Epic offers a suite of medical practice management and EHR software.
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NextGen Healthcare EHR
Score 8.5 out of 10
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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…
All of the EHR's I have worked with are strong in their own right, however, Epic really shines in an Enterprise level situation. Most EHR's are specific to one context, like hospital, lab, or clinic. Epic has a great deal of strength in unifying all of these different contexts …
NextGen is ok. It is not, nor will it ever be, Epic. I have seen strides from Cerner since the Oracle acquisition, which will certainly give Nextgen a run for its status quo attitude. ECW is still very popular in the FQHC world. I have worked with NextGen software for many …
The Meditech solution I used was a green screen product, so NextGen is a vast improvement over that (Meditech may have improved by now). The Horizon and McKesson EMRs that I used may not be correctly identified above, but my experience is that all EMRs provide the same basic …
Epic is very good on the medical side and continues improving mental health and dental care. Having integrated telehealth via Zoom was a game-changer. During COVID, it was vital to have telehealth options and to ensure it was completely HIPAA Compliant and easy to document inside their health record.
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.
There are doctors' notes templates with prepopulated fields in them. This saves a lot of time.
Epic sends medication orders to pharmacies electronically so that we do not have to call. This saves a lot of time.
Epic has a Secure Chat feature via which we can send HIPAA protected messages to any employee with the patient's name and record attached.
It has a PDMP link. We can look up what controlled medications such as opiates patients have been prescribed and by whom.
It links to MyChart, which is a platform via which patients can look up their own information without them having to call the doctors. This saves a lot of time.
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
Visual Updates: While Epic is constantly improving the user experience, there are a few features that still need a design refresh. While this does not effect functionality, it does have an impact on user perception.
Ordering: While placing an order for a physician is very easy, a few changes to the workflow could improve the experience for physicians.
You should invest time into taking a training class before using Epic, but once you get the hang of it the usability features are endless! My favorite part about Epic is how it is automated and "trained" to catch user errors that would typically be missed in normal documentation/charting. This ensures accuracy and eliminates errors.
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
The initial training was good but would have been even better had I been more familiar with the system before taking it. I found learning how to deal with Epic while working in the field at the same time was a (pardon the pun) Epic learning curve. I really think there should be a scribe who does the data entry and others can focus on what they do best.
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
Epic gives extensive customization options in terms of utility and view. I have found this to be highly useful and efficient EHR as compared to other EHRs we use in our organization.
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.
Being able to track and document all of our services in the same place has made an exceptional improvement in continuity of patient care, both internally across departments (medical/dental/mental health) and externally with specialists and other healthcare organizations on a national scale.
Continuous improvements in Data reporting and analytics make tracking and implementing quality improvement measures throughout the year easy.
Massive improvements to the ELLA training platform, combined with detailed and interactive training materials for all system areas, make onboarding and staff training much easier!
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.
