DrChrono vs. eClinicalWorks

Templates are customizable and you can take pictures directly into a patient's chart. DrChrono is less appropriate for this reason: they have been working on enrolling my company for Medicare electronic billing for [seven months]. [As a result], I have been unable to bill for any Medicare patients for [seven months]. The only person I have talked to was in India [and] ([the] email address ended in .india). I have had to call Medicare to try to figure out how to complete the enrollment process, [and I ended up with this response from Medicare: "DrChrono needs to [stop being lazy and do something]!." I lost [a] significant [amount of] money. [...]

If you love clicking around in a pretty EMR all day long then this is the EMR for you. [However, I believe] if you are looking for efficiency and support, you should look elsewhere. [I feel] this is an EMR clearly designed by the tech world without much attention or care for those who use it and if you look at the reviews carefully you see that most of the people who love it are in IT.

• Documentation Template Customization

• Access to patient's records - obvious lack of file and charts; transportable ; multi user synchronous access
• Produces clinical note as end product that is organized and "readable" as opposed to the gibberish output of many EMR's that look like a poorly formatted FORTRAN printouts

• [Onboarding] trainers and tech support do not know the program.
• [All] DrChrono calls are from blocked, [unknown], or their personal numbers. [Looking] at [each] caller ID, you have to answer every call because they do not register as DrChrono.
• DrChrono [uses] [Google] phone and [I could] not understand what [a] trainer [said] [when I called them]. [I could not hear what the trainer said] over the noise of other conversations on [Google] phone.
• [I] [had] absolutely no way of talking to tech support in person.
• [Tech] support tickets [are] unanswered.
• [They] do not know how to enroll providers to bill Medicare electronically.
• [There was] absolutely no accountability.
• [The] platform was constantly down [and was very frustrating].
• [There was a] consistently, delayed submission.
• [Every] day, [I got] an email about a problem that they are working on.
• [Weekly] issues for platform [was] addressed for slowness.
• Tech support needs [to have professional people answering tech problems, needs to be reliable, and be responsive whenever someone has issues].
• [The] tutorial videos [for DrChrono] are from several years [ago] and no longer apply to the [most] current platform layout.
• [The] help browser [is] nonfunctional.
• [Tech support is not well trained. You can not talk to anyone in person and they often do not answer tech tickets. Onboard trainers do not know their system. Customer often figures out the answers before the training rep. Between the accent and the noise of Google phone, my entire training session was asking her to repeat what she said. When they are rated lowest of the group for tech support, it is for a reason].

• Meaningful Use Reports should be capturing data in real time and generated fairly quickly instead of the MAQ dashboard extraction process.
• Their support teams are not very helpful at certain topics such as the definition/logic of Meaningful Use calculations. These are generally difficult to determine but several cases in regards to Meaningful Use take several days before it gets addressed.
• Training videos would be helpful on their support website.

Incentivized

DrChrono has resulted in revenue loss

If we had an option to easily switch to another EMR product we would. However, an EMR keeps you invested solidly in it - once you've started you're then going to be stuck with it. The investment into the data in the system are such that you have no real option to back out of what you are in and move into something else. Again, if we could, we would immediately move to another EMR. The ability to use it and be supported by the vendor has decreased nearly to the point of inability to use.

Incentivized

If you don't want to do anything custom, the platform is pretty easy to navigate.

[In my opinion] the features allowed by the system are not designed for providers. [I think] the systems are inefficient, and new features tend to be "bolt on" features either as products purchased and added from other providers or simply a module created and strapped onto the software. There doesn't seem to be much idea around making things easier for the provider, though they like to state that provider burnout is something they are working on.

Incentivized

I am glad I am not always affected by the platform problems. You get daily emails notifying you they are working on slowness, ERA submission problems etc

For the most part, the program slowness has not affected me directly.

I often cannot assign a proper diagnosis under the assessment section; and as mentioned, sometimes (about once a month) the dictation just freezes because "the request has timed out" (even restarting the iPhone/ laptop does not help).

Their tech support is not well trained. You can not talk to tech support directly. You have to submit work tickets, which have gone unanswered

You put in support cases through a support portal. [I believe] for no apparent reason, the company decided that their support cannot have access to actual patient records and as a result, it's required that they have to connect remotely to a computer system in our network, and log in as one of our users to do anything. This also entails that they are completely incapable of diagnosing problems and require significant amounts of user input and time to try and begin any sort of work on the problems. [In my opinion] this takes away from patient care and other concerns. Also, while you can put in as detailed a ticket as you want, when you are called, you have to go over the ticket again, as they don't seem to read or care what you put in, as it's more important to them to go over everything in painful detail. Often times you must explain to the tech how the process works. In the past month, we were upgraded overnight with zero warning, which caused issues the following day as we had to update every single computer in our network (over 300) and it requires administrative privileges so couldn't be done by a user. This also doesn't update any information in the programs list, so there's no way to tell whether the update happened or not.

Incentivized

Paid for training, did not help. They trained prior to go-live, but it was so long ahead that users weren't able to function well when it actually happened, they seemed unable to provide adequate support. [In my experience] further support is typically very boilerplate, and is thus not useful, and has additional cost.

Incentivized

When being trained on the billing program, rather than start at the beginning and "TRAIN HOW TO USE THE PROGRAM" the trainer kept asking me what questions I had. I kept saying I don't know what I don't know. Her response was, ok, were done then. You don't have anymore questions. The only thing I could think to do was ask her to explain each item in each drop down box, but she would just read out loud the drop down choices and ask what questions I had. This pretty much sums up their training.

If you have used other EHR and programs, over time you will be able to self train for DrChrono

It's very important to limit your schedule during the weeks after go live but it is equally important to have a resource that is the lead at the practice that ensures that milestones are met leading up to the go-live date. Someone must be the point person at the practice otherwise milestones will be missed and the implementation will run into problems.

Incentivized

TheraOffice has the best tech support and onboarding training. WebPT is also good, but their charting templates lack customization. RehabOptima and Casamba are straight forward and reliable. I am currently stuck with DrChrono.

eClinicalWorks is above average for primary care outpatient services. It is not my favorite but it is not the worst either. ECW was selected by the group prior to my arrival so I cannot speak to why it was selected. I had an easy time adopting it but I have an extensive history of working with EMRs as a CMIO. As a company, they are constantly work to improve their product

Incentivized

The platform is often being worked on for slowness.

• Negative: I have lost reimbursement due to the time for tech support to address ticket and the max claims submission time.
• Negative: I have [not had any medicare revenue for seven months] due to DrChrono not knowing how to enroll for Medicare Electronic Billing. This issue still has not been resolved.
• Negative: Lost time due to the platform being down or running slow.
• Negative: Slow claims processing.
• Negative: DrChrono needs [qualified] tech support, [quality] [for] onboard training, [timely] response to technical issues, [and timely] response to billing issues.

• I will just share one area that our organization saw the ROI in a very short time period. That is the elimination of a dictation service for most of our specialty group doctors when we introducec Dragon Medical. This functionality brought a tangible benefit and a significant ROI in a short time period.

Incentivized