Here is a very interesting review submitted on our site a couple days ago.  This points to the fact that everything must be in writing when dealing with a vendor and it pays to have someone knowledgeable on staff to assist with EMR integration.  If you are considering an EMR program, we recommend you downloading our free software selection guide and if interested speaking to a software selection assistance.  Download the our free Selection and Meaningful Use Tools Here

Brian Blake says:

I am an IT Admin; MCP, A+, Net+ and Linux+ certified. I’ve been working on computers since the early ’80′s and networking since the early ’90′s. I’m currently the MIS Director for a non-profit organization in central Florida. Many of my side consulting jobs are with doctors – one of which uses eClinical – and it’s the biggest mess I have ever encountered.

For starters, his original server is a 6 year old Gateway that was running out of space on it’s RAID 5 array. I was able to add another drive to the array, extending the server’s life for a while longer. The problem was, he was adding 150MB of data every week, so it was a temp fix. We recently installed a new server for eCW and requested info regarding migrating the database and application to the new server. What a mess this turned out to be.

At first, eCW demanded a fee of $1,000 for them to do the migration – which is completely asinine. The doctor was finally able to get them to talk to me about it; during the conversation all they would say was they have a certification program for IT Professionals to become eCW certified – but would not discuss with me how to go about doing this. When I asked them what would be different with this migration than any other database migration he stated there should be a backup done before hand and it was quite involved…

At this point, I explained to him that I really didn’t appreciate being talked to like I was clueless. I’ve moved many databases and their applications, and the process is usually quite similar. I also discussed my opinion that there was fine line between running a business to make a profit and outright greed. Charging someone $1,000 to migrate a database, when they are already paying $500 per month for the software and maintenance fee was crossing that line.

By the time I was done, the doctor got the migration for free. The process took two days – why? When they began working, they copied almost 90GB of data from the old server to the new one – all of the contents of the data drive. That was day one. After installing eCW and Tomcat on the new server, they went back and removed much of what they had previously copied. What they did not do was point the doctor’s laptops to the new server – which I had to call them and ask them for info on what to do. Simple process, but, a little documentation goes a long way.

And since he’s used eCW for several years, he’s not looking to change right now. However, they are giving him the run around regarding ‘Meaningful Use’. Several other local practices are inquiring about eCW, but, eCW is telling them they cannot use eCW for Meaningful Use. All of that’s beyond my desire to understand, but, why would a practice pay the money for eCW to manage their practice if it couldn’t provide the necessary services?

Today, I still am no closer to getting the certification info from eCW than I was on that day of my initial conversation with eCW. And knowing what I know now, I’m not sure I’d want to pursue that anyway.