NextGen Healthcare

Opmerkingen: I have had providers leave a company when I needed them, and luckily have been shifted to a virtual visit at times in order to keep my medical conditions on a steady treatment path. I like Patient Portal communication because often it is simply to difficult to speak to you Professionals one on one. Medical records, EHR's, RX needs and face to face care still take place but can do so without such time or travel delays. Then a bonus of my information being intertwined with Companies using NextGen (of course with my consent) mean safer treatment options if I dissect the concepts here. I feel secure on the web and in seeking the best treatment for my concerns at any given point. This is a win/win for me.

Pluspunten: I chose to review this avenue because I am on the receiving end of many Health Care Professionals who are using telemedicine and health portals to provide smarter, faster and more streamlined medical care to millions of people. I happen to be one of those people. NextGen Population Health, and its general Patient Access Portals both play a huge role in my medical needs, physician to physician communication and my EHR's as a whole. Electronic Health Records to me are critical. I have a few specialists and I love the ability to have them accept my permission to review my records and such. Just a smart way whether you are a traveler, stay at home worker or an everyday "Joe". Patient safety in my idea here is also upped, leaving less room for critical errors that could arise. A Wonderful Platform I have used as a general Portal for over 5 years, and more recently teleconferencing for a specialist these last few months. Very patient oriented and available when often the world seems booked.

Minpunten: I am hoping that the Company concept will continue to impact Physician/Patient/Peer communications and flow quickly into the offices of most Practicing Medical Professionals. My downside has been virtually nothing. I still use a former Physician group in another major city where I received medical care for several years and relied on their Patient Portal powered by NextGen. I keep my specialists on their portals and search them for my needs based on my own chart with them. It is easy and right there. I have seen no hippa related issues and I get what I need for efficiency out of it. I have no cons except its under-utilization. I do respect that for some, this idea is not an ideal fit, so regular visits and records should never end for those who use something related to their well being in an alternative, standard capacity such as in person needs.

Opmerkingen: Once you learn nextgen you will love it. Everything you need to know is right there, and its easy.

Pluspunten: I like all features of this software that I'm aware of how to use. I like that we can have all of the patients information right in front of us. See all upcoming, and scheduled appointments.

Minpunten: The thing I like least about this software is the fact that you can do so much on it, and I don't know half of the stuff. Everyone would need a very intense lengthy training to know all of its options which is just not feasible.

Opmerkingen: I believe Oklahoma Foot and Ankle is NextGen's first podiatry practice. Having been with Next Gen almost 5 years, we have come to realize areas (such as the one's mentioned above) where improvement could be made and perhaps additional feedback from us could help you attract other podiatry practices. On-site training should be part of the cost of our monthly service fee. You offer webinars, but some staff would greatly benefit from hands on training.

Pluspunten: I like the ease of transition between Practice Management and EHR.

Minpunten: With the ease of transition, there are some features that are totally different between the two features. Specifically, scanning in EHR doesn't give you the option to select a provider. Instead, the provider defaults to the first provider in alphabetical order in our practice. I've addressed this problem with support and they seemed to be unable to fix the problem. Also, the templates are difficult to create in EHR. Podiatry specific templates would be nice.

Pluspunten: 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.

Minpunten: 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!

Pluspunten: Easy to use , customer service is quick and easy to contact

Minpunten: Reporting could be a little more detailed . Would like a feature to create our own reporting template.