Allscripts Professional EHR Software

Pros

I don't have a single word to say anything good about it. May be the people from India who are on support team with this company are the best. Most of the time they fix the problems.

Cons

It's not physician friendly at all; freezes up all most every day, horrible customer service; and particularly if someone is closing the practice; whether you are retiring or moving out of the state, you still have obey the termination date and either you pay upfront fees to the date of termination and or keep your license active and keep paying monthly fees for no reason. I regret that I hooked up with this company. You pay a big amount when sign the contract and you pay even more when you terminate the contract.

Terrible customer support. When call for customer support, always have to wait for them to call back. Price gouching, charging extra for everything. Charge extra for what supposed to be part of meaningful use. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY! RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN.

Pros

Can create template on the fly, good electronic prescribing, interface with labs. However, every complex system.

Cons

very slow, freeze frequently, error messages. Poor customer support. Every time there is update, we have issues afterwards. I have been using the system for 2 years and it's still creating lots of extra work.

Pros

Like the fact that it auto generates orders, requires a complete chart before it can be submitted. Like that I can see patients from all offices.

Cons

Cannot flip around in the chart (assessments to care plan) without completing the previous section. Do not like that it does not calculate travel time correctly.
Do not like that fact that the branch cannot be selected on the visit. Do not like the fact that some of the sections contain assessments that are not specific to hospice.

Pros

You can connect with payerpath via the allscripts, you can also run multiple ERA at one time to maximize production

Cons

too many manual era postings, the options to prevent things from automatically posting a great but should be more defined

I am very glad that we changed to EPIC.

Pros

Laboratory results, problem lists, and medication lists were easy to print. It was easy to send notes to coworkers.

Cons

There can be three or four places to enter the ordered screens (like colonoscopies) and only one will show up on the dashboard.
The program crashes a lot.

Customer service is terrible they are not coordinated at all.

Pros

Availability of useful information. signing up is quick and easy access to sensitive data protected well.

Cons

Difficult to navigate. Proprietary in that it is not interactive enough. also always down for maintenance

We have been unhappy, but our Liason Sally Borel came to the rescue and set up meetings to answer our concerns and has kept in close contact with me. She is a big, big improvement over the Allscript liaison that we had before, Maureen. she never returned any phone calls or emails.

Pros

Careplan charting
Support Team
Sally Borel our Liason
Fact that a clinician does not need to be hooked to WiFi to use
Med profile more user friendly, still needs tweaking to be able to give to a patient

Cons

Not cloud based
Need to sync in order to see documentation
Need a server
You charge by the license and not by the census
Can not use the software on any device
HHA care plan not user friendly

Pros

There is nothing that I liked about the company. I pay the bills for our company and every month I had no idea what I was paying for.

Cons

There is a long term cost for literally everything you want to do or change. Their contracts are so lawyered up they are impossible to get out of. We just terminated our service and we have struggled through with them since 2008. They were our first EHR company. They have now sent me my billing information through 2026. I left a voicemail Monday which as of yesterday afternoon had not been returned. I sent an additional email yesterday in regards to the bill which has not been answered. I also left my cell number since I would be out of the office and so far no word from anyone to discuss our bill. My practice is closing and opening up under a new name and tax ID. Not sure how to handle their bills for the next 9 years.

The support I have received on technical issues is by far the worst I have ever experienced. Our issues are possibly stretched out over days to weeks. I submit our cases for support and most of the time I do not hear anything back that someone is looking at our case for days - sometimes I hear back the next day. We ask for guidance on server refreshes and they send us an out of date manual if we hear back. I have expressed our deep concerns when we experience down times due to lack of direction from the vendor. We had a down test environment for over 4 weeks and we had to reach out to another contact to get the issues resolved. I begged for documentation on what the fix was, and I have never heard back. We need to perform another refresh and are guaranteed to run into the same issues again. This is unacceptable as a company to offer this level of support to a paying customer.
The company also only connects to your environment through SecureLink, a gateway that is usually non conforming to any sized organization's IT Security policies and preferences. They will not work with you on this issue either. I have not had a good experience with this company at the last 2 organizations I have worked that used Allscripts. This is my single point of contention in my job duties.

Pros

The product offers an ease of use for our end users.

Cons

Everything.
The customer support is horrendous.
The company's connectivity.

Run away from this company as fast as you can before they hook you and apparently never let you go!!!

Pros

Absolutely nothing. There really was never anything that was good. The only reason I stayed with them as long as I did was the initial investment in both time and money was such that I felt obligated to keep it.

Cons

Don't know where to begin. Was a user for several (5-6) years. Got so frustrated with the constant "upgrades" that did nothing but erase all of the templates that I'd already spent hours compiling. Trying to reach customer service was a joke. Finally saw the light and switched. I now get EMR and office management/billing support for less than half of what Allscripts was charging me annually.
The only problem is that I ended my Allscripts subscription in 2013 and am still getting bills. Got one again today which is what prompted me to go seek out somewhere to post a review for services June 2017 thru June 2018. Again, this is after I terminated service with them in 2013. Pretty fair example of how on top of things they were when I was actually using there services.

Pros

Easy to use and works with Dragon software. I like the macros templates that can be generated - saves typing

Cons

Slow, instability with random kick offs, a lot of clicking is needed. The ICD 10 has poor choices and conflicting descriptions with provider codes vs. ICD 10 billing coding.

I would not recommend this product.

Cons

Constantly get errors and system down time. Some of the diagnoses descriptions do not match the ICD-10 book. We recently had an EHR upgrade and the following day after the upgrade, out system was down. Found out that the did not test before initiating the upgrade to clients.

Pros

Lab and X-ray interfaces work as expected
The H&P format is appears good.
Support is fast for critical issues but a little slow for other problems

Cons

It takes too many clicks to finish a note and dragon speaking is not part of EHR but can be added.

Pros

Easy lay out and easy to use. it has all the aspects of EHR like eRx, faxing, internal communications.

Cons

If you want support for your equipment, you have to purchase all hardware and software through them at 3 times the cost. We were trying to upgrade and their estimate included "education and training" for 3 years. When I asked to have it either removed or brought down to 1 year since we won't need it, they refused because it's what they think is best for us. Their monthly maintenance fees are very high and any updates I can't do myself, I have to pay extra to them. We were looking to switch to cloud based version but their fee is so high which didn't work for us either. In other words, once they got you and you are stuck with them, anything you want to do will cost you a fortune.

Please , do not think about
Do not ruin your life , your patients and your sanity over it.
Inspite it is very expensive but changing software is not easy.

Pros

EHR with horrible customer support
I do not like anything about it.
May be email intergration .
They return the call same day but useless

Cons

8 months ago, we are getting multiple errors during the day, that paralyzed the computer and we have to restart the computer again that may take up to 10-15 minutes and sometimes more. Imagine this can happen 10-20 times per day which lead us to finish charting at midnight every day. Very frustrating
We are contacting our attorney

The turnover within the company makes it difficult to establish a relationship with anyone if there is an issue. Routine failures in connectivity and lack of timely support create severe difficulty with work flow and patient care.

Pros

I have been using it for 7 years so familiarity is about the only saving grace at this point. It is a certified ehr vendor.

Cons

see review title. Follow My health portal was unusable. Third party vendors for additional add ons available for additional fees. I have been told that I will need to pay them for access to my patient records should I desire to switch to another vendor or retire.

Not happy with the Allscripts System. Have been with company 16 years, started with Tiger then Allscripts Myway, now Allscripts Pro. Unable to get problems resolved in a timely manner. Problems understanding the customer service, overall language barrow. Ask when to call in (Have you check the Allscripts Port for the answer first before call customer service) We are a busy 4 physicians office and don't have time to search for the answer to our problems) We need an answer so we can continue on with our daily duties.

Pros

Displays nicely, user friendly for the most part, easy to navigate, Doctors like having the dragon.

Cons

Problems with e-Prescribe, allowing the physician to free text diagnosis, doesn't show social security numbers (which would be very helpful for the referral clerks), If correction needs to be made in PM the corrections do not cross over to EHR, so you have to go in and do an addendum

It is so ancient. Not sure how they can say they are one of the best or leading in EHR?? Complete lie! Has any of the faculty or developers of this company ever seen any other EHR?? I'm guessing not. Maybe they should see some other EHRs or have experienced providers help them! You also get nickel and dimed on everything even when you pay majors dollars to have the program and have to continue to pay for services, monthly fees, and for every upgrade and added the feature. Their customer support is horrible because half the people don't know what they are doing.

Pros

Nothing. Well I guess I'm supposed to pretend that I like something to move forward, but I honestly cannot!

Cons

Everything from the layout, templates, workflow, e-scribing, how only one person can be in the note and you have to steal it or take it over in order to do your part. I can't even create a note on someone I saw last week because another provider had two charts open on this patient that needed to be finished. AND...I can't even view any of these open notes either even when I am following up on this patient and need to see some things. You have to enter each prescription and send separately. The search buttons for diagnosis, procedures, test, education is horrible. You need to be able to find one thing with multiple names medical and layman, most commonly used. The nurses should be able to put in their vitals and go into medication, history, social, family, etc.....at the same time I getting into the HPI, exam, diagnoses and plan. I should be able to see the entire note, every section, on one page so I don't have to do a tone of clicking to try and see everything. I want to see the entire note. I should also be able to see problem list, medications, and other things off to one side. If someone is trying to open a section I am in it just needs to let them know by saying "so and so is in this section right now do you really need to take it over as it wouldn't save anything." This was helpful with the last EMR I had at my last job as I could even ask the person it said was on if they could get out of the section if I needed them too. When you have a template, you should be able to select something, but still alter it. For eg. if you choose one of the already made master list options you can't even put anything before or after or in between the sentence. Even when entering days or weeks to some of these sections you should be able to free text and even put 2-3 weeks or whatever you need to put in there. It should be very easy to make templates and edit things. Have any of these developers ever went into a medical office to even see how busy and complicated it is. It needs so much work. It is SOO old school!! I seriously am so frustrated, I can't even understand how this business is still successful?? I'm honestly going to spread the word on this program as it is the worst investment ever. Also when running reports it doesn't capture everything. Also isn't very helpful for meaningful use.

It is a nightmare. "Allscripts is not user-friendly, updates that allow for monitoring of data gouge us (but are a requirement of future reimbursement) and support is slow to respond to problems. When we notify them a common response is "it is a known problem". That is not at all reassuring.

Pros

E-prescribing

Cons

Everything else

Advice to Others

Stay far away from this product. Not only will it drag you down but it is almost impossible to get out.

Does not accept different file types (PDF, Jpeg) to be imported into the encounter. Too many clinics to accomplish simple tasks. Not Intuitive. Does not allowed to open multiple windows. Free text entry limited: No formatting, limited character entry.

Pros

Nothing

Cons

Inflexible.

Advice to Others

Look elsewhere.