NextGen Healthcare EHR vs. Practice Fusion

I would recommend NextGen Healthcare EHR 9 times out of 10 for a mid-sized multi-specialty practice, internal medicine, family practice, peds, and behavioral health (for CHCs, FQHCs, and private practice), but beyond that, I don't believe that NextGen Healthcare EHR is the best solution most times. Consider having all staff at all levels read "Raving Fans" and employ the model. Do what you do well, don't do what you can't do well. You'll be far more successful.

Incentivized

The best scenario is a small non-profit clinic who needs a great EMR but cannot afford one like EPIC. I might also recommend this to colleagues who are starting a small business because I think PF would be a good, easy, and more affordable to get up and running. I think this EMR makes less sense in the setting of large academic institutions who need lots of easily manipulable data and a huge amount of support.

Incentivized

• NextGen has always stayed on top of the many changes every year and remained certified. I have seen many EHR companies go out of business or seen users have to change EHR systems in order to remain compliant for reporting.
• With NextGen, I am able to make a few customizations that my providers ask for to make their documentation easier. Not all EHR's are customizable. While it is not best practice to do a lot of customizations, sometimes it is worth the extra work to keep your providers happy!
• I love going to the NextGen User Group Meeting they have every year. I always learn things I didn't know and learn more about the things I do. They offer classes for everyone no matter what you do that pertains to NextGen. Even Government updates for healthcare.

Incentivized

• Document storage- You can upload documents and attach them to specific patients. As well as flag documents that need to be signed, and assign them to specific doctors.
• Charting- Very detailed integration for charting.
• Reporting- We really enjoy the reports we can pull from within the software.

Incentivized

• EHR and Practice Management are two completely different interfaces within the same program and are not easily navigated.
• Only super users can perform all tasks, making it so all staff needs to become a super user.
• Credit Card processing is difficult to set up and change-- we moved offices but need to process CC payments through our old office.
• When patients prefill their registration information online, we are unable to confirm their insurance information due to small glitches with the program.
• There are multiple ways to view the daily schedule, and none of them are easy to use.

Incentivized

• Have Physician Assistant as a provider status.
• Make the notes section of each patients account displays towards the top of page and not the bottom.

Incentivized

The usability of the product is great. The difficulty that we have is in the background with the speed of servers or of things loading. If there are any issues with the remote server, things can really slow down drastically.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

We always get a return call within the time stated. There are many available topics on the forum and it is often easy to find the issue you are seeking more information on. When we have tried the live chat feature we have been satisfied with the timeliness and response.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

NextGen is hard to use as far as medical records. Practice Fusion is user friendly. There is a great knowledge base for questions asked. Practice Fusion takes all the guess work out of the day.

Incentivized

• Our AR days are very low compared to industry standard.
• We end up using many 3rd party tools (IMO, virtual scribes, voice recognition, etc.) to accommodate shortfalls.
• In my experience, some support issues take over a year to resolve. In the meantime, you have to develop workarounds.

Incentivized