AdvancedMD

We had a rough transition with Advanced MD but overall it has gotten a lot better and we don't have hardly any issues with the system.

Vorteile

There are multiple options to do things, which makes it user specific. I also love that the product development team is always working on ways to improve the system and is great when it comes to listening to the every-day users.

Nachteile

The help file can be difficult to use. On the PM side, you can hit F1 and it will pull up the help file for the screen you're in but that doesn't work for EHR and finding the correct help file can be difficult.
I haven't had a lot of luck with tier 1 customer support. I find it to be very frustrating to call and have a lot of times found the answer myself while waiting on hold. We feel very "nickle and dimed" by the company.

If you're looking for a powerful billing platform this may be a good system for you to consider. However, if you're looking for a full PM/EHR system to manage a mental health practice this system is not ready and costs too much for what you get.

Vorteile

- Great billing platform with many ways to keep track of claims and payments
- We're able to manage 3 locations with a single system
- The system overall has a lot of great capability and most of the functionality we were looking for in a PM/EHR system. However, as noted below there are issues with how some of these capabilities work.
- Templates can be customized

Nachteile

- The EHR is not user friendly and leads to many new users creating notes that are not connected to a session as well as multiple redundant notes for a session.
- There is no easy way to track missing notes other than going session by session for each chart
- The standard reports are generally not very helpful as they provide few ways to customize and filter. The filters that are present are often not logical ways to filter data. What's more frustrating is that there are actually more useful reports that are in the system but they cost additional money to be added to a user's key. For example, a common filter type is to filter a range of providers alphabetically. AdvancedInsight does provide an enhanced reporting capability (for an extra cost) that relies on Internet Explorer and MS Silverlight all of which are old technologies. It is also somewhat difficult and time consuming to learn and still does not provide the ability to customize reports in the standard report capability. For that you have to pay AMD to make the changes or to add the report that already exists to your key.
- Printing chart notes requires a time consuming process of creating a Microsoft Word Merge template for each note template and then printing each note one by one. The Word Merge templates are complex to create and manage.
- Our sales rep guaranteed us a 95% first pass acceptance rate. After 7 months we are at 89%. There are several reasons for this and the company has provided us a credit but don't be fooled by the promises of their sales team.
- Adding new providers can take up to a month. Again we have been promised a 24 hour turn around time and yet sometimes have to wait weeks to get new providers added to our system. Note: we have the ability to add Users but only AMD can add providers.

Overall, I am very happy with the PM and "2-3 out of 5" happy with the EHR. Once you become familiar with the difficult quirks, it just becomes second nature. However, what is "second nature" for me now would be appalling to someone who is familiar with a most customizable, more user-friendly EHR.

Vorteile

The scheduling part of Advanced MD is so intuitive. To move an appointment, just click, select "move", and click on the date and time you want instead. I like how you can customize the time intervals, color code appointment types, and assign each a default length of time. Adding a patient is easy. Making billing notes, sending messages/tasks, entering patient info, are all quick and simple. There are nice features in the EHR, such as being able to pull in medication history from a national database, look up pharmacies, customize acronyms and use pull-down menus to drop in often-used phrases.

Nachteile

Actually customizing the templates is quite difficult if you have not been formally trained by Advanced MD specialists, which costs extra. Trying to figure it out yourself online via training videos is next to impossible because it is not customized to your situation. Also, finding training videos to answer specific questions is also near impossible. In order to print a note out, you have to select a "WordMerge" option from a menu, then click several times until a word document opens up, which you can THEN print. Far too many clicks just to print out a note, in my opinion. I have not found a simple way to print out all of a patient's notes, so I end up repeating this process many times when an entire medical record is requested -- VERY time consuming. Advanced MD offers all sorts of conferences and trainings, but they all cost outrageous amounts of money, and most are in a location where you would have to travel to get there. I wish training was more accessible and not so costly. I wish creating templates were more intuitive and more easily done by a regular run-of-the-mill user.

more than I expected.
The accountability for finance is complete.
The EHR area is wonderful.
Having the program available anywhere is fantastic.
PC and Mac perfect!!!!

Vorteile

I am a manager and therefore have full access. There are many features I rave about. The work flow ease from front desk personnel to billers to providers is amazingly user friendly. I do like that there are access limits to set for each job title within the company. The accountability of each service date is complete financially as well as historically.
The scheduling module can be as complete as you design it. The fact that we are able to customize certain areas is absolutely wonderful. The EHR portion is very complete. I like that AMD allows additional information to be added at anytime to a patients record not effecting the scheduling.
I also like that we are able to access this program on our Ipads for quick usage.
I am glad we are able to export reports to excel to manipulate information as necessary. I rave about your program all the time! I have worked with three other programs and am the primary person that hand picked your company's program for Therapediatrics.

Nachteile

There are always quirks in any system. REPORT ACCESS* and referral/authorization areas could use improvement. I do find that important reports for business purposes such as for finance, current active clients, marketing, HIPAA, rx renewals, referral counts, etc are not accessible unless your purchase an additional module with AMD. There is not a report that pulls all current active patients. There is a report that pulls discharged or deceased, and there should be a report that pull all active only.
The referral area does not count referrals/authorizations the way the insurance companies count them, which is critical for our industry. Every single client comes to us by a script and could be accompanied by a referral or authorization. I would like to see this area reviewed to its usefulness for our industry.

AdvancedMD has done a superb job with their support team, I really can't say enough about their level of professionalism, expertise and willingness to go above and beyond to help with almost any situation. I've used other practice management products and AdvancedMD is by far the most user friendly.

Vorteile

I really don't know where to begin with the Pros of AdvancedMD. I might have to say the Video Training Library is one of my favorite parts of AdvancedMD. It is a guide or a visual aid to assist any user in the practice by displaying and explaining how things work. After any formal training a user may have questions or uncertainties with regard to posting payments, processing claims, adding demographics, etc. With pretty much one click of the mouse or F1 you have access to training.
The ease of use is another Pro to AdvancedMD, you don't have to be afraid to experiment or test different aspects of the Practice Management piece. I like how the product has evolved over the past 5 years and their social media piece "NEST" shows their willingness to relate to a younger generation of users while making it user friendly for us old folks too.

Nachteile

I would have to say the reporting piece is lacking from an accounting point of view, and the idea that Advanced Insight is available at a per provider fee is definitely not the answer I want to hear. The financial health of a practice can only be measured in numbers, increase the subscription to AdvancedMD and throw in Advanced Insight, it's a win win!