Versatile

Pros

This software has been a vital part of our practice for many years. it is versatile and medical record templates can be customized to your preferences. Our laboratory results integrate directly with the medical record and are available from remote locations through the internet (VetconnectPlus). There are additional features that we hope to integrate soon such as signature capture to further streamline our "paper lite" practice. Support is fantastic and readily available from Idexx.

Cons

Rarely, a feature we love gets lost in an upgrade and starts to glitch.

LOVE IDEXX!!!!

I wish the clinic I was at now could afford Cornerstone, I miss using it everyday. It made my life so much easier and more efficient

Pros

Cornerstone can look intimidating, especially those new to VetMed. But it’s actually a lot easier than it looks. There are so many useful features to the program. One thing that I love is the Patient Visit List and how only ONE person can access it at a time. If someone else tries it says that it’s being accessed. I love the ability to “finalize” a note, which means no one else can go in an change something. Believe it or not but people can twist your words around, and with that feature they can’t. You can always go in later and add additional information to the bottom of the note, but it says it’s an add on, when it was added and who added it. LOVE. Scheduling appointments is also a lot easier than it looks, and while scheduling the appointment you can see what the patient is due for. The color coding on things that are due, coming up due, and current is a life saver. I also love the convenience of how easy it is to access IDEXX labs from the software.

Cons

Honestly nothing, I haven’t found a feature that I find unhelpful. There are so many of them, which can seem overbearing, but helpful.

Frustrated

While customer service such as help with software, learning, and hardware issues are really good. There seems to be constant need for these people, more so than there really should be is the application was better designed for the user. I had an opportunity to receive finical assistance to pay 50% of the training to learn Cornerstone software. I asked several times to get the proper paperwork and documents to accomplish this task. I had one month to get it done. Cornerstone sales continued to fail to get back with me and get what I needed. This cost me over $5,000. It seemed once they had my signatures on the contract they really no longer cared.

Pros

Customizable templates for medical records help to accomplish many tasks and streamline our work flow. Customer serves is quite good, we can generally get help quickly. The daily planner with several tabs of tasks helps to decrease chances of task left uncompleted and gives a picture of our day. Client communications capabilities are beneficial.

Cons

The user interface is not intuitive and has a very steep learning curve. Initial user experience is poor and frustrating. There are often way more steps than needed to accomplish a task. Many tasks I need to accomplish use work arounds which decreases effectiveness and efficiency, this also increase the chances of user errors, increases the learning curve for staff, this in turn leads to lost revenues and decreased customer satisfaction. While there are good automation features they lack the ability to truly make a great client information pipeline that is needed in today's veterinary industry. It is interesting that we call this a practice management software yet the features needed for a manager such as automated reports with graphs at specific time intervals to give a better overall picture of the practices health are nonexistent. The integrated Pet Health Network Pro does not truly allow the use of two practices with out the real possibility of confusing clients and lots of work arounds, they also do not have the ability to create custom templates for communication base on specific client and patient needs.

Flexible software that is easy to learn and use.

As a paperless practice utilizing many of the Idexx platforms and services, we are power users of Cornerstone. We have two practices within 15 miles of each other and we need to be able to access client records from either, or remotely. It's been a good solution for our practice. I've used several practice management software systems and while none of them are perfect for everyone, Idexx has the ability to invest in it's technology and continue to make improvements. It really does offer robust options and flexibility for many practices to use the features that are a good fit for them.

Pros

It is a robust software package with good integration with other Idexx offerings. The integration increases the value of each service offering. They provide continued improvements on the user interface and enhanced functionality. The learning center provides fantastic training resources for new hires and those needing a refresher.

Cons

New enhancements seem to take priority over improvement to known deficiencies, such as the functionality of the multi-location single database systems. I would like more options to capture data for reporting and analytics. You can gather most information, but need a good grasp of excel to manipulate and combine it.

Cornerstone Reivew/Survey

From a support staff point of view, very good. From a practice management point of view, it can be difficult, especially if you join a practice years into owning the software and it was unorganized. Clean up can be difficult.

Pros

I like the appointment book as it is easy to read and organize. I like the ability to email records, notes, and forms to clients. I like the help desk as they are easy to get a hold of and are very knowledgeable. I think it is easy to look up pets and clients and deal with financial transactions. PHNP is great too.

Cons

You need to make a new client file in order to make an appointment, although I know there are a few work around for this. You cannot inactivate a mass amount of clients at one time. You can email a mass amount of clients at one time. I wish you could eliminate service and inventory items instead of just inactivating them. I wish there was a better way to organize service and inventory item, so we can pull sales and revenue figure easier. It is hard to create these reports. I hate that once you have 4 files open on the patient clipboard, it make you close a few before you can continue working. I don't like that you cannot put cost of good on service items (labwork, etc.)