Epic Cadence is the company's medical scheduling module.
N/A
NextGen Healthcare EHR
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
NextGen Healthcare provides ambulatory practices of all size solutions along with dedicated support and professional services. NextGen® Enterprise EHR offers practices configurable clinical content, workflows, and an integrated patient experience platform that incorporates telehealth. With NextGen® Mobile, providers’ smartphones become an extension of the EHR, saving time. NextGen has its own fully integrated solutions that provide dictation, speech-to-text, direct to desktop and Ambient…
Cadence Enterprise Scheduling is particularly useful in a multiple provider, multiple location scenario. It is also quite useful in situations where there are multiple rooms or pieces of equipment that need to be scheduled.
NextGen is very easy to navigate and simple to learn. The patient scheduling and calendars are very clear and the flexibility to customize the calendars is very helpful. When we are making patient appointments it is clear what times are available for each doctor and office which helps avoid mistakes since we have multiple doctors and offices.
The system is simple to use it helps schedulers create appointments and, avoids placing patients in situations where they are scheduled at the same time in different facilities.
It has many reports that can help managers maintain a smooth operation and shows what areas need to improve.
It has a one place for all scheduling information for schedulers to see patient's appointments, especially when patients do not recall where or when their next appointments will be.
The system can be created in such a way that you can control who can make appointments and who can't.
They system when built provides warnings to schedulers helping to minimize many scheduling errors like overbooking.
it is easy to create an appointment for a patient. The system is easy to use. It can easily show you when the next appoint is and also has pop up system alerts that the staff can view as to any special things that may need to be done before that appointment is created
Adding charges from an encounter is effortless, creates the claim and is sent to the clearing house and onto the payer. This process is all documented
one of the best features I like is that in the background is that NextGen documents every user's actions as to what is being done to the patient's chart. As a manager I can view what has happen over time with the patient's chart and easily repair what's needed
Questionnaires: EPIC seems to be very stringent on questionnaires and how may can be attached (only 1) on a Cadence level causing us to be quite inventive on how to get questioned answered on only certain visit types. One big stumbling block was the Ebola questionnaire. Currently we have a particular questionnaire for new Phy. Therapy patients which prevents us from adding the Ebola questionnaire to NEW patients. We are still struggling with this.
Patient Itinerates used for multiple appointments: Not very professional looking regardless of how you set up (OP visits, instructions etc: Most practices will not use the itinerary therefore adding dollars to having printing cards with the practice name on them. (the old fashioned way)
Building new DEP records: Wish there was a way to copy entire builds from one DEP to another.
Security": EPIC security is a nightmare to develop for multi faced users. RN that schedule appointments. Many of our practices are small practices that only have 2-3 people (the doc, the RN and the scheduler/biller . This creates the need for everyone to do everything from a scheduling perspective and building this security can become very cumbersome from practice to practice as each is unique.
As stated earlier, it seems to be the best out there, from a built perspective as well as a user application. While some practices feel it to be time consuming (Cadence/Prelude) together others who see the whole integration thru the Epicare and Resolute systems love it. From an IT perspective, while sometimes cumbersome to build, the end results are pleasing and satisfying. We can usually accomplish what we set out to do with the practice vision in mind.
I gave this rating because it is truly a system that flows data extremely well within the NextGen ecosystem. Many times you will find systems that do not want to talk to each other from a data perspective, let alone from a capabilities lens. NextGen Healthcare EHR delivers on this data flow without aggregation to where you are deciding on what not to bring into the chart rather than worrying if it is in available.
Pages load quickly and reports are uploaded quickly. It just takes far too many clicks to get anything complete in this program. If a patient wants to pay for something after we have checked them out of their appointment, or wants to make an appointment it is not efficient. In a busy practice like ours efficiency is key and we need to keep the flow going
EPIC has been great in their support and communication at all hours. They also openly communicate when an application TS (Technical Support) will be away and who is covering for that person. During standard non working hours - you always know what number and who to call to get resolution to issues that arise at those times
Tier 1 support is useless. They gather details we've already provided and have no idea how to help us. Techs just call rather than scheduling an appointment which means we are in the middle of something else and our internal IT is unavailable to provide appropriate connection. Webex details aren't provided in advance of the call so it's difficult to get connected timely to have a conversation in real time during the support session. Many issues drag on for months and tickets get closed without resolution. It's a "known issue" is the most unhelpful response to a recurring problem. UGM Learning Lab is perfect because the issues based experts are there! It would be ideal to always be connected like that in real time
Use implementation team from EPIC but know what you want and make sure that it=s what you get. You can be easily swayed by lack of knowledge on the application and therefore decisions are made that are not correct and then have to be redone. EPIC including Cadence needs a great understanding of the workflows you currently have and how they will be impacted by your build. We had a great understanding of the existing workflows in the offices, however lack of knowledge on the Cadence IT side, had a large impact on what was delivered as our implementers believed that a standard EPIC workflow would suffice and did not.
Centricity was limited in ability to scale and customize compared to Cadence for our environment. Also the regular updates for Cadence vs. Centricity is where Cadence really shines. Vendor support is also much better with Cadence over Centricity. We also like the robust capability of the reporting module in Cadence over other vendors.
NG is like no other software I have ever used. I thought if you used one software they are all alike. Not this software, it is totally different but let me tell you very thorough and it also can track anything that anyone has done in a work day. Good auditing system.
While in some cases, NextGen Healthcare EHR improves efficiency, most practices are not able to reduce staff, they usually have to actually have .5-1 more employees per physician or midlevel provider. These employee roles change and shift throughout the implementation and into the adaptation process. Those staff generally slowly transition to where they are needed next.
