.
to Mark R. Anderson,
We have a contract agreement with Allscripts for My Way. (post #71)The practice has not yet set any implementation dates, however the IPA clause reads to be iron-clad. As you stated, the products have “NO guarantee that the product will work. The only guarantee is that you have to pay them.”
Our practice wants out, due to the extensive hours for preparation (office administrator 23 hrs), due to the disorganization and dishonesty of the representation of Allscripts My Way.
I am not sure what the rules are on this site for providing help to individuals, but if you want to contact me directly, I can help you get out of the contract. just send me an email at mra@acgroup.org.
You could certainly do the discussion on my blog, but it’s not likely the best format to address the issues so email seems appropriate.
Do you know how much Allscripts charges for client support fees? Do they still charge a $1250 annual fee?
We are having problems with it locking up on our wifi. New access points and new laptops. Using n for wifi. Is it just too much data to push across wifi. The desktops with gig connections work great. HELP.
Ryan,
You might want to say which Allscripts EHR you’re talking about since there are a bunch of them.
Nick,
Sounds like a poorly configured wifi to me. I bet your EHR doesn’t touch that gig wire connection.
Nick,
If you were in Michigan we could do a free diagnosis and take care of any issues. We always do a site survey before bringing Allscripts into the picture just to make sure it will run smoothly afterwards. You can always find an IT company to check on it for you.
I am a Physical Therapist and I have recently been using Allscripts Homecare. I have used several EMR’s including: Meditech, Genesis Healthcare’s EMR, Pariox, and WebPT. As an experienced PT, I already know what data I need to enter. I need it to happen with the fewest mouseclicks/screentaps/typing possible. In this regard, Allscripts user interface is poorly designed. It looks like something left over from 1990. It forces you to click more useless check boxes than any system I have ever seen. Like Meditech (not the most expensive.. I mean recent version), it relies on templates on top of templates. I can’t imagine using it with an Ipad – you would probably end up with a bruise on the end of your finger by the time you were done a single evaluation.
To answer the question why I preferred CPRS over Allscripts it has a lot to do with all those dumb templates (within templates). Free text is difficult and no cut and paste is available. way too many windows within windows. For example, if I am working on ( or looking at ) a note I have to get completely out of that note and navigate thru two additional screens before I get to the rest of the notes. In CPRS all the notes were always visible on the left side of the screen so you could navigate between them easily. These are only a few reasons… I could type all day.
By the way it is Allscripts Enterprise that I am talking about. Allscripts Pro is a little better, but not much.
Folks – USE MARK ANDERSON if you’re purchasing an EHR. I’ve been in this business for over a decade and have automated nearly 1,000 physicians. The sad fact is, our competitor’s contracts are DISMAL and you get the short end of the stick.
Thanks for comment Matt. Your right, there is a minimum of 40 changes needed in every PM/EHR contract. So far, we have negotiated over 400 contracts with 42 different PM/EHR vendors. The vendor contracts are designed to protect the vendor, not the buyer. Before signing any contract, get outside help from someone who knows what is needed in PM/EHR contracts. It’s not just legal wording, it’s the operational issues that are left out of the contract. Basically, you are not protected in a common PM/EHR contract.
For example, what happens if you want to terminate the contract and what it will cost you to terminate the contract? Terminate of unsuccessful EHR applications has a high cost for the average practice. Luckily we have helped 100’s of physicians get out of their contracts – with refunds. So don’t give up hope if you find that you purchased a software product that does not meet your needs. There is help out there.
I am 4 months into using this dismal product called Allscripts Pro. It is just flat awful. I have over 2 decades in medicine and I can type faster and be more descriptive and accurate than these stupid check boxes. They don’t even use terms or words I would EVER use professionally. The printed out product looks awful. I am embarrassed to send my printouts to specialists – they look like DOS. escripts gave us constant problems, now it is efax. Labs don’t cross over. Whose idiotic idea was it to have SIX inboxes? There is no such thing as signing off on a document – it is reviewed or finalized. Stop with the awkward terminology. Call a shovel a shovel. It is slow, cumbersome and completely detracts from patient care. It is all about the documentation, nothing to do with patient care. The actual patient care plan is in the tiniest font and cannot be changed. It is THE most important part of the document. I hate this product and actually just turned down a job involving Allscripts. Give me Centricity or give me something compatible with DragonSpeak and I can take care of my patients again!!!!
Do you want to terminate the Allscripts Professional contract? If you have documented the issues and told Allscripts your concerns, then you fall into the large % of physicians that are not happy with their EHR.
If you would like help getting out of the contract and potentially getting a refund on what you have already paid, please let me know. I have helped over 50 practices to get out of their PM/EHR contracts and in 85% of the cases, we were able to obtain a refund on payments made.
Mr. Anderson
I am an employee Physician Assistant. I don’t get any say in any decision on what software we use. I doubt a great number of practitioners nationwide get any say in what their large group or hospital owned practices use. The sad fact is – somebody, somewhere was convinced by key terms of meaningful use ( WTH?) and other catch phrases of compliance to use this bright and shiny EHR “that will keep you in compliance”. ie. Bean Counters and nonmedical personnel picked the computer system, software and implementation for the actual folks who use this stuff. We, the practitioners are hosed. We are stuck with about $100K worth of junk and have to use it. So, my employment goals are changing – find a practice where I can actually see patients – if that even exists anymore.
So, thanks for your professional interest but I have NO SAY in what I use.
For all of those physicians that are using an EHR or considering an new EHR, just remember that the ONC 2011 Stage 1 certification is a minimum standard and based on our detailed analysis, the Stage 1 requirements only represents 8% of what a physician needs to effectively manage their practice. This means that many of the 800+ certified products will not meet the needs of every physician. Some of the products are very good and many are extremely weak in meeting the needs of the physician.
‘For example, many physicians want to be able to view a patient’s lab results over time in a flowsheet. If found that 69% of the ONC certified products that we reviewed could not provide a lab flowsheet. Why not? Because lab flowsheets are not required to get certified.
Also, when evaluating an EHR, you have to look at the actually output, or clinical encounter note. Many of the product’s outputs resemble just a listing of medical terms and condition, not the traditional clinical paragraph that explains what the physician found and the physician’s assessment of the patient’s medical condition.
I was reviewing a contract for one of my clients last night and the contract clearly states that the product is “as is” and there is “No Return” and “no refund”. My main question to the vendor was “why did they add those clauses to their contract if they believed that their product was a strong product for my client”. They told me that they are not responsible for insuring that the client likes the product and they are not responsible if the product does not work. It’s the buyer’s requirement to insure they have clearly evaluated the product”. So if that is true, then how does a physician evaluate the entire product to insure the products meets all of their needs? The answer is clear, the physician cannot evaluate the product to insure it works.
The EHR market is truly a “Buyer be Ware” marketplace.
If you buy a car and the car breaks down, we have the “Lemon Law” to protect you. In the EHR marketplace, there is NO protection, you are all on your own. My suggestion, get outside help with someone who is completely independent from the vendor.
What I have learned that is Impt!! When choosing an EMR–
Ask if and how the EMR you choose will help you ATTEST! -Allscripts for small practices does not seem helpful with this! Beware!!
However, competitor like QUEST (I have heard) does take you by the hand and help you Attest- checking if ready to Attest or not- and if not what you need to do- to attest.!
Just remember, the ONC Stage 1 certified product does not mean that the product will work for you. ONC certification only represents 8% of the average practice requirements. Don’t pick an EHR vendor because they are ONC certified – there are more than 800 certified products.
Experts in the field estimate that more than 600 of the ONC stage 1 certified product will not survive past 2015. Therefore, unless you are happy with the prospect of replacing your EHR in 2 to 3 years and losing access to most of your discrete patient data , it is important to look at the other 92% of the operational requirements.
For example, if you need to view patient specific lab results overtime in a flow sheet and then compare those results with vital signs and other clinical indicators, you just eliminated over 65% of the certified products today.
If all you want is the $18,000 in government funding for the first year of stage 1, then you can pick one of 800 vendors. Just be prepare to replace the product again in the next two years.
I have a legal client that purchased Allscripts MyWay a year ago, with hosting by Etransmedia. The product was paid for up front. It never worked. Slow, dysfunctional, crashes, etc. The two companies point fingers at one another endlessly. Then they simply don’t respond to technical complaints. Even hiring a lawyer will not get your money back, as Allscript’s lawyers play legalistic head games and will simply not take responsibility for a defective product even when their own CEO acknowledges technical problems. You will need to bring legal action before you can have a chance of recovering your money. My client’s experience with Allscripts and Etransmedia has been horrendous. It doesn’t work. You won’t get a refund. You are pretty much screwed. Caveat emptor.
Ditto on that. We purchased Myway from Allscripts and with hosting by Etransmedia. The experience has been awful. It is slow. It freezes up. It crashes. The support staff from both companies point the finger at each other. Nothing is ever resolved. it is an absolute nightmare trying to deal with these companies. They play head-games, will not give you a refund, and pretty much take your money and run with it. Really terrible experience.
Allscripts MyWay / Etransmedia customers should assemble a user’s group, or perhaps a class action law suit, to get some resolution of these problems. They are really out of control and predators to the medical community with this product/service offering.
Honest Abe and Jim,
You should both contact Mark Anderson who’s commented on this thread: http://www.acgroup.org/ I’m not sure what he does, but I think he has a great success rate in situations like you describe. Let’s just say that I wouldn’t want to go toe to toe with Mark either. He knows his EHR stuff.
The art of medicine is dying. The ability to accurately describe your patient has been squashed by statisticians and accountants. I can no longer describe my patient’s rash. I have to click thru 700 stupid little boxes that don’t use real words. Specialists no longer read my notes – they are cookie cutter and bland. I am embarrassed. I click enough boxes to get by legally and free text the rest. I refuse to give up on the art of medicine and the personalization of my patients’ charts. The ONLY EMR I have ever liked is Centricity. Allscripts just flat SUCKS. There is nothing about it that works the way I was trained 20 years ago. There is nothing about it that reflects the actual examination and conversation with a patient. The practitioners in this country are going to have to take back the ability to actually take care of patients instead of clicking damn boxes to satisfy Medicare and nonclinical idiots who like to quantify everything. The process of medicine is dying – hope it is not too late to save it.
Just consider the statement by Allscript’s CEO regarding their own product (as reported in the class action securities lawsuit that was recently filed): “Given that many of our clients are smaller practices, the challenges have not just been about upgrading software, but also include hardware upgrades, connectivity issues and work flow. For some, this is the first upgrade or change in years. While we have added staff to manage through this, there have been challenges, and candidly, there is more work to do relative to improving the client experience.”
The EMR vendors should not be charging for their software until it is integrated, tested and accepted…
I like the call to kick against bad, cookie cutter EHR software.
The common practice in the software industry is to install the software, test it, debug any problems and then run it through a monthly accounting cycle before final acceptance and final payment. This is the problem with Allscripts and other vendors. They want to be paid up front for (in Allscript’s case at least) defective products. It’s no wonder their CFO and half the board recently departed. This sh** catches up to you… the company’s continued efforts to stick with the same playbook is counterproductive to their survival. What they should be doing is taking a restructuring charge and make things right with customers…. either by fixing things (if possible) technically or giving them a refund with an apology.
I would like to invite the CEO of Allscripts to spend 2 days with me in practice. one day I will do charts my way – real description. I can type faster than most data entry, so – advantage. The next day I will click the stupid boxes. He has to sit there the whole time then compare the end product. I will have a doc friend critique the output for him. Then he will see how cumbersome and cluttered Allscripts is and hear how ugly the end document looks from a doc. Our patients deserve better and, if the US wants people to practice primary care – something has to change!!! Reimbursement sucks for PCPs and the software we are relegated to using is disastrous and damaging to our profession. Why is Allscripts so popular??? It is terrible. Not perfect but Centricity is at least logical. What is the draw to Allscripts. I have never met anyone who actually likes it.
I think Glen is well aware of the deficiencies of his software. The answer to your question is because Allscripts is great at marketing and making sales.
So they know the software stinks. Taking action? Asking real practitioners how to improve it? Caring at all? Why hasn’t AAFP or AMA commented? Why hasn’t anyone stood up to this disaster? We have to live with it. We should be the agents of change.
Did I hear that Allscripts is going to sell MyWay through Costgo? That’s going to be the biggest mistake Costgo ever made. They are going to permanently damage their relationship with every purchaser of Allscripts. I guess Costgo hasn’t bothered to read the class action lawsuit against Allscripts (quoted in the post above). Allscripts and Etransmedia are a blight upon the medical profession. “Lie until they buy” seems to be their corporate slogan… Pathetic.
Allscripts has been selling MyWay through Costco for a long time: http://www.emrandhipaa.com/emr-and-hipaa/2011/04/03/some-perspective-acos-costco-emr-and-april-fools-day/
I even heard of one incident where the Costco ad hijacked an EHR selection process. Crazy stuff!
eCW was at Sam’s Club for a while: http://www.emrandhipaa.com/tag/walmart/ Although if I remember right, that’s over now.
The bigger rumor I read was that Allscripts Professional could be sunset. Something has to happen I think. Allscripts has too many EHR to support.
Because of a pending lawsuit against Allscripts, I cannot post additional information on a public website regarding two of my clients that have experienced failed Allscripts MyWay implementations.
If anyone would like to hear about the issues, please contact me directly at mra@acgroup.org.
I think the definition of a “scam” is when a company sells knowingly defective software, charging the price in full up front and then when the inevitable problems surface, they point the finger at their hosting company (while the hosting company points the finger back at the vendor).
Isn’t that what Allscripts and Etransmedia are doing with respect to the MyWay product? I think their CEO owes the medical community an apology (and a refund)…
Mr. Anderson’s stated need to sue Allscripts to get any type of remedy does not surprise me. That is how Allscripts is governed, by scam artists, who are being sued not only by their investors, but by more and more customers of MyWay.
It takes a lot for a doctor to sue someone. So the fact that there are several lawsuits pending or in preparation against Allscripts and Etransmedia is a big red flag to the medical community.
The definition of a corporate psychopath includes no discernible empathy for their victims. That what we have here: two companies that victimize their customers, take their money, then laugh as they walk away… I have yet to see any expression of concern or remorse by them for their behavior towards their customers.
Add to that definition a glib ability to con people out of their money, making whatever promises are needed to get the money, then engaging in “blame shifting” to divert responsibility for not delivering. See C. Body, “Corporate Psychopaths: Organizational Destroyers”.
Corporate Psychopaths account for about 3 percent of the population, but almost single-handedly destroy organizations, customers, suppliers and employees. They need to be identified and pretty much “gang tackled” by the community. This forum is an important channel for getting the word out on these companies.
Not to mention the fact that doctors base their medical decisions on information they get from Allscript’s system. Their knowing distribution of defective software into the medical community is a blight on a community that is just trying to serve their patients…
Allscripts and Etransmedia should be investigated. They are an embarrassment to themselves and the medical community for their behavior and lack of respect for their clients. They have no shame.
The doctors i have worked with are not happy with All Scripts. They do not like the way the screen are designed. Also price tag is very high.
I found that a free open source product like OpenEMR is compared to these expensive products and very reliable .
Remember everyone, Allscripts is a leading healthcare IT software and service company, not an EHR.
Allscripts has 9 different EHR products, including Enterprise, Professional, MyWay, Peakpractice, Medinotes, Eclipsys, Amicore, MisysEHR, etc.
When stating comments about Allscripts EHRs we should alway include which of the 9 Allscripts EHRs we are talking about.
In this case, which Allscripts EHR product are your cleints not happy with?
I can agree with some of what Mark is saying about the products – however, semantics aside – Allscripts is producing MANY products that practitioners are finding horrific and an insult to practicing medicine. As a whole, Allscripts does NOT support their products after purchase either. Their products were so obviously written by people who DON’T practice medicine and have no concept of seeing a patient or patient flow. The 2 Allscripts products I have been forced to use are both an abomination to family practice and do not in any way reflect my visit with the patient. And again, I will say it, MOST practitioners do not have any say in what they use – everything is getting bought up by “Health Systems” or corporations and we little people in the trenches have no say in much – from what brand of bandaids to what kind of suture to computers and software.
Just as a note, I read back through many of the comments today and many of the positive comments were related to Allscripts free eRX product, not their EHR.
These are two separate products and since the header for this blog relates to Allscripts EHR, not their eRX, I suggest we separate the two subjects.
To help individuals on this site, can everyone include which product you are talking about since Allscripts has over 100 total products that they offer to the healthcare industry and mainly stick with their EHR products instead of mixing products together. I think that would help everyone.
If the Allscripts products are as bad as most physician have indicated on this site, then we really need to get the word out there so that physicians that are looking for a new EHR product have a neutral place to go to learn about product issues. I wish every physician would read blogs like this instead of just reading vendor supplied marketing materials.
For example, Allscripts claims that their EHR is in the top 2 or 3 in end-user satisfaction based on a third party study.
Based on what I have read here I find it hard to believe that the majority of the physicians believe that Allscripts has the best EHR in the market. But that’s what marketing is telling physicians and hospitals.
Has any physician on this site participated in the semi-annual KLAS end-user satisfaction rating system?
What is the best way to educate physicians on the 800+ ONC certifed products that are being sold today?
I work in an internal medicine specialty…No one in our office likes Allscripts except for the incompetent clinician who left our group and never really documented anything or really thought about the work that he was supposed to be doing. I favor using my brain and actually writing an intelligent note. “Preprogrammed” sentences with a one size fits all spells death for the fine art of medicine. The smiley faces and frowning faces that denote one’s medication choices or how quickly the document and bill are compile testify to the truly juvenile attitude of this loser company……Why did the administrators at so many places buy into this nonsence and why do they think that we’ll drink the Kool-Aid..
I’m still learning HealthIT and EHR’s but have gotten quite the earful here re Allscripts. Funny – I’ve had some hands on time with VISTA CPRS and despite an antiquated interface I find it very easy to use. I can’t say what doctors feel about it, but everything I’ve looked at seems well integrated and consistent. I was watching a fellow student today using it the first time, and he had very little trouble adapting to it.
I’m not providing a deep review, nor am I trying to compare it to Allscripts Enterprise, which I’ve not used. Nor do I know how easy or hard it is to customize it to match a doctor’s work flow. But I do appreciate hearing what all of you have to say about this and other EHR/EMRs of varying types.
For those who are not happy with the Allscripts product, please contact me directly. We just settled two claims from unhappy Allsripts MyWay practices and both practices where every happy with the outcome. We found that onces we presented the facts to Allscripts, they were more than happy to provide a settleman that met the desires of both practices.
We found working with Allscripts very easy as long as you can document the facts.
Mark Anderson
mra@acgroup.org
Mark – are the issues that you deal with problems with the product, tech support, training, or perhaps with contracts that don’t cover what the customers thought they did? And are there some basic lessons to be learned from them?
Assume for a minute that I represent a practice, or a hospital that has chosen Allscripts. In fact, one major hospital group in my region has. What would you tell us, in general, how to negotiate, what needs to be in the contract, what do I need to get in writing on customization (to provider workflows, etc.), training before go-live, training post go-live, support, interoperability, etc. before we sign on the dotted line?
And once we sign, how do we keep things on track? I don’t mean normal project management – I mean specific to the relationship with Allscripts.
I’ve also gotten an impression – perhaps very wrong, that Allscripts has people out there in the field with perhaps insufficient training and experience? Of course, we’ve all heard about the hordes of young Epic people supposedly out there.
Thanks!
To R Troy
Your questions are excellent and realistic and have NO good answers.
The Allscripts “training” I received involved conference calls with webinar type setting and completely useless.
The Allscripts trainer sent out from the East Coast was young enough to be my child – I am only in my 40′s…. He couldn’t spell diarrhea much less understand medical jargon. He had NO knowledge of medical work flow, terminology or general working common sense. He could program like a fiend – too many video games as a kid. So, computer smart – business NOTHING.
Don’t count on anything.
Training beyond that is nonexistent unless you are loaded with money to throw away.
Customer service is also nonexistent. Work tickets are randomly closed without return calls and some return calls take days or weeks.
NOTHING fixes quickly.
Third party companies have jumped on this bandwagon and actually provide good training – at a price. Everything costs.
The program itself – ANY of Allscripts products, mind you – are the PROBLEM. They don’t understand medicine and relegate your patient down to bland, faceless descriptions without personality or clinical value. You are relegated to clicking boxes – and clicking more boxes until your eyes glaze over. If you don’t click the boxes, you get dinged by the government.
So, don’t look for an acceptable manner in which to integrate this useless software. Look for ways to actually practice the art of medicine.
Centricity still has my vote. It actually makes sense and produces decent looking, readable documents.
Lovely. The hospital system that I believe (based on their posted jobs) is taking on Allscripts (and potentially pushing it out to affiliated practices) is the biggest on Long Island!
One of the odd things about Allscripts; when I’ve looked at their web site, I found very little usable info on what their systems look and work like. Maybe there’s a good reason for that! The only way they want you to learn about them is through the sales force. And they are the last people I want to talk to – after I know what I need to know.
Go to YouTube and put in Allscripts. All kinds of stuff from propaganda to interviews with the CEO to demos of MyWay and some others.
I have been a PA for over 20 years. Allscripts is contributing to the death of medical art and patient interaction along with govt regulations, Meaningful Use and UDS – whatever that really means.
It no longer matters what you THINK, it matter what you CLICK.
The ability to see patients both effectively and efficiently has been lost. More time on documents and less time on actually expressing your medical opinion, thoughts, differential and actual plans for the patient.
So, I still spend considerable time free texting real words, descriptions and thoughts after clicking the minimum amount of boxes required to satisfy some moron at Medicare that I actually asked my patient if he smokes and what I had to say about it.
Allscripts must have some savvy sales people who can blow sunshine a mile – the product stinks and their customer service and training are all but nonexistent. A new ring in Dante’s Inferno has been added to handle all the folks pushing EMR and Meaningful Use down our throats.
Ok.
Tell me if this sounds familiar. I was visiting my orthopedist last November or so. He was showing me his EHR, which he noted had received ‘mandated’ updates over the weekend. As he went through the many checkboxes on many pages, it came up with a neat sequences of checkbox questions. First, confirming that I was male. A bit later, asking me several questions about my pregnancy status.
Any chance that was your favorite EHR? The orthopedist was rather disgusted at the waste of time, let alone trying to explain all the checkoffs he HAD TO DO.
That EMR actually sounds a bit brighter than Allscripts…
We don’t get any checkboxes to go thru with the patient.
It is just maddening that a system doesn’t even know what an ORIF is or the most common surgeries performed on a regular basis.
Further madness comes when it uses terms that NO ONE uses and are counter intuitive. Ever heard of “patient words”?
The dermatology “standard” exam has over 600 choices for describing a skin lesion – all buried layer within layer within layer. AND – none of them uses terms or descriptions of common use.
So, to denote a 4 mm macular scaled dark colored lesion with irregular borders on the right scapula could take you ten minutes.
Now, try the musculoskeletal exam. Seriously – written by someone with NO orthopaedic knowledge. EACH ROM comes with numeric type in boxes of each angle. NO findable and easily usable testing box with accurate answers for anterior drawer or MCL testing. Forget a real shoulder exam. It lists tests that the Board Certified Orthopaedic Surgeon I worked for has NEVER heard of in over 25 years. We had to look up some tests to find out what the &%$#@ they meant.
Totally unusable and still see 20+ patients a day.
You could literally spend 30-45 minutes per patient just searching and clicking illogical boxes to find ONE KEY WORD of description.
I can type faster than most secretaries.
I can still give you a free texted, actually usable ortho exam in less time than it takes to click and get lost in layers you have to exit out of sequentially.
Seriously makes me want to move to a country where medical practice is still seen as a science and skill. I would gladly go to Germany and work in their national health system.
Allscripts has nine different EHRs. Which one are you working with?
There have been many postings in the last few days, but no one has stated which of the nine different Allscripts products you are using. Please remember, Allscripts is NOT an EHR. It’s a company that has nine completely different EHRs that are supported by different groups. We need to know which product you are using.
As far as Meeting the government’s MU requirements, over 9,000 Allscripts providers have already received their initial $18,000 stimulus funds. This makes Allscripts the # 2 vendor as far as the number of physicians using one of their nine (9) EHR products.
However:
Just because 9,000 Allscripts providers have received their government stimulus funds, does not mean the various Allscripts EHR products will meet your needs. There is nothing in the ONC certification that really shows usability and strength of product by specialty. It’s up to each provider to evaluate the 800+ ONC certified EHRs to find the right product for you. Of course evaluating 800 different EHR products is impossible. Just think, it took me almost a year to evaluate 148 EHR products including all of the top 80 vendors based on sales.
Every sales person states the same thing, “our product is the best”. But rarely can you find one salesperson that can prove it. I am hated by 95% of vendor’s sales teams because after 40 years in Healthcare IT and 12 years evaluating EHRs, I know more about their products that they do. Remember, usually the sales staff have never worked in a physician’s office, and from what we have been able to determine, over 95% of the software development teams have never work for a medical practice – or even been in one
.
Our studies show that 83% of all EHR implementations “fail”. Meaning one year after purchasing the product, the physicians still cannot record all of the appropriate SOAP notes on al least 80% of their patients. Why the high failure rate? In most cases, EHR vendors are selling primary care or multi-specialty databases to specialists. These products do not work for Dermatology, Ophthalmology, Neurology, Orthopedics, etc.
The Overall Problem: Sales people don’t understand your needs, physicians don’t have the time to evaluate the products; the contracts are designed to protect the vendor; the vendor’s implementation team doesn’t spend enough time understanding your needs before training; training is inadequate, support is inadequate, the prices are too high.
If 80% of planes crashed, no one would get on a plane. If
80% of surgeries failed, no one would want to get surgery. So why are so many physicians spending an average of $50,000 over 5 years for EHRs that don’t work? Physicians are extremely smart, but the healthcare EHR marketplace takes advantage of these busy professionals.
We need groups like this to spread the word, the truth about EHRs, and we need to fight the inaccurate EHR marketing that everyone is hearing. Bottom line, we need “5 Rights”. We need the right EHR with the right functionality, and the right usability, and the right training, and the right support. Anything else is designed to fail.
On Wednesday, I will write about “how to protect your practice with a good contract”, following by “How to get out of a bad contract” on Thursday. Everyone enjoy your evening.
I am on Allscripts Pro with their highly dysfunctional PM Practice Management program as well.
I have also worked Allscripts Mysis – an archaic – laughable product – I would be better off using MS DOS to document anything.
I do not believe we need to separate Allscripts products when talking about how bad they are – pretty universal. As the old saying goes – crap runs downhill. So, from the top of the company down – the products are suboptimal and the service deplorable.
Allscripts Pro CANNOT be fixed to be functional AND make sense. They are mutually incompatible ideas in the minds of the non-medical people who designed these monstrosities.
eScribe is another devilish part of the Allscripts experience – I KNOW it belongs to a nationwide effort but when combined with Allscripts – WoW, things are uglier than before.
So, I applaud your efforts at helping people understand EHR overall, HOWEVER, I have said it before and will say it again.
THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF PROVIDERS HAVE NO SAY OR CHOICE IN EMR/EHR. Corporate ownership or nonmedical management make 99% of the purchasing decisions and actual medical providers get stuck with the product – good, bad, ugly, and dysfunctional.
So, you are preaching to the choir.
But thanks for caring.
I started studying computers in my teens; the same time give or take that I became an ER volunteer. And I used an early EMR in that ER – in the early 1970′s. Now I understand that IT and medical types don’t see much of anything eye to eye, but you’d think that in something so important as an EHR/EMR that major / well funded vendors would really try hard to do it right. Plus you’d think that they’d be following years of complaints and try to improve their product.
It now scares me more since this hospital system that my family and I use appears to be going full speed into a less then optimal EHR. Plus probably pushing this out on affiliated doctors, most of whom have 1 whole PC in their practices even with several doctors. IOTW, doctors and other staff who are badly computer phobic.
Most vendors refuse to give you your money back if the implementation fails. The vendor’s contract , signed by 98% of physicians, have no “termination clauses” to protect the practice. The only termination cause is if the vendor wants to drop the practice.
In fact I am working with 10 practices that purchased a PM/EHR product, signed a 5-year contract, and paid the software vendor 5 years in advance for hosting and support. The software product was never installed, the staff was never trained, and therefore the software never was “live” in the practices. The vendor still won’t provide the money back. Clearly, the contract states that the software vendor is “entitled” to the full price with no refund.
The first question: Why would anyone sign this type of contract? The main reason, the physician is promised the world and they never read the contract. In 80% of these cases, the contract clearly states that “support cost” begins at go-live. When I ask the software vendor the definition of go-live, I usually get, “once the contract is signed, the product is live”. Well that does not match any software Go-Live definition in the world. Software vendors cannot get away with this.
Can you really get out of a bad contract or a bad implementation? Yes, of course. But nice guys finish last when it comes to contract renegotiations and getting your money back.
To date, I am batting 94% in regards to renegotiating contracts and in most cases getting full refunds for the physicians. Why? Because I have represented over 25,000 physicians and the volume alone makes the vendors pay attention. Let’s face it, most software vendors don’t like me, actually many of them hate me, but they also know that people like me can influence future sales. I also helps that I have two very large Legal Firms that I can tap into that have extensive experience suing and winning against software vendors.
According to government surveys, over 350,000 physicians have purchased an EHR, but after almost 2 years of Stimulus funding, (May 31, 2012), only 70,500 have been able to meet the Stage 1 MU requirements (20%) and that is only 10% of total practicing Physicians. What happens when the requirements are increased with Stage 2? Will the % of physician attestations decrease? The answer is YES. There are more than 800 ONC certified products and as of May 31, and of those only 319 vendors have any physician meeting Stage 1 MU. Actually the top 8 vendors have more than 80% of the physicians that have meet MU. So if 8 have 80% of the Physicians, do we really need 800 EHR products?
I’ve gotten spoiled in my work in financial market data; yes, I had to go through contracts VERY carefully – and did, concentrating on things within my expertise. But I also worked closely with corporate attorneys on the clauses and language I was not trained for. I did spend a lot of time going through the strange and nasty clauses some of our vendors put in. Like, you could add users, but you could never drop users (keep in mind monthly fee), or maybe you could drop a small percentage of your users every quarter, or if you didn’t block an automatic renewal 60 days ahead the 2 full year renewal would automatically happen. And there are all sorts of usage and other clauses that could give you migraines!
The thing is, buying an EHR is very serious business, and needs serious attention – including having a competent attorney who knows your practice reviewing the contract along with your EHR expert. Assuming, of course, you have an EHR expert and that attorney.
Now Mark – you make a very important point. It;’s not even remotely useful to have so many vendors with so little information out there about most of the vendors. As far as I can tell there is no one central clearinghouse with features, reviews, rankings, etc. Klas would sort of like to be that but you’ve got to buy in from either direction, and by not including all vendors and products it loses, IMHO, credibility.
When someone I know needed to go on Medicare, I did piles of research and Medicare Advantage and Medigap plans. I won’t say that CMS does it all that well, but CMS does have a complete list with lots of info including some ratings. Imagine CMS doing this for EHR vendors! Plus having some guidelines and rules as to the contracts.
In reading your comments though, I am absolutely floored by the nonsense that some practices sign. Go live on contract signature date? No SLA? No clauses if EHR fails to deliver? I mentioned some of this to an attorney I know who would have found it mind boggling that doctors would sign such contracts without having them reviewed first by an expert and an attorney – except that this attorney has dealt with doctors and knows better!
Hello,
Can anyone help me with the steps on closing in the Mysis system. Once I get there I know to click on the Chatge SUMMARY TAB. We nolong have the option of calling the Mysis reps anymore. Please, I really would appreciate you help.
Thank you
Chell
My proposed slogan for Allscirpts: “Dream big and don’t worry about the details.” I work for a university health service that has used Touchworks since around 2006. We are currently using V11. The interface is needlessly awkward and clumsy and is riddled with bugs. And as a bonus, V11 introduces a new design feature: facilitation of medical errors. It’s very easy to review a request from one patient while you’re in another patient’s chart. If you’re not careful, you’ll order a test or a drug on the wrong patient. This version has been out for a couple of years, and it’s inexcusable that this feature remains part of the program! The program has no meaningful customization at the level of the individual user, so every single day when I log in I have to configure the program to display the way I want it to. It has no ability for the individual user to load preferred text (this has to be done at the institutional level), so to this day I have to copy and paste frequently-used text from Word documents into fields in the EMR. In notes and orders, V11 requires an extra, unnecessary step to save your text edits and orders: you have to click on a “commit” button and then OK the changes. However, the “commit” button frequently and arbitrarily vanishes. And since, for example, you can’t print a med list for a patient if there are ANY unsaved changes in the patient’s chart (whether or not they pertain to the med list) I sometimes have to switch to a different patient’s chart altogether just to get a “commit” prompt so I can return to the chart and print the list. These are just a few of countless examples of bad design and implementation. Anyone considering this program should run away as fast as possible.
From the viewpoint of a former programmer, that’s not just badly designed, it’s also buggy. And my guess is that because it is so easy to affect the wrong patient’s records, that there is also a HIPAA violation.
Allscripts is essentially discontinuing future sales of its SaaS-based MyWay product, stating it will “converge” over time with the Allscripts Professional EHR. This is an attempt to “standardize its small office electronic health record and practice management systems.” MyWay will continue to be supported but not expand functionality.
Does this mean that Allscripts MyWay will not meet Stage 2 requirements, and thus everyone that bought MyWay in the last two years will have to replace with a new system, meaning new training, new hardware, and complete re-entry of all patient data? The answer is Yes.
So MyWay users – what are you going to do now?
o Given up on Stage 2 and 3 and pay the fines,
o upgrade to Allscripts Professional, or
o give up on Allscripts and move to another vendor?
Many physicians are already upset with the product and are already deinstalling. In the last month we have help 10 practices get their money back because of failed performance and poor Vendor Support.
Mark,
I wrote a post with the details I found out about Allscripts discontinuing MyWay: http://www.emrthoughts.com/2012/10/05/allscripts-to-discontinue-myway-ehr/ The MU stuff is interesting. I wonder if they’ll back off the stance you describe like they did with the Misys stuff. They said they wouldn’t do any MU, then they changed and said they’d do the initial year, but not future years.
Either way, this is going to leave a lot of unhappy MyWay users. However, it seems that many of them were unhappy MyWay users already.
I have been using Allscripts Myway EHR for more than a year. It is slow, non- user friendly, and and exceptional amount of errors, non responsive delays, and server down days. Working on this program is exhausting. Contacting support is a daily issue, and I am not even sure we will be able to attest to meaningful use stage 1 due to the problems with this system, and the different ares that don’t work properly. If I were recommending an EHR to anyone this would not even make my list of the top 100. It is a very expensive agfgravation.
Are they talking about a migration path of any sort?
janet,
For good or bad, you won’t have to worry about those MyWay issues for much longer since Allscripts is discontinuing it. See: http://www.emrthoughts.com/2012/10/05/allscripts-to-discontinue-myway-ehr/ I don’t think they’ll sell it to anyone else now.
R Troy,
They are working on a migration from MyWay to Allscripts Professional. Also, Aprima has offered a migration. I imagine it’s just a matter of time before many more EHR vendors offer a migration option as well.
But will Allscripts give you a way to salvage some of your investment?
Buyer-be-ware: For those with Allscripts MyWay, do not sign any new contracts with any vendor, even with Allscripts, until you have a complete 3rd party independent review of your current contract and any future contracts.
You purchased a system, many requiring you to pay for 5 years of support, even if you don’t like the product or if Allscripts drops the product, like they did. Before deciding what you will do, get an outside review of your options.
We have helped numerous practices with contract issues my MyWay and we have found that Allscripts have been very willing to work with outside pressure. You can get through this, but the new solutions must meet your needs and must protect you legally.
I was looking at joining a family practice that has Allscripts Enterprise. Thank you for the above critique because it will be a deal breaker that they use this apparantly horrible Allscripts Enterprise EHR.
I tried to look at the Allscripts website to get some background information and just see what a typical patient chart looks like and in my opinion their website is deceiving. I went to a page that says “View on-demand. See the solution in action by viewing a recorded demonstration at your convenience.” When I hit the tab “replay”-it redirected me to apparantly a page where I was asked to enter all type of personal contact information and I assume now a salesman will probably contact me….. but no actual video yet of anything to look at.
Might there be anything on youtube? As to what their site does, that’s a wonderful way to discourage new sales!
I did a search on my EHR video website for Allscripts and found a bunch of results: http://www.ehrvideos.com/?s=+allscripts Although, even those are more marketing videos than a really in depth look at how it works.
I looked at a few of the videos, and while very slick and wonderful to see, they said pretty much nothing about implementation or actual day to day use of the EHR.
Allscripts is the worst piece of #%&* Ive ever seen. It was not written with a physician in mind, it was written by some PC programmers who didnt have a clue about customization or fluidity or making a sensible medical chart. It has no redeeming qualities, lengthens the time for a 15 minutes clinic visit to 45 minutes. What kind of EMR wont let you change the font size. It is a joke, no wonder their CEO quit.
I’m always amazed to find software that makes it hard to change the viewable font size / zoom in or out. One piece of consumer software I was beta testing months ago was a mess that way but cleaned up for the most part by release time. PC based software should need only a Ctrl Mouse scroll button to view (plus a menu option) or if a touch screen an appropriate gesture, etc.
Stay away. Far far away. I can’t say too much without giving myself away and risking termination, but the Allscripts EMR is so clunky and inefficient plus its SLOW that you are better off going with something like practice fusion, the Ads are worth the money you’d waste on this..but if you can afford something like EPIC then you are golden. I’m telling you, someone pitches this to you…RUN don’t walk. Allscripts outsources most of their support and if you happen to get someone to help you, good luck understanding them, let alone getting them to help you with your actual problem. I have nothing against outsourcing but this is something they have done very BADLY.