Interview with Mr. Timothy Heffer, president of the AllscriptsTouchWorksTM Eastern Region Users Group (ERUG)

Interview with Mr. Timothy Heffer, president of the AllscriptsTouchWorksTM Eastern Region Users Group(ERUG)

ERUG Pulls the rug out from under “drive-by” poster who claimed unfairness in Allscripts customer service response-priority

By Robert Gleeman, Medical Journalist for EMR Update, robert@emrupdate.com

When asked by a lawyer from Allscripts to remove a first-time poster’s critique of the way technical support prioritizes service "tickets" for users of Allscripts TouchWorks EMR in the Northeastern U.S.A., (posted here, http://www.emrupdate.com/forums/t/8972.aspx), - Allscripts contended it may have been posted by a competitor - we received an email from  Mr. Timothy Heffer, president of ERUG http://erugweb.org/ , saying that his group DID NOT post the complaint. In a telephone interview with Mr. Heffer, I asked about how Allscripts users in his group, the Eastern Region Users Group, or ERUG, are doing with the TouchWorks EMR software product, and why he felt compelled to support his vendor for EMR, Allscripts.

I asked Tim Heffer how he came to be a user and leader of a users' group for Allscripts TouchWorks^TM .

Tim replied, “I am the administrator of a cardiology practice with 15 cardiologists, called the Rochester Cardiopulmonary Group at 30 Hagen Drive, Suite 100, Rochester, NY  14625, http://www.rcpg.com/  , and we have been using  TouchWorks EMR for five years. If anyone wants to contact me for a reference, just send me an email with your phone number, theffer@rcpg.com , and I’ll be glad to call you with any information you need.”

How many users are in ERUG, and how do you communicate as a group?“

"We have a monthly conference call meeting,” Tim answered, “Allscripts supplies us with the phone number and password.  In addition, we have an extensive e-mail distribution list with approximately 200 participants representing 65 or so organizations.  This distribution list is used periodically throughout the month when members have questions or wish to solicit information from other members.  We have just got our website up and running and hope that it can be a valuable tool for information sharing.  We also meet in person annually at the Allscripts Users Conference in Chicago.”

How much help do you get from Allscripts in running the ERUG?

In his typical relaxed manner, Tim laughed and said, “They’ll get involved as much as the user group wants them to get involved.  We have had a number of presentations by Allscripts personnel on our monthly calls.  Including folks on their management team.  We are not very highly-structured here in the Eastern Region, but we are listened to carefully by Allscripts, and they care what we think about their service. They called me about the aforementioned critical post, but by the time I looked, it had been removed from EMR update. I never did actually see it. But at RCPG, we have no complaints about Allscripts tech support and I knew no such letter had come from the group."

Would Allscripts supply you with a forum such as EMR Update if you asked for one? 

“They already have an on-line user forum, Tim commented, "but to be honest, I am not sure how much it is used.  Most of the various user groups have their own forums as well.  I think we are all trying to figure out the best way to use these forums to share information." 

Did you use any on-line forums in your EMR decision making process?

Tim said, "Allscripts was much smaller five years ago when we purchased TouchWorks. The information available to EMR shoppers is much better now, and I think EMR Update is part of that progress. This is a winning situation for clinic administrators like me, because EMR is much easier than it used to be. Five years ago, it was difficult to find references in any given geographical area. Now it’s easier and the users themselves are more experienced, so references really mean something. The main goal of a users group is information sharing, and how each group is using the product is always of interest to everyone.”

Can you tell me why you chose Allscripts for your EMR five years ago?

“It’s like they say,” he answered, “once you have used EMR in practice, you can never go back to paper. But thinking back, we liked the modular software concept offered by Allscripts—you don’t pay for—or get bogged down by—software you cannot use. The most obvious benefit is having all patient information in one place and accessible from anywhere to any provider at the click of a button.  The days of hunting for a paper chart are gone.  We recently purchased the “Charge Module” to use with our billing system. And that was another reason we went with Allscripts, the fact that they are tightly integrated with the billing software we were using at the time, and we still use to this day, IDX. We have purchased four software modules since buying the main EMR, so we feel we have grown with TouchWorks at our own pace, and never saddled ourselves with too much information to learn at any given time.”

Didn’t GE buy IDX about a year ago? How has that impacted your EMR and billing software?

Tim replied, “We did not feel any impact from that acquisition. We had IDX and still do, which is linked to Allscripts, with no third party interface needed. I guess we dodged a bullet in that respect, because it was our choice to skip all the interfacing grief by going with Allscripts and staying with IDX. It just worked out fine for us.”

[Author's Note: When I commented to Tim Heffer that I felt the interview was a bit too short, he promptly shot back, "What's wrong with concise?" I was left with a very distinct opinion, which is this: Listen to your administrator when it comes to buying an EMR. A practice administrator such as Tim perhaps develops a "sixth sense" for avoiding problems. Or maybe it's just the philosophy of all administrators? R.G.]