OpenEMR vs ClearHealth

jabellon wrote on Sunday, June 12, 2005:

I have a few questions and have been wondering …

I recently found a link, via one of the coments made in this forum, about ClearHealth.
It seems that it is based on OpneEMR (maybe from original code from Pennfirm ??, I am just guessing ).
Does anyone has an idea or knowledge about it ?
What happened to Pennfirm after the transfer of the code to sourceforge, are they still supporting or developing OpenEMR ? What happened to that fine young man, Mr. Pennington ?

… a wondering mind wants to know …

I will need to decide and switch soon… but I have so many questions holding me back, like:
How can I transfer some of the last 12 years worth of data ?
Is OpenEMR ready ?  ( Am I ready for it ? )
As most of you must have guessed: I AM GOING TO NEED LOTS OF HELP.
I will need a tarball or better yet an RPM with everything included: OpenEMR, FreeB, Forms, ICD9, CPT codes; and of course an easy tool to modify the forms, etc wouldn’t be a bad idea !!!

Please help.

I’ve been following this forum since it started, and I really feel confortable with everyone of you guys who post here, so I don’t feel embarassed to acknowledge how little I know about programing or Linux in general, although as an end user I do know what I want the program to do.

You may answer to me here or directly to juan at wellkids dot org if you care to, and I do hope you will …

Thanks to all

sunsetsystems wrote on Sunday, June 12, 2005:

I responded to Dr. Juan separately, to recommend that he let me build a preconfigured server for him.  Converting from another EMR or PM system will be nontrivial.

Clearhealth is new software and seems to still be in testing and development.  Dunno about Walt, he’s been pretty quiet…

– Rod <rod at sunsetsystems dot com>

drbowen wrote on Sunday, June 12, 2005:

I have been using OpenEMR since 1-1-2004. I estimate it is saving me about $80,000 a year in transription fees, employee benefits, paper, and toner.  My productivity has increased dramatically so that I am seeing more people and keeping up with my charting and getting on time more.

The original code was developed at

http://www.synitech.com/

The last verison I have seen from Synitech is 2.0.  I started with version 1.7.

Walt Pennington of PennigntonFirm and his employees made many major alterations and additions to the code and published versions 2.0+ through 2.7.1.

David Uhlman has moved on from PenningtonFirm and started his own company Uversa, and has started developing ClearHealth.  He has been joined there by the John Trotter.

David Uhlman and John Trotter have borrowed some code from FreeMed and OpenEMR (the parts they liked) and have written everthing else from scratch.  John Trotter was the lead developer of FreeB 1.0.  FreeB is being rewritten in PHP (instead of PERL) and reportedly is a major part of ClearHealth.

Back to OpenEMR.

I have only implemented the EMR portion and have not tried to go live with the billing portion.

>How difficult is it to implement it ?

The EMR portion is easy.  The billing part is hard.

I run linux in my production environment.  The thing that attracted me to OpenEMR in the first place was the clean uncluttered look and it was the easiest open source solution to install.

I installed the EMR portion yesterday on my Windows 2003 server.  It went as easy as linux and seems to working flawlessly.  I did not have to make any special modifications.  I am working on writing a Windows HOWTO today for the EMR portion.  I am hoping to publish this later today on the SourceForge forums and also in the wiki at:

http://www.oemr.org/OenEMRWiki

>Can the previous balances be transfered via an script, who
>can help with it ?

Nikolai Vitsyn here in my office does this kind of work on the side.  Writing this type of script depends somewhat on how clean the data is in your existing system How the data is stored etc.  Which billing system are you running and how is the data stored?

There are others around who have the skill to do this.  Several of whom are doing this commercially.  Try this link:

http://www.openemr.net/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewforum&f=5&sid=842cd6e07d8b4edf0304819f25d8e46c

>What would happen to the previous database if they change it
>later on, specially the office visits ?
>

We have had little trouble migrating each version to the newer ones.  The system is very modular and the forms from the older version seem to be perfectly at home with the newer versions.

Migration usually involves writing a script that maps the old tables onto the new tables.  None of the old data is lost.  Usually there are just some new colums in a small portion of the tables.

As an example: the "encounter table" has two new columns that allows post-dating of visits.  This is usually necessary in posting hospital charges because the practitioner is frequently turning in the chrges after the date on which they occured. The addition of the two new date fields in no way changes the way the old data is stored or works.

The developers are very cognizant of the problem of introducing changes that interfere with the way old data is kept. Tekkno Genius is a SQL database expert and very cautious about this.  He is contemplating making some significant database changes that should make the whole sytem cleaner and faster.  The first thing he did was to raise the option for public comment before he considered making any changes at all.

Do you have an IT person working with you or are you "hacking" it on your own?

I’ve been working on documentation so I’m trying to write up step by step procedures for everything I do.

>Juan " a lost pediatircian "
>
We were all lost when we first started.

Sam Bowen

drbowen wrote on Sunday, June 12, 2005:

Oops. Typo.

http://www.oemr.org/OpenEMRWiki

synseer wrote on Monday, June 13, 2005:

Hi. My name is Fred Trotter. John Trotter is my brother/uncle/grandfather.

Thanks,

drbowen wrote on Monday, June 13, 2005:

I apologize Fred. I guess I was up to late on call.

remoore wrote on Saturday, June 18, 2005:

OK,
let me see if I have this right,
It seems from the discussions here and in the other openemr vs. clearhealth thread that much of the actual note portion (EMR) of the programs are similar but the billing portions are handled differently.

If I take the time to develop encounter templates for open EMR to see if it will be useful tome, how hard would it be to transfer those to clearhealth or vice versa?

and, there is very little in the wiki about how to make templates for encounters that I can find.  Is that information in another place perhaps?

andres_paglayan wrote on Saturday, June 18, 2005:

for the forms, please refer to the appropriate thread,
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=1303551&forum_id=202504