NextGen Healthcare

Dermatology Office Using MediTouch's HealthFusion for nearly 1 year

In 2015, I spent countless hours reviewing/sampling one EHR after another to find a good fit for what we needed/wanted in an EHR. We were moving from paper and wanted a cloud-based solution. As a dermatology office, we absolutely need the ability to document patient's skin findings on a diagram. HealthFusion was one of the few that gave this ability and even allowed us to upload our own images which we have designed for quick easy use. Most dermatologists will utilize a more derm-specific product such as Modernizing Medicine's EMA, PracticeStudio, etc, however, another criteria we wanted in our EHR was something that was truly platform-independent and browser-independent -- could work on a ChromeOS computer, a Mac, a Windows machine, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Edge, Internet Explorer, etc. Again, MediTouch's HealthFusion EHR & Practice Management product provided this capability while other derm-specific products did not and continue not to. We also do our billing in-house and wanted a robust billing product. MediTouch is their own clearinghouse which is a big benefit so when there are issues, we don't hear from our vendor "Oh it's a problem with the Clearinghouse", instead MediTouch customer service tells us "Oh we need to fix that". Customer service is overall very good - it is here in the United States (Pacific Coast which is our local time zone) and available relatively quickly. So why not five stars? Well, the EHR itself is not designed very well for a specialty-specific practice like ours so we went through a process of customizing it for our needs. We are happy that customization was available however it was a daunting and time consuming process. While the EHR system allows for some meaningful use and PQRS measures it does NOT collect data for specialty-specific measures so it's basically useless for our PQRS/MU/MACRA reporting needs. Which is very unfortunate and might force us to move to a derm-specific product.

Pros

Platform-independent (works on ChromeOS, MacOS, iOS, Android, etc.)
Browser-independent (works in Chrome, Safari, Edge, Internet Explorer, Opera, etc)
Cloud-based with no need for specific hardware/software in-house.
Local to our time zone (Pacific) with U.S. based customer service
Clearinghouse is in-house with the vendor
Speed of operation - there have been moments when the cloud-based

Cons

Lack of specialty-specific Meaningful Use, PQRS, and MACRA measures
Need for heavy customization for the purposes of documenting specific scenarios (specialty or otherwise)
Extra components within standard documentation unnecessary for most specialties
Integration of PM and EHR could be a bit better

Great potential, but needs some improvement!

Pros

They are improving the product consistently. There have been two product updates since we started with them in March. Customer service has improved greatly as well. 99% of the time someone who picks up the phone and helps you with your problems. They have daily webinars that are free of a particular topic, so you can log in, ask questions, get help, and then log off. The product has a lot of great things such as ease of sending the charges from the docs to the billing department, seeing the exact statement that a patient received so you can talk to them more intelligently, getting lots of detail on the claims, rescheduling a patient from one day to the next, and blocking a portion of the schedule or opening a portion of the schedule.

Cons

You can submit issues via email, but once they respond back, they close the case. Even if they didn't give you the answer you were looking for, you then have to email again and reference the case requiring you to print everything to keep track, because there is no way to follow the status of your case. If you submit feature requests, there is no way to know if they are working on it, aren't considering it, holding it for a future update, etc. There are specific reports that you can get, but if you need something that's not pre-built, there is very little way to obtain the info, if at all. I requested some kind of report writer. The reports all come out as an Excel spreadsheet which is good, because it allows you to manipulate and move around the data, but when you print it's very unwieldy and not pretty. They need to have a way to convert the report to a PDF format once you have it the way you like. Many of the reports don't offer options such as picking providers, locations, payers, so you have to manipulate the report after it opens to delete what you do not need, which is time consuming. The software is extremely dependent on location, which means everything you do has to be done by location creating a lot of work. If you have many offices, your docs do surgery in several locations and they are outpatient or inpatient. Changing or adding something has to be done many times, because you do it by location. It would be easier if there was a drop-down listing your locations and you only had to check the locations to which your additions or changes were applicable. Parts of the software feel as if they are too structured and everything has to fit into their predetermined way to do things. There is not enough flexibility and leeway to change portions that suit your practice. Vendor training was not great when we started and we paid for an outside vendor that works with Healthfusion to come on site and train us. I understand that the help and training portions have changed a bit since then and may be better. It has great potential if they would open up the software and be more flexible!

IT Program/Project Manager

In 2006, a 3rd party integrator (no longer in business) sold NextGen to our organization and since this was their first time installing it, the installation and configuration was barely implemented. To mitigate, in 2011, additional Practice Management training from NextGen and EHR Training/template development resources from Ciscon were engaged to review billing processes and create clinical workflows. Thanks to NextGen/Ciscon, we were able to launch the EHR in 2013. Since then, they have helped us make significant improvements to the clinical workflow (customizing templates) and billing processing. In 2016, the NextGen reports allowed us to start receiving CMS Meaningful Use/ACI incentive funds.

Pros

1. Highly configurable...an organization can develop/program/configure any template or drop-down list box to tailor it to their clinical staff!

2. Software includes everything a clinic/hospital needs...and with NextGen's MirthConnect product, any interface or integration to another system is possible and easy! Besides the EHR and Practice Management, NextGen provides a Patient Portal, ePrescribe capability, Rosetta and MirthConnect (allowing interfaces to any system like LabCorp, Quest, Immunization Registries.), and much more!

3. NextGen Support is awesome...and if there is a new staff member, just request Tier 2 or Tier 3 support techs so your challenges are addressed quickly by experts in every area of the product!

4. NextGen Training is helpful from knowledgeable and experienced staff who have worked in clinical and front office environments. For any upgrades or projects, or if you are brand new, leverage the advanced trainers for additional training for staff and learning how to utilize/configure the system by having them review your configuration.

5. NextGen Development and NextGen 3rd Party Integrators (like Ciscon) are amazing to work with...If you don't have time to develop templates or learn, contact them to obtain a quote. I have been most impressed with support team at Ciscon! They have been able to streamline Provider templates and save tons of clicks so the Providers just adore and appreciate the efforts! They were also able to train all the clinical staff on the new workflows.

Cons

Like any EHR (vs a paper chart), there are lots of clicks for the clinical staff members.
In addition, the graphical user interface was so new to staff, this caused delays in the encounters.
(To mitigate, we spent time, money, and effort on training users as well as building customized templates...This was worth every penny!)

We are a single physician clinic in rural Texas. My physician is also my husband, and he is a board certified Family Practice osteopathic physician practicing in the same clinic for almost 30 years now. Our clinic is busy, and my staff is small. Employees are cross-trained in medical assisting and clerical duties and often cover each other depending on patient needs and/or staff absences. Having MediTouch PM software has given me a peace of mind, regarding patient care business needs, that I never had with prior computer programs. The system gets the insurance information correct and the insurance forms completed so much better than anything I've used in the past 15 years or more. I have less missed charges thanks to the patient page showing the listing of a patient's office visits. If the charges have not yet been entered, there is an "ENTER" beside the date just waiting to be clicked. This better assures the correct dates are posted. Staff uses the recall options to follow up on patient care and schedule future appointments with less chance of letting a patient slip by without follow up. The Electronic Remittance Advice documents are wonderful - no more paper and everything in one place. The search options allow us to go back to anything as needed. Automatic posting saves time and frees staff for other tasks. At present, we are operating with one less staff member as when we first began to use the system. As the physician's manager and wife, I appreciate that I can work on this day and night (for better or worse) without being tied to the clinic building. I am here at my home desk completing this review right now. I can finish posting claims, follow up on denied claims, generate and print statements all without carrying home boxes of papers. Having the data for both management and health records stored off-site is a blessing to me. The constant fear of system crashes and failed backups is over. I do not have the burden of upgrading to newer and more powerful servers at the clinic, but can use money to by better single computers that can connect with HealthFusion remotely and not to a central in-house server system. I am still learning many aspects of the system, and anything not yet learned is entirely my own fault as HealthFusion has improved the training materials greatly over the past year. They are now easy to find and access. My time is all that needs to be planned because they have done everything else for us. Reports are available if I want them, too. I have seen our clinic income increase; payments come more quickly and less error thanks to the MediTouch PM system. Whenever I do find areas that I think need attention, the customer service is quick to respond and have taken my suggestions into implementation on a few occasions. They are very personable and professional whenever we call, although I tend to use email when possible. The replies are quick and complete. We signed up for the programs in November 2010 based on promotional programs that were offered via the American Osteopathic Association. We didn't jump in to actually using the product until the following June when e-prescribing was required. If I could go back, I would have started the programs' use much earlier. I was simply afraid to jump in and leave our old systems behind. To my surprise, the transition has been easy. Thank you very much for the chance to share this experience. I do not mind providing more details if needed.

I love MediTouch PM Software

Pros

I love the A/R features. I love how fast I get paid by commercial vendors. I love how intuitive it is on helping avoid claim issues. I did not have any issues with implementation. I have had nothing but good experience with support. We have had this EMR for over a year (and I have dealt with a few) and this is by far the best I've used. We have not had any issues with it going down. We have called when we have thought the system was down and they have guided use through issues with browsers, internet speed etc. So we were always glad we called, problems solved when we thought it was on their end. Yes, claim eligibility check is only on some providers but if you get to know how to use it more in depth it can be VERY helpful in further info not just for eligibility but for knowing primary care provider etc. I have had ZERO issues with auto post and yes, I have double checked. I also really like their statement service, I review each statement before I "send" them to them to send for me but no more issues with bad addresses etc and well worth the money. Their "help" section is great. The help sheets are AWESOME. I email support more than I've ever called them and they send me helpsheets when I can't find them.

Cons

I would like a better way to weed out the non paid lines with auto post instead of dumping them all to the appeal bucket. I would like to be able to attach a claim to the billing comments and be able to send them to another employee to review. I wish that I could upload our own forms to save in the system- I do not like the forms library at all, pretty well worthless to us, I would like it if I could upload, name our files and use it that way.

We have been on Nextgen since 2009. We are a pain specialty. We had MAPS templates for paincare we

Pros

The customizations that are possible. WE are a specialty so it is important to capture the data, that is not always PCP. We have needs for rx report to be integrated which is coming in the new upgrade. We need to interface labs so doctors have quick and easy access to results. We have a responsibility to the community to keep them safe from people misusing or selling their medications. The templates and documents are easy to customize. The Nextgen support is helpful. We are excited to hear what the future hold for paincare, through their VAR Itelagen. The integration between EHR and EPM is coming along. Interfacing with labs, HIE. The reporting is made easy captured in the back ground for MIPS. They provide access to websites to become experts in there system. The help desk is not afraid to say if they don't know something and direct you to someone that does. The hosting is made easy. We are told it will be a 30-45 day transition very excited. The application has come a long way in looks it has been designed to be easy to access, it has shortcuts that only need to be hovered over to see data a quick glance. The Patient education was a nice add. It is user friendly and attaches to the encounter as a record it was done. The clinical reconciliation is a great add and makes things easy.

Cons

I wish the upgrades were easier. oTHERWISE i AM VERY HAPPY WITH THE SYSTEM.

NextGen has been easy to learn and has grown with the changes that occur in the medical field.

We transitioned from paper charts to this EHR. The process was challenging but nextgen navigated us through all of the ups and downs it takes to get through scanning paper records and training staff. We have improved all processes since the initial implementation. We have from scheduling on the front end to the billing and statements on the back end we improved those processes. We took our antiquated tickler tab system for prior authorization of our outpatient surgical procedures and moved it to an electronic way to tracked, authorize and then schedule procedures. This cut down on any procedure being schedules before it was approved. This help improve revenue in the long run. The benefits of patient portal are still being realized. Patients can communicate with office staff on their own schedule. After implementing online billing and payment options our payments on account have increased a great deal.

Pros

The ability to track authorizations using tasking and worklog as patient portal and how the messages easily populate into the front desk inbox. Patient portal can easily route the messages appropriately. And last, the ability to customize it to the needs of our specific practices slash specialty!

Cons

The ongoing upgrades although I know that is necessary for any EHR. Also there is no "reschedule" option for appointments. You can cancel then rebook and look at reschedule history but I personally like a reschedule button then follow the sequence needed.

Great experience

This software is excellent in general, it has freed a lot of my time since I have customized it.

Pros

Once you customize documents, questionnaires, custom forms, physical exam information - it simplifies your work and you can be more efficient.
Easy to customize once you learn how - my previous software took me long hours for several months to fix and even then it was not so easy, I had to keep typing additional data for my office notes.
Saves time creating paper super-bills ( with my previous software I had to do it manually for every patient, then give it to the biller to post it), here once you close your note, the claim is actually ready to post... faster payments.
The chief complaint has many set up questionnaires that are easy to use by staff and helps the health provider to quickly review the concerns, facilitates the interview, simplify the provider's work.
Billing - has many ways to see the claims. Recall list for follow ups, blood tests, etc - once you order a test that is a follow up or in your note you document the follow up... automatically show in the recall list. Nice appearance of the finalized progress notes, many of the areas are automatically saving and you do not have to worry about losing your data. At the end of the day, you can review open encounters to make sure you finalized all your notes.
Interfaces with labs and vaccine registries are available and work very well.
Labs show automatically - there are icons on top of the page that make easy to find labs, tasks, messages, prescription requests, etc.

Cons

Unable to see several tabs or pages at once, you need to save and close what you are doing to go some other part of the chart or if you need to open other patient's chart at the same time you are with one patient in the room - same applies for the PM portion and it is time consuming because you can not multitask.

We are a relatively small 6-provider midwifery practice in Anchorage, Alaska. We used Lytec for years, but wanted to move to something web-based that was highly functional, but also affordable for mid-level providers. HealthFusion stood out as one of the only companies that was willing to differentiate in pricing between a group of MD's, and a group of NP's and midwives, as the difference in the amount of reimbursement is obviously significant. We found the [slightly more time-intensive] self-serve training process to be well worth the savings in up-front costs, which was another big difference between HealthFusion and other players in the market, like Advanced MD and NeuMD, to name a few. We find it quite easy to use, on the whole. We appreciate the fact that when we do make suggestions as to how to improve certain processes or interfaces, our suggestions tend to be adopted, or at least addressed by the engineers, via customer service... And speaking of customer service, theirs really is excellent, as their salespeople will of course tell you. Our calls are always answered promptly and our issues dealt with promptly - plus virtually everyone on their CS staff is extraordinarily pleasant to talk to, so calling CS is never a chore. I also like the fact that their sales people stay in touch with the customers, so I can always call Greg and get the same level of attention that we did when he was trying to make the sale, which I've discovered is quite rare among other companies. The only gripe we might have - and I have no way of knowing whether this is unique to them or par for the course among web-based software providers - is that the site does go down or experience difficulties about once every other month, but usually only for a few hours. Certain processes like posting insurance payments take longer with HealthFusion than with our old client-server software, but that is also partly because our old software just let you input whatever you wanted, whereas HealthFusion has you posting the actual insurance checks before you can apply the payment to claims so that they are linked and verifiable. This is but one example of how their PM can be more time-consuming to use, but is much more rigorous from an accounting and audit standpoint, which is good overall. I trust the numbers that come out of HealthFusion's PM much more than Lytec's reports for things like outstanding A/R and productivity numbers for each provider. I've had an easier time staying on top of aging claims with HealthFusion than I used to with our old software. Overall we are very happy with HealthFusion's PM, and are just now starting the process of integrating their EMR into our practice.

I've always been intrigued with the idea of automating as much as possible in the doctor's office. In addition, I am very compulsive about the quality of clinical note that I write. Over the years this has created circumstances where I would get behind on my documentation simply because I didn't have the time to write a quality note until the weekend. I have spent a very large amount of time off work on completing these charts. I saw MediTouch at a Texas Osteopathic Medical Association meeting and was fascinated with the scope of it's abilities in practice management and medical documentation and the relative simplicity of its use. The reasonableness of the cost was also attractive to me, particularly after going home and calculating the amount of money I spent on printing, mailing, and licensing fees for my checklist medical record system which I was using at the time. I was amazed to find that it saved me $1500.00 a month by a conservative estimation; not to mention improving the accuracy of my insurance filing, and the turnaround time of my payments. The responsiveness of the people at HealthFusion is also quite good. If there is an issue, there are multiple ways to get in touch - including after-hours emergency contact ability, which I have actually used once on a Sunday night. My problem on that occasion was resolved almost immediately. Implementation was a major learning curve as we did it on the fly (as we had been encouraged to do), and while this was extremely trying, it did speed the implementation process along quite well. The fact that the training program is on the Internet and easily accessed is quite good; although, as a constructive criticism, the training program actually could benefit the user if it were streamlined and changed from the format of hour-long lectures. I love walking into the treatment room with an iPad under my arm and not having to leaf through six-inch thick charts to find last year's laboratory work or an x-ray that I need to compare to this year's. I really love ePrescribing in the patient room to any pharmacy in the country, and knowing a call back will not occur because the pharmacist can't read the prescription. The first year we started using the system, I was on a Mediterranean cruise and refilled some prescriptions using my iPad from a lounge in the ship because I could. As for my documentation compulsion, I dictate personalization nuances into the available visit templates in MediTouch using Dragon NaturallySpeaking (which I have been training for over 8 years). I walk out of the office with all of my charts done, and all of my insurance claims completed almost every day.

User since 2011

Pros

The EMR portion of the program is very easy to use. You can access it from anywhere to work. I did my billing from the Bahamas one year. It makes meeting the meaningful use criteria very simple, and does most of the work for you, where other programs are much more difficult and too time consuming. The monthly price includes all updates and support, which is very reasonable. They have a great learning site and you can access the information on updates at anytime.

Cons

The billing portion of the system is not up to par if you live in New York State. It does not have a compatible NYS medicaid form, but will charge you if you want them to create one. It's secondary billing posting is awful if it is not able to be auto-posted, which is mostly because of New York State insurances. You have to manually look up in each account a secondary claim number you need to post it to the insurance payment, then go back into the posting module to actually post the payment. You have to create and send each claim individually to insurance companies, unless you want to pay more for them to create batch files. If customer support is not sure about something and they tell you they will get back to you, several occasions I never heard anything and had to repeatedly call back to find out the status.

Wide improvements over the last two years

I've been working with NextGen EHR in a clinical setting with multiple specialties since 1999. As a Health Informatics EHR consultant, I have the opportunity to support practices internationally and am exposed to numerous EHRs. NextGen is amongst my top 3 favourites. PROS: NextGen is fairly intuitive. It is easy to navigate through an encounter and locate the tools you need to manage your patient's care. The EHR offers a progressive workflow so you won't need to jump around between disjointed tabs or sections of the EHR to document an encounter or procedure. From one set of templates you can work through an entire encounter with every component readily available - SOAP/APSO, Care Coordination, patient communication and so on. Within easy reach is the ability to order and manage diagnostic and lab tests, immunizations, and monitor preventive milestones. There are many opportunities to view and manage common areas of the patient record so you won't need to jump out of an encounter to review medications, allergies, chronic problems, or medical histories - just to name a few. NextGen accommodates multiple specialties ranging from Primary Care, Behavioral Health, surgical specialties, and optometry and so on. Best of all, there are plenty of time-saving tools that work like Macros build, then load when applicable to a patient or encounter. This includes frequently reached for medications, phrases, treatment plans, PE and ROS findings...even an entire SOAP note for common complaints. Using these tools is often easier than dictation. NextGen is certified across all Regulatory Healthcare measures. CONS: No doubt, this is an expensive product. Their implementation process is a nightmare. In my humble opinion, their Implementation process often lacks focus and project plans given to new clients are cookie-cutter and not at all relevant to the client's organizational needs. Milestones and deliverables tend to fall short. Training is oft left to tedious eLearning modules and recorded webinars. This is no way to learn a system as adaptive as NextGen and organizations adopting this as their EHR will find themselves frustrated long after go-live. I can't stress enough the importance of in-depth, workflow specific training, customized to how you do business. SUMMARY: No EHR is perfect. But, out of the box this EHR will likely serve your needs and, with adequate training, you will find that physician adoption may be surprisingly high.

Be prepared to train your employees forever!

Pros

I like that there are two distinctive sides to this software: Practice Management and the EHR. This makes everything difficult though when learning it for the first time. It really breaks up what would be a fairly daunting task of switching to this system. I love that patients are able to register their information before their first visit-- this makes entering in new patients so much easier and faster.

Cons

You can only do some things through Practice Management and many others through the EHR. When admitting new patients I have to toggle between the two and often have to have several browser tabs open while entering in patient data. It took seemingly forever to figure out what kind of profile employees should be on-- should we all be administrators or not? We found that some permissions were not granted if everyone was not made to be an administrator and vital abilities were lost to some employees. After learning this system for about a year we are still figuring out ways to work with this system a little better. It is not intuitive and it is difficult to learn. There has to be a better system out there when switching to Electronic Medical Records.

We are a solo Family Practice. MediTouch is our first EHR system and we saw about eight demos before choosing this one. We loved the PM portion, but were not sure about the EHR. Since MediTouch does not require a long contract or huge start up fees we decided to give it a shot and started using it about 2 months ago. The doctor is still learning to use it and we have installed Dragon naturally speaking for him. The medical assistant's portion is pretty easy, they got it quickly and use it for vitals, medical history, family history, allergies, and social history portions. They have minor problems, like smoking use, it has the option of how many packs per day, but not how many single cigarettes per day. They also document chief complaints, but we are still working on customizing them. MediTouch comes with every possible question you can ask for all sorts of complaints so we have to go in to each individually to select the questions that your doctor would want. If you don't customize, you cannot just leave questions blank or it will not save in your encounter. It's a bit time consuming, but this way you get only the questions that your doctor would ask. As far as the review of system, physical exam and so forth, our doctor has been dictating wherever he can. He is not a great typist so he prefers doing it this way. We have saved his negatives so that he just goes in to change any problems. This saves him a lot of time, but he's not using it for every single patient yet. At the beginning, the doctor thought it wasn't possible for him to use this system, but after some practice he feels if he puts in more time into learning it, he can do it. If you don't want to dictate, the system is mostly clicking, not much typing which I think is good, but if your doctor is not a computer person, this might be time consuming for him. Using a dictating system may help. The diagnosis portion is easy and the Escript portion has been great. If you get a request for a patient whose information is not yet in MediTouch, you do have to put it in before authorizing. Sometimes its difficult to find a pharmacy, unless you know what to search by, but that doesn't happen often. Overall, we like the EHR portion of MediTouch, it just takes practice and time to customize the system to how you want it. I like that it has the capability of making the progress notes, just as the doctor would have in a written note. I think he will be using it for all patients pretty soon.

If not for the reports, all would be 5 stars

Customer service was fantastic when this was Healthfusion. Then NextGen came along and decided to cut staff, outsource and shift everyone to a website for service requests and complaints. The "Success Community" is a farce, your requests rot there until you escalate them or call in asking why they haven't been touched. The various departments no longer communicate very effectively. The people that are still employed there are great, but spread entirely too thin.

Pros

Fully intergrated. No uploading, no downloading. You enter a claim and it sends when you save it. ERA's are there daily without having to retrieve them. Everything comes to you.

Cons

The reports module is hopelessly complicated and not written for the laymen. You will either need to pay them to write custom reports for anything you need beyond the pre-made reports, or go through lengthy training and lost of practice to understand their system.

Meditouch EHR in a Interventional Pain Clinic

This is one of the few EHRs that actually turn out looking like a medical note rather than a list after list of repetitive data that is hard to follow and actually see what is going on with the patient and what they are taking for current medications. The note is constructed in the SOAP format so that it is easy to follow. The platform allows customization for office/ASC procedures that are easy to setup after initial orientation and it also allows for multiple options for physical findings in the exam. Care360 is similar in that it is a SOAP note format, but doesn't have a billing component built in and requires Kareo or another billing program that doesn't marry to the EHR easily.

Pros

Customization, Readability of completed notes, no confusion on problem lists, medication lists, etc. No laundry list after list after list causing you to wonder "where's the meat" of this note that will tell me what's going on.

Cons

There is a lot of data on the page so it is sometimes hard to read everything on a standard iPad. At my age, I should probably use a "Pro" sized iPad. Other than that, not much.

We are a small medical billing and practice management firm located in the Dallas area. I've spent the last 18 months sitting through demo's of PM and EHR products on behalf of my clients. There are a lot of good products out there, but Healthfusion offered something the others didn't which really fits the needs of some of my clients. It's an All-In-One PM, Clearinghouse, and EHR (meaningful use ready) all for a reasonable monthly fee. There are no huge up front investment costs that take away financial resources that could be spent on patient care. Because it is 100% online, we can use the system anywhere as long as we have an internet connection. Since continuity of information is vital for our service, we love that we can access the front desk schedule and clinical information at the doctor's office in real time. The document feature in the patient chart is a huge help and something we didn't have in our last system. Real time eligibility is a big time saver. The best part about this company itself is their support. I was under contract with a different vendor for many years and my biggest complaint was that they never answered the phone - that's no exaggeration. The monthly support fee was significant, yet I couldn't get the support I was paying for. HealthFusion has been a breath of fresh air. From the Sales Team (love you, Andrea) to Implementation, everything went incredibly smoothly. I spent a fair amount of time asking a ton of questions, which were always welcome 100%. The ongoing customer service has been amazing. The team over there knows me pretty well and are always cheerful when they answer. I love the live webinars because I can always learn something new, hear other user questions, and ask any questions I have. These webinars happen every week! I'm giving 5 stars for all except functionality and quality. There are just a few things that I feel are "missing". To be fair, HealthFusion has been very responsive to my comments and has assured me they are working on adding additional features that I have been asking about. Bottom line is that HealthFusion is making me look great to my clients, it's been fairly easy to learn (after I took the time to do my training), and overall it is saving me a few hundred dollars a month in support fees. My clients and prospects love that I have a product to offer them that won't cost a fortune to get started.

One year of Meditouch now!

Pros

Started Meditouch EHR in 2015 after using a customized EHR since 1970s. Overall this past year a good product for the complexity of my medical office. Patients do like the interface and it is quite nice when I use my iPad Pro. Buttons are nice, clear. Search function is getting better.

Cons

I'm in a unique situation that Meditouch has never encountered. Because of my high complexity lab I have multiple billing lines for each type of bloodwork and Meditouch did not provide a solution. I have had to pay them for a lab interface but also had to purchase a LIS so our lab can communicate with the EHR just like commercial labs. Billing has been a nightmare for my office manager who did not used to spend hours finishing the day. We are a complex office with bloodwork but our per patient payment is much higher than a standard primary care practice. Patient portal isn't great and many patients complain. I miss my
Programmer and having in house support but Meditouch is getting better. Training is not great and there is a lot of learning on the go. My new physician has had difficulty with it and I'm worried about Locums learning it. I wish there was a support group for all Meditouch users to share their concerns and HF has not really provided that. A lot of EMRs use a groupthink method for billing and it would be useful. I wish there was an east coast office but this issue has improved over the past year

I started using the MediTouch EHR system in the latter part of 2011. I changed over to solo practice of Obstetrics and Gynecology from a group practice and was not eager to have an initial high investment cost to begin a new system. MediTouch was affordable, but also, to my immense pleasure, transferring over from a system that was not only cumbersome but also more costly, I found working with the MediTouch software a delight. (Even more so because it was softer on the pocketbook. The software is really a quality product. Not only that, there are so many continual improvements that it is hard to keep up. Just recently, I discovered the E&M coding tool. Now I can code office visits with confidence knowing that I have all necessary component for the proper code. I was amazed at how often I would think the visit was one code, such as a 99213, only to find that it was actually a higher code. Most often, what I though should be coded as 99213 was actually 99214. And sometimes, it is only a matter of legitimately documenting something that I had reviewed, but had not put in my note (for example, as smoking history or review of sexual history). My staff had a harder time with the change than I did, but now, they too prefer this system. There are some functions that need to flow better from the HealthFusion practice management side to the EHR system, for example, follow up appointment intervals, which cannot be seen on the practice management side, but we have managed fine as it is. When those changes come, I know this system will be unbeatable. I do not think that changing from a paper chart to an EHR system is ever easy. I just finished taking a medical records course, and after learning about chart audits and what are considered deficiencies, I feel confident that with this system, going through such a process would be much less painful. In fact, I think I could approach it with confidence with the MediTouch software. Changing from paper to an electronic charting system is never easy, but with MediTouch, it was well worth it. Since everyone is different, I think everyone will have to find how this software works best for them. For me, I find my charting is now more thorough and complete than ever. And believe it or not, I spend less time charting than I did before!

The implementation teams, customer service and support teams are very robust

Functionality and ability to customize has been key for our practice.

Pros

I appreciate the various platforms offered and the ability to interface with other products. The support and training is probably the best that I have seen. I love the reports and hate the reports at the same time. Nextgen can retrieve almost any data, but you have to know exactly what to ask it in order for it to pull the data correctly. I also like the support on compliance side of healthcare and regulatory updates. .

Cons

Price, reporting as mentioned above and that since it partners with so many outside vendors that it does not develop things on their own, that I think should be a part of Nextgen. An example would be the HQM. Nextgen should have a platform for a dashboard, but instead they partnered with someone, so that is yet another fee and vendor we would have to work with