UPDATE ON THE ALBERTA BILLING MODULE - NEW MODULE IS BEAUTIFUL!!!!!

Well - I've been trying to get a billing module going since I started using OSCAR in 2009.  Since that time, I've been a lot of money and time trying to get a functional billing system going with no luck.  As a result of my efforts since 2009, at least 5 programmers have been hired and paid for - with no results.

I spoke to a friend about the rotten luck I've had with programmers - and he opined that my experiences were not unusual in the industry.  The reason, he conjectured, was that the field of programming is sorely in need of going to the next level.  In other words, they need to become "PROFESSIONALS".  What they need is a Professional Society to help them achieve a minimal set of standards for their administration and conduct.  The Professional society would be self policing and self funded - much like Physicians, Nurses, Engineers, Lawyers, etc.

But I digress.

When I was asked to look at a demo of a billing program for ALBERTA OSCAR today - I was expecting very little.  In fact, I was expecting to be disappointed with another iteration of the rather disappointing billing screens that are used for Ontario and BC.

I was rather hoping for a much better type of billing screen for Alberta - but I had long almost given up on this....and had learned through disappointing recurrent experiences that programmers are more likely to NOT deliver on promises than to come through.

To say I was blown away and impressed as hell is a considerable understatement!

The billing screen for Alberta OSCAR is a beautiful and modern thing to see.  The design, the thoughtfulness in the presentation and organization of the fields....the awareness of a Physician's workflow and billing needs - appears to have all been considered!  These guys are impressive!

The billing screen has the look of an elegant presentation with clean lines, easily readable fonts and a very modern feel that folks have come to expect and associate with higher end computing environments like those seen on a Mac.  The older and "outdated" 1980's look and feel that one sees on OSCAR is gone on the new Alberta OSCAR billing screen - and it has been replaced with this new modern look and feel.

There is still more work to do, and a private billing module will be added.  But what I have seen today has renewed by enthusiasm and restored by faith in the programmers!  These guys have really come through, and I'm exited to see what they churn out in the next month or two!

More soon!

JF

Update on the Alberta Billing and Labs module for OSCAR



Well - after my 4th kick at the can to get this done, I have learned a lot with my latest failure.

Basically, the Programmer that was hired to do the job - took the money and then basically quit due to personal problems (a divorce).    This was my 4th try at getting this done with no success.  Apparently, almost half of the necessary coding was done - but half of nothing is still nothing.....so I'm back to square one.

The NERD folks are amazing - and they got unfortunately "taken" by the well respected programming company as well.  NERD lost their own time, money and efforts on this project and they realized that the scope of the project was beyond their abilities.  They donated a heck of  a lot of effort to this project, and I will be forever grateful to them.

NERD decided that creating a billing/lab module for Alberta is beyond their scope.

This is a sign of a great company that is run by great people.  The most important thing a company can do is to define and limit their scope - and to stick with what they do well.  Steven Jobs did EXACTLY the same thing on his "Apple" product development mountain retreats - with eventually spectacular success.

The NERD folks are still my OSCAR providers, and I am proud to have them.


So I stepped back to analyze the problem from a wider perspective.

Basically, the problem is that other than my own personal convenience - there is no "incentive" out there to get a billing/lab module done.  Programmers have a LOT of well paying oil companies to choose from in Alberta, and when they run out of Oil Companies, there are innumerable industries with deep pockets ready for them with welcoming arms.

Also: apparently, Programmers have to eat and they don't like living in homeless shelters.

Some people in the Open Source community may be critical of the programming community's aversion to poverty, but it seems somewhat reasonable to me as I type this from my comfortable chair in my nicely appointed office in a nice house in an upscale community in one of the world's most expensive cities in a fabulously wealthy province in the best country in North America with the highest standard of living on the planet and possibly the universe.

OSCAR is spectacularly successful as an open source project largely because of the amazingly generous contributions of the folks from McMaster.  Their personal contributions as well as the contributions of the OSCAR community and McMaster keep OSCAR constantly growing and evolving to be the success that it is.

But doing a billing/lab module for each province is probably beyond the scope of the abilities of the OSCAR community at large right now, and this will not be likely to change over the next few years.  B.C. has a billing module as well as a lab module, but I understand that both of them have something to be desired.

Ontario's billing/lab module is apparently better, but both could also apparently use improvements.

Also; getting a billing/lab module built to a high standard is only part of the challenge.  Maintaining it and evolving it are also necessary and expensive.

With programmers busily picking the low hanging fruit out there (i.e.. OIL INDUSTRY) - there just is not enough lack of competition for their skills and time to keep their prices down and their focus on OSCAR billing/lab module development.

So - what are we to do?

The answer is already underway and will be probably operational within the next 3-4 months.  A company is simply going to develop a commercial "plugin" for OSCAR for profit.  Open source enthusiasts (of which I am one) may clamour that this violates the precepts of the much touted open source concept - but at the end of the day, we have to get real.....this is not a violation of the open source concept at all.

You can't have something for nothing.  Programmer need both payment and incentive.  These fine folks (the programmers that are building a billing/lab module for Alberta) seem to be motivated and they possess the necessary expertise to get a billing/lab module built for OSCAR in Alberta.  It will function as a plugin - and these folks may replicate this process for other Provinces.

Therefore, for a modest cost - you can have a high end, always evolving and maintained Billing/Lab module for your Province for OSCAR.  Open source pundits may disagree with this approach, but quite frankly, I've been going at this since 2009 and I have not seen a better or more viable solution.

Rather than burning their underwear in protest and screaming epitaphs about how this approach may violate the open source spirit - we open source enthusiasts should consider a better approach for the viability of the open source concept - which is to embrace this commercial "plugin" approach - and accept the inevitability of an eventually strengthened overall product that will always remain at its core, "open source".

So I'm going to give this a try and I'm going to promote this approach for Alberta.

There is  a lot of interest in OSCAR in Alberta - and the only thing holding the deployment of OSCAR back from widespread deployment in this province, is the lack of a billing/lab module for OSCAR.

Well - it is now on the way (for a modest fee)!

We will see where this new approach takes us!

Stay tuned for an update within a month.

WTF? Why isn't the Alberta Module done yet?

GOOD NEWS!!!!! - OSCAR FINALLY HAS SOME CONCRETE PROGRESSION!

I know what you are all thinking......

"WTF? - where is the Alberta Module and why has it taken so long?"

Here is the explanation and FINALLY - some hope!

It turns out that Programmers don't have a professional society. As such, they are not compelled to always act professionally. It is easy to forget that as Physicians, where we work in a profession that is self regulated to the highest standards of any profession. And we tend to take that for granted. I suppose I never really appreciate that until I became dependent upon programmers to get this project going. Maybe some day, there will be a Professional Society of programmers - but until then, it is more difficult than you might imagine to find a programmer with a professional level of conduct.

Like any field, there are good eggs and there are bad eggs.

It would seem that with programmers, I had managed to find more of the former than the latter.

The last programmer that we had working on this project stated personal problems - and for that reason, she simply stopped working on the project. Her work was contracted through a manager who brokered her work on the project. He apparently never bothered to pay her, despite his having being paid......it turned out to be quite a soap opera that resulted in little more than frustration and additional delays.

Thankfully, the programmer that quit on the project - ended up at least making good on her obligations during her exit, and had documented her code well enough that she was able to communicate to the next programmers.

NOW - we have two OSCAR Provider services and three full time programmers that are intimately familiar with OSCAR - working on the Alberta Billing and Lab Module. This is a MUCH better way to get this sort of project done - and it will FINALLY get this project completed, probably by late spring at the latest.

We still need about $15,000 for programming costs. We are hoping to raise this by having new OSCAR users in Alberta contribute about $2000 (though any amount would be welcome) in exchange for a very cheap rate on a professional OSCAR installation.

This is really a great deal - you get OSCAR installed by real pro's - which means that it will be PROPERLY installed (very important). Then you get the billing/lab module installed when it is ready to go. The module will have a private billing module as well so that you can keep track of non-insured billings, etc.

If you want OSCAR - just let me know and I'll get you in touch to get this process going for you! You won't be sorry!

Contact me at:

drjohnf@me.com

I look forward to hearing from you!

The current status - my server DIED!!!!!

I got a call at 05:00 on Sunday morning....not all THAT unusual with my practice....but still not fun. It was the security guy from my office. Apparently, a "bad surge" hit my office and the power was out. I headed over there to try to see how my status was....and my server DIED.

My APS was also fried - and it did NOTHING to save my server! My backup server was okay, but was not operating quite properly....so the NERD BC guys were "on the job" immediately.

I have to say - these NERD BC guys are truly amazing when it comes to availability and when it comes to solving weird problems. They're going to go far. I'm very happy to be working with this brilliant and forward thinking team of two young men.

My offsite backup was thankfully just fine, and so they they uploaded the backup to my backup server while I get the primary server fixed.

They installed the 64 bit version of Ubuntu first...followed by OSCAR 10.06 - and I am IMPRESSED with how much better and faster this is! I'm installing more RAM tomorrow - just bought 4 more Mb RAM for each server, so I'll have a total of 8 Mb per server now. Apparently, I'll have even more performance once I get this going (on top of my 32 Gb SSD Hard drives).

I'm going to install a new APS on each server - and THIS time, I'll set them up properly with a USB data controller to turn off the servers if they are about to fail (and email me with a status).

The billing/lab module is about 70% complete now. Things will go faster now, as the Programmer (very talented) has brought her knowledge of the project up to snuff and is now basically coding on it full time. I think that a more realistic timeline for testing the finished product prior to deployment will be the 3rd week or so of November.

Where are we? HERE WE ARE! Final Strech

We are starting to receive some pledges for helping to fund the last 100 or so hours of programming for the Alberta Billing and Lab module. This is becoming a life saver, because it is not cheap, and even OSCAR programmers need to eat more than just Ichiban.

The programmer, I am told, has not been coming up much for air lately - and she is a very talented (and I'm told good-looking) programmer. I hope to meet her one day (not because of her looks - I'm married to a devastatingly beautiful woman already).

More Physicians are contacting me about OSCAR and there seems to be a lot of genuine interest in OSCAR in Alberta. Within just 2-4 weeks, we should have finally an Alberta Billing and Lab module for OSCAR.

I have recently installed Netcare in my office. This is a wonderful thing that has made a real positive difference to patient care - and it saves me hours per week.

I'm normally happy to enthusiastically criticize the Provincial Government.....but I have to grudgingly agree - NETCARE IS BRILLIANT. Whoever was responsible for coming up with the idea, will probably save countless numbers of lives, countless suffering and countless Health Care Dollars. Whoever you are: Thank-you.

We will attempt to also build a Netcare connection to OSCAR, as this is a logical next step.

Many have asked me why I am not pursuing VCUR compliance to receive POSP funding from the AMA.

My answer is: what for?

POSP funding is a nightmare of paperwork that gives Physicians grey hair and high cholesterol....and the costs of OSCAR are so insignificant, that the hassle of obtaining POSP funding for it does not seem to be worth it to me. It will be interesting to see how this issue evolves....but we will perhaps go after VCUR compliance after these several things are done:

1) Alberta Billing and Lab Module Complete

2) Alberta Netcare interactivity module complete

3) OSCAR ISO certification complete (being worked on by fine folks)

4) OSCAR takes over most EMR installations in Alberta

Feel free to contact me at any time at:

Drjohnf@me.com

My Twitter is at:

@Drjohnf8

Billing/Lab module has a light at the end of the tunnel.....

Alas, we now have a light at the end of the tunnel with respect to Alberta's Billing and Lab module.

And no worries - we are keeping it totally "open source", which means that everyone will be able to have access to it.

This has been difficult and expensive. Anybody that would like to contribute funds towards this (to help alleviate the financial pressure on me) would be most welcomed! To be a wonderful, benevolent and altruistic spirit - please feel free to email me at:

drfernandes@me.com

if you'd like to be able to help me accelerate development with a little infusion of additional funding for this project.

Hopefully we'll be able to beta test by mid-October to late October. I fully intend that I will not see 2012 without a functioning Alberta billing and lab module for OSCAR.

I've started an OSCAR Alberta discussion newsgroup - much like the BC group, but it is intended for OSCAR Alberta specific concerns and discussion.

Anybody that is interested in this newsgroup is welcome to join up! There are not a lot of members yet, but perhaps more will join in time. Within the next few weeks, there will be a few clinics in Alberta that have adopted OSCAR. I hope to have these clinic members participating on this list.

To subscribe to the OSCAR ALBERTA newsgroup - please feel free to visit the following link:

https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/oscaralberta-discussions

Because things are starting to heat up on the OSCAR Alberta Front....I am going to post at least once every couple of weeks with an update as to our progress.

John Fernandes.

OSCAR-ALBERTA: failed attempt initially - but rebooting now

OSCAR-ALBERTA development has not progressed as fast as I had hoped, for many reasons.

The task was daunting, and my initial approaches did not bear fruit.

HOWEVER - I'm trying a new approach. The OSCAR-ALBERTA billing and lab modules will be all open source and available to anyone that wants it. I hope to have some real progress by September.

I will personally bear the costs of this venture - and will give it away. So anybody that has a mind to help my pay for this would be most welcome. I estimate that I'll have to collect about $10k or so (conservatively......just getting an estimate figured out now). Altruism is great - but it's hard to do it all by yourself.....but I will if I have to.

In the mean time, please feel free to subscribe to the OSCAR-Alberta list server on Sourceforge.

Please go to the following website and register for inclusion on the newsgroup server:

https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/oscaralberta-discussions

This is basically a service where subscribers have the ability to post any OSCAR-Alberta related question - and get an answer from other subscribers. The BC list is very good, and has a strong user base. The users help each other with all things OSCAR - and this is one of the many things that makes OSCAR unstoppable.

So please sign up and feel free to ask or answer as you like. No questions are too simple, and all comments and questions are most welcome!

I'd like to build a large user base for the OSCAR-ALBERTA List Server.

I remain the ongoing optimist!

JF