Patient communication/electronic patient forms

[kellycacc]

I'm looking to switch the company who sends our automated text reminders and electronic patient forms.    It seems many automation companies do not integrate with Practiceworks. I'd love to hear which company you are using and whether you are happy with them. 

[joedindo]

I just started with reminderdental.com for patient messaging and we've been happy with it so far.  The interface is clean and quick. It has yet to offer patient forms so I'm going out on a limb and I'm gonna start using JotForms to make them; that is so widely used that it is worth trying. Price point is good and it offers HIPAA compliance too.

[kellycacc]

We've gone back to YAPI for reminders and patient forms.  We don't have any problems with their forms.  They also offer inter-office communication, which Lighthouse did not.  Does reminderdental have that feature?  We have reached out to Gina at Lighthouse about them purchasing the licensing necessary to integrate with Practiceworks.  Hoping to hear back from her soon.  If the licensing isn't possible I'll check out Reminderdental.  Thanks for the update!

[joedindo]

I’ve had several discussions with Gina and although they may have the best of intentions, they’ve never been able to get things going with licensing. After a year of working with them, it was clear to me that it was not getting anywhere and I also got the message that it wasn’t the highest priority. While we would have LOVED to have stayed with YAPI, the problems grew to the point where it was becoming unusable. I’m delighted to have found reminderdental and the price point is simply unbelievable.

[ralph]

We are still with lighthouse after 10 yrs plus.

Appts are confirmed(with some exceptions for patients local interface restrictions).

Daily Reports are now(in the last 8 weeks) meaningless! (as they are the wrong date!)

One thinks the end of convenience and efficiency is nigh.

[joedindo]

Great question!!  We started using automated text/reminder when they first came out with Lighthouse many years ago.  They integration worked great because the original developers had deep knowledge of PW.  As you know, other companies emerged and some had reported integration with PW.  We switched to Yapi because of the amazing paperless capabilities and other features. These worked well until we upgraded to V10 of PW. Apparently, Yapi and Carestream don't play well together so we have been forced to switch again. The ONLY 2 options I found, with legitimate integration, were Lighthouse and Carestream's e-services. I compared both and found that Carestream's Patient Manager had a slight edge in terms of the user interface. We will be going live next week (I hope).  

But, looking at the other options that are available for other PMS (e.g. OpenDental), I am VERY frustrated that we cannot use them. In speaking with those other companies, I have been told that Carestream's (so-called) Authorized Partner program is not conducive to a mutually beneficial business arrangement but I was not provided any specifics and I don't know if I am to believe them. I've also been told that PW is such a small platform with a declining user base that it's simply not worth it and that's something that I can believe.

I posted a few months ago asking about the future of PW and did receive a response with some assurance that PW will continue to be supported and updated but I haven't seen any compelling updates in the last year. Seems to me like Carestream's strategy is to deploy e-services that works with all of their PMS offerings and that is a smart business move for them. I truly hope that these e-services are as good but they do seem to have less features and a higher price point when compared to other options.

Finally, let me say that I believe PW to be a powerful PMS with some features that others simply don't come close to such as the contact experts and analysis experts. I use those features to extract tons of important practice data that I use to track our business performance which is invaluable to us. To my knowledge, no other PMS does this without having to get into expensive custom reports or having to learn SQL database queries (yuck!). If you know basic spreadsheet operations and have motivation to explore, the experts are infinitely more accessible and powerful.

[kellycacc]

Hello @joedindo,

I couldn't agree with your response to my post any more.  We also started with Lighthouse many years ago and moved to YAPI.  We switched back to Lighthouse last month after YAPI stopped fully integrating with PW.  That switch lasted one day.  Sadly Lighthouse does not compare to the features YAPI offers. After spending two weeks creating patient forms and working on the conversion to Lighthouse and realizing immediately it wasn't going to work, I actually told the Lighthouse rep "I think it would be easier for me to quit than to try to undo this."  Some tears were shed that day.

I'd love to hear how PW's e-services (specifically confirmations and patient forms) are going for you.  Our next step will be to try them, although I've not had success with some of the other e-services we've tried. We don't have interest in moving to Sensei and I worry that all the focus will be placed on Sensei and original PW users like ourselves will be left behind with few alternatives.  

If you have a moment to share your experience so far with PW confirmations/texting and patient forms I'd be so appreciative. 

Thank you!

Kelly

[joedindo]

I' m afraid that Patient Manager is simply not ready for prime time. It's lacking in many basic features and seems to be buggy. For example, it sends recall notices to patients who are already scheduled. We've already reported some bugs that they have had to fix. No problem but I didn't sign up to be beta testing at the rates that we are paying.

It's lacking many basic features.  For example, you cannot send an email with attachments to a patient. And it's limited in how many patients you can message because, for some odd reason, it cannot see all of your patients but only a subset who are scheduled soon.

Worse yet, support is S L O W!  Maddeningly slow no matter whether you call or email.  For example, I emailed them yesterday morning and, 24 hours later, no response. My office manager called them yesterday morning and still no response.  I've emailed Carestream and the Developer (Doctible) several times without a response. Sticking your head in the sand is hardly appropriate support.

I've avoided forms because it seems limited too and I didn't want to get into it quite yet. 

I wish I had better things to say I really do.  I have no incentive for the system to be in such poor shape. For all of its shortcomings, Lighthouse has the advantage of solid performance with solid support. I may well have to switch.

[tshaw]

Hi @joedindo, 
Thank you for the feedback. This is being investigated by our product team and I'll ensure they receive the info from this string of posts to take into account as well. 

[joedindo]

Happy to help

[kellycacc]

@joedindo Thank you for the feedback.  If you're interested in hearing our experience with Lighthouse you can email me at kelly@dentistryofrandolph.com  There are a couple of things I wish I'd known before I switched to them.  

Overall we are happy with YAPI with the exception of appointments not automatically confirming in PW when using PW version 10 and higher (it worked beautifully before then.)  I've got an idea regarding that and if I can work it out I'll let you know.

Kelly