OfficeMate Suite

Originally purchased due to the reputation of VSP as being a solid company. In the 3 years of use, I had to help my staff, almost daily, with accounting problems and transmissions of VSP claims. Most days, I had to stay after closing or work on weekends to clean up problems. Even after 3 years, the staff had multiple problems with electronic transmissions of VSP claims and had to enter the claims manually on Eyefinity which caused double the amount of work. Due to the complexity of their financial system, we were constantly overlooking charges that should have been turned in to insurance companies or charged back to patients.

Their customer service has improved over the time using the software. Originally, I would have to wait for days for customer service to call back after leaving a message of our problems. I did find that by staying on hold for up to an hour, I was finally able to talk with a customer service person which I did almost daily for some time. After the first 1-2 years (don't remember how long it took), the customer service staff was increased which made it very easy to connect with. It usually only took 1-2 minutes for a representative to answer the call. Even with the faster service, the software was becoming more difficult and restrictive to use with each successive upgrade.

I was finally forced to cut my loses and change to a different software package.

Good for start up, have about 9k pts now getting harder to control bad data or staff errors. Security needs some improvement. New certified version took two products an smashed them together. Made it hard to navigate and program office functions. Too expensive for equipment integration. Scanned files get dumbed into one directory, recipe for slow search and futur disaster.

First off, let me say that I don't have a lot of experience with EMR's. I just left a practice I"ve been with for 23 yrs that while is very concerned with proper documentation, it doesn't use an EMR. With the practice I left, we designed our paperwork for examinations to be very comprehensive, yet very easy to use. And, with 20 yrs of refining these forms, we achieved that. We had to as we have had hundreds of doctors use the forms. And, as sort of a strange compliment, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of doctors around the country have "stolen" the forms throughout the years and are using them in their practices.

I bring all this up because I know now what it takes to provide a format for easy, concise but thorough documentation of an exam.

While Examwriter is very comprehensive, it is not "easy" or "concise".

If you want to provide thorough and individual documentation for patients, you will spend twice as long inputting the exam info into the program as it takes to examine the patient. It seems there is just an endless parade of popup windows to deal with when documenting. Unfortunately this compels the doc to oversimplify the documentation just to get through it so he can get to the next patient. I even know of a doc who now brings scribes into the exam room to enter the info into Examwriter as he does the exam, just so that he can go on to the next patient instead of spending another 10 min documenting everything. And, if it's a complicated patient, count on at least 30 min spent on documentation. It's so ridiculous.

Now, let me qualify that I don't have a lot of experience with different EMR's, but I sure know which one I'll never buy for myself!

Do they even listen to US? Everything needs work. Updates always induce errors and crashes. poor customer service. equipment integration with cumbersome at best. difficult to correct any mistakes or make changes to fee slips, charges or coding. Statements for patients are difficult to understand.

See: What needs work.

We are using the Enterprise version of the OfficeMate software in order to provide for a multi-location platform. This version of the software seems even more prone to bugs and crashes than the original software and would not be recommended for connecting multiple offices.

I will comment more after we upgrade to OfficeMate/Examwriter 9.0.

There are a few good things with this software and I hope that it continues to improve. Communication from the company on features and updates is very poor. They need to improve the stability of the program and better integrate frequently requested features such as scrolling within windows.

I think OfficeMate is a victim of their own success, they have grown so much that they are too large to respond to user request. While it is a very comprehensive program it is not that user friendly. I find myself constantly looking at other programs in search of something better. I have seen several other programs that look interesting but most of them have a very small user base and I am concerned about the ability of these companies to survive. I may not absolutely love OfficeMate but I am confident that they will be around for many years to come so I have not switched. Yet.