Clinical Records Software

[flipper35]

Does anyone who works at a retirement/nursing home facility have an opinion on sofware for clinical records? What we have has been killing us with maintenance and overtime for people on call (though not as bad as our VoIP system has been) after the last service pack and was down this morning and was two hours before we recevied a call back from the support people that we pay monthly for.

We currently host the application in house but it is a web based app on a server supported (mostly) by the publisher and we don't have a problem with it being off site if it works well and we have the bandwidth.

[Tobra]

Most of the EMR systems use a server and store data remotely. I don't know which one you should use, but if you are considering a GE product, I would encourage you to investigate further.

[dhoward]

There is usually a response time SLA in a support contract. It's never soon enough when you need it.

[flipper35]

With the problems we have had lately I would think it was published by Lucas Electronics engineers and supported by people who have other jobs but do this as a hobby because their wife asked them to.

A typical conversation is like this and a a second for each period:

(I answer the phone and they say)Support guy: This is "Sam"........

Me: Hello, what can I do for you.

Support guy:....We might have a solution to your problem..........

Me: OK, what's that and when can we implement it?

Support guy:......Well....we can remove and reinstall one of the modules..........

Me: OK can Jack do it since he is on the east coast and can work on it before we get into daily heavy use? (Jack works for them and has been on several email conversations with Sam)

Support guy: (several seconds as we obviously wait for him to pull his string that makes him talk) Who is Jack?.........I suspect he works for you......OK.

"Sam" once installed something on our server that he wasn't supposed to and cost us a couple hours down time because of it and his escuse was that he forgot which company server he was working on.

Any conversation with Sam is controlled by who ever is conversing with him prompting him for comments or answers. I once waited well over a minute for him to say something after I answered and he gave me his name. He may have a medical issue, and if so I feel bad for him but he shouldn't be the top tech if he can't keep straight what he is doing.

For a priority issue like we had this morning during business hours is 20 minutes. I was over 120 minutes this morning. Four hour respons to a regular issue by email inthe contract is nearly a week. I won't even get into the inefficiencies of the way they programmed the site.

[pavulon]

I have to use EPIC on the hospital side of EMR. It's not great but FWIW, I'm told Cerner is worse. Not sure if this applies to your situation.

[flipper35]

EPIC, from Verona? At least they wouldn't be too far from us. Not sure if they have something specific to nursing homes and assisted living facilities but will give them a look.