ATLANTA – No question: The immense show floors at HIMSS10 were vast and dazzling. And no question: As worthy as the products on display in those huge vendor booths may have been, many were trumpeted to journalists and prospective clients with healthy dollops of hype, hot air, and PR-savvy spin.
So it was refreshing to hear Heather Caouette, spokeswoman for eClinicalWorks, the Westborough, Mass.-based electronic medical record (EMR) vendor, suggesting that Healthcare IT News check out eCWusers.com: an independent online forum, populated by physicians, nurses, CIOs and other users of eClinicalWorks EMRs, where they compare notes, ask questions, and, sometimes, gripe about the software.
The commentary there is unvarnished, Caouette says: "what they hate about it, and what they like." Whereas other companies might be defensive or dismissive of criticisms, Caouette says eClinicalWorks makes constructive use of the commentary logged on the site. Company employees are registered as users there, but have no moderating privileges. Oftentimes they will answer users' questions or provide advice and clarification. Just as often they'll use the critiques they read on the message board as fodder for improving the development process.
Listening and responding to customer input is key to being an effective company, Caouette says. And "transparency" is respected, she adds. So rather than trying to shy away from the site, or even conceal its existence from potential clients, "we tell them to go check it out."
The hoped-for response? "If what I saw there is the worst you've got, then I'm happy."
William C. Biggs, MD, managing partner of Amarillo Medical Specialists in Amarillo, Texas, is a member of eCWusers.com. "It's a great site for people sharing ways to fully use the software," he says. "Seeing how everyone else does it is great. You don't have to reinvent the wheel."
Biggs joined the site "about a year before we actually bought the software," in order to do some advance scouting on the product, he says. "I think a lot of people do that: 'Are there issues with the software?' 'Is everybody complaining about it?'
"Let's face it," he continues. "Every EMR package I'm aware of has issues. It's really a matter of how the company deals with them. Do they say, 'Nah, that's not true,' or do they say 'Let's go in there and fix that'? This site was something that no other vendor at that time had. It's an independent thing, so people could and did say anything they wanted to about the product. It's not moderated at all by eCW. They weren't trying to sweep anything under the rug."
On the message board, users discuss everything from big questions about purchase and installation to minutiae about operation. Recent topics "run the gamut," Biggs says, including tips about how to add NDC codes to prescriptions, questions about how to switch from one server system to another, and advice about interfacing with the lab.
The site, he says, is "a win-win for everybody: eCW gets feedback for their product, but more importantly providers are able to tap into a wealth of experience as far as how people are using the product. I can't tell you how many ideas we've gotten from that site that we've actually implemented into our practice."
