Practice Fusion

[mbloom]

I am just curious about WHY this product is absolutely free. As a biller it concerns me because it belongs to Kareo- who not only sells a billing component but offers billing service as well. With EMR becoming a requirement, I just wonder if there is a catch?? Any thoughts???  I saw a previous post about these companies wanting to "partner" to get you to sell their product....but again- thats not the case here because it is free..

[RichardP]

Practice Fusion had a partnership with Kareo - which has since been dissolved.  Kareo has their own EMR now.  Kareo has never "owned" PF.

If you use the "free" version of PF, you get advertising presented to you at specific intervals.  If you want to avoid the advertising, you must pay a small fee.  (Edit:  Or use Mozilla Firefox with adblock.)

As is the case with most folks who start businesses on a national scale, I'm sure the plan is to grow the user base to a certain size and then sell the business for a bazillion bucks.  It's the American way.

[gurumedbill]

Richard is exactly right that Kareo has never owned Practice Fusion but they used to have a good relationship with a sub par interface to each other.  The relationship has since taken a turn for the worse and they are no longer official partners.
Why they are free is pretty simple and I think Richard is pretty accurate.  I also think they will begin to charge in the future because they will be able to.  Let's say they have 200,000 providers (which will probably happen in the next several months or year) and they say we are going to start charging $25 a month per provider.  That is an extra 5 million dollars a month.  Almost no one will leave for only $25 a month.  The headache to learn a new software and get their data out of Practice Fusion would not be worth leaving.  If Practice Fusion doesn't do this then whoever they end up selling to will. 

[tallmanusa]

PF is free and also very good. Most people who use it like it, better than some paid EMR.
They have competition, office ally charges a very small fee for EMR, and free PM.
I see no reason why anyone should pay for EMR.
I don't think PF will be charging anyone. The major competition is from Kareo, Nuesoft, AdvancedMD, Carecloud, ECW and dozens of others who give out free EMR and PM for doing billing at 4% or less. Of course they send all the work offshore.
Try getting a new client these days, see who you are competing with.

[mbloom]

Thanks guys!!

[PMRNC]

http://www.emrandhipaa.com/emr-and-hipaa/2013/08/21/practice-fusion-violates-some-physicians-trust-in-sending-millions-of-emails-to-their-patients/

FREE is not always best!! You get what you pay for!

[mbloom]

oh wow!

[camedbill]

http://www.emrandhipaa.com/emr-and-hipaa/2013/08/21/practice-fusion-violates-some-physicians-trust-in-sending-millions-of-emails-to-their-patients/

FREE is not always best!! You get what you pay for!

Awesome articles! Thanks for the links!

[medwave]

Rather than try to explain it myself, although I could, let's just go with the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of applications that utilize the Freemium model.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemium

Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium", is a pricing strategy by which a product or service (typically a digital offering or an application such as software, media, games or web services) is provided free of charge, but money (premium) is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical (offline) goods. The business model has been in use by the software industry since the 1980s as a licensing scheme. A subset of this model used by the video game industry is called free-to-play.

Ways in which the product or service may be restricted in the free version include:

• Limited features: A free video chat client may not include three-way video calling. Most free-to-play games fall into this category, as they offer virtual items that are either impossible or very slow to purchase with in-game currency but can be instantly purchased with real-world money.
• Limited capacity: For example, SQL Server Express is restricted to databases of 10GB or less.
• Limited use license: For example, most Autodesk or Microsoft software products with full features are free for students with an educational license. (See: Microsoft Imagine.) Some apps, like CCleaner, are free for personal use only.
• Limited use time: Most free-to-play games permit the user to play the game consecutively for a limited number of levels or turns; the player must either wait a period time to play more or purchase the right to play more.
• Limited support: Priority or real-time technical support may not be available for non-paying users. For example, Comodo offers all its software products free of charge. Its premium offerings only add various kinds of technical support.
• Limited or no access to online services that are only available by purchasing periodic subscriptions

[PMRNC]

just to correct one of the above posts..EHR is not required for all... my clients all opted out of Medicare/Medicaid and are not required to use one and when they came out I predicted this mess we are in now with it...ransomware, breaches, billing companies NOT providing their own risk analysis and relying on the covered entities to do it which many don't..it's a breeding ground for a potential disaster that is GOING to happen. EHR doesn't do what it was supposed to do in more than half of the practices using them. Patients HATE them, most don't know what to do with their info, don't know their rights and don't want to read 100 pages of legal mumbo jumbo.. As a patient myself i'm finding them DANGEROUS and i predict in future more restrictions will be put forth to protect patients that will pretty much make the EHR useless.  State hubs? Federal hubs?  When our own govt can't stop ransomware, can't stop breaches. More patients are doing what I do. I have a legal OPT out.. my info gets transmitted NO WHERE I don't authorize.  EHR vendors came out of the woodwork and still they are sneakier and peskier than the PM system vendors if that's possible. So glad I don't pay for any of this.