ECW has brought me to the brink of retirement! Functionality is terrible. A 16 character password, are we trying to hide this from Al-Qaeda? There are approximately three screens where you can view current medications and in only one of those screens, can you actually work with the medication to make changes etc. in order to make changes in the current problem list on the right side bar there is no way to work with that list to prioritize things or remove an acute diagnosis that is no longer valid without clicking into yet a second screen. When adding a new diagnosis that immediately goes to the very bottom of the list and cannot be moved up on the side bar but once again, you have to return to that second screen. When attempting to go through a patient visit, you are presented with these narrow boxes in which you either type or dictate and once you finish, you are unable to view the full text and are forced to go back to the main screen to see the full text without having to scroll within the tiny box that is presented to you. When working in ROS (review of systems) upon opening a particular system, nothing is in alphabetical order, and there are multiple duplications. Customer service is poor. When problems are presented they are rarely addressed in a timely manner. In addition, every time they make a change, something else goes wrong! The most recent addition to his cadre of irritating problems is that when you touch the screen on your tablet, it highlights all of the text in blue, making it rather difficult to see what you have done. When typing or dictating symbols, such as the greater sign (>), the lesser sign (<) or even a hyphen (-) cannot be used. I am told that this may be a CMS mandate and if so, this is yet another example of the federal government making things as hard as possible for physicians. We were told when the mandate came down for EHR's it would be mandatory that they would all "talk" to one another. It has never happened and I do not foresee it happening in the near future. When comparing eCW to Epic for example well, there actually is no comparison, the functionality and the flow of Epic, which I have used at our hospital since about 2016, is intuitive, and generally smooth. That is not to say that Epic is the perfect EHR, I am certain there is not one. So when our over 100 provider multispecialty group when in search of a new EHR about three years ago because of our outdated previous platform that was not keeping up with CMS changes, a committee of physicians and individuals from our IT department reviewed multiple EHR's and did site visits. Everyone on that committee was in agreement that the best EHR platform for us would have been Epic however, a $14 million investment was not possible. Site visits can certainly be helpful. However, the company is obviously going to have you visit a site where for whatever reason, they have had success and satisfied providers. The weekend before we went live on eCW I did an Internet search. I honestly could not find one single positive review by a physician. This software is a disaster. We have had face-to-face meetings with eCW and virtually none of our major concerns have been fixed. The old saying that "you get what you pay for" has never been more true than it is for eCW. I suspect that when I finally make the decision to retire that I will feel pushed into it much earlier, because of this debacle called eCW.

We started eCW in 2020, after many prior "bugs" were worked out. It has saved our practice. We belong to a 150 physician group, who advised us to "Get eCW - if you possibly can - because it is the best for Family Practice and Internal Medicine". None of us like EMR's over paper - EMR's are a source of physician burnout. But, in order to survive in the current environment - you MUST use an EMR. We used eCW Televisits during COVID (for free). If we submitted a HELP ticket - we always got a response within a day. We are now doing full data migration and implementation. It is imperative that you build ICD-10 codes and CPT codes into favorites or templates, and you have to construct common templates for HPI or ROS - eCW will help you if you ask. The major hospitals are all going to EPIC - except VA and some rurals, which signed contracts with Cerner. Independent practices cannot have EPIC or Cerner (unless you are a group of 200+). All major insurances did an audit of our cases - 10 -20 cases each for Medicare, Medicaid, United, Cigna, BC/BS, etc. We could take our patient record and transmit it (along with all outside records) electronically to them - and survive. ECW has interoperabilty with EPIC, and ver. 12 will be even better. We currently get records from EPIC hospitals, through Healow Care-Connect. We can easily do electronic Rx and controlled Rx's on eCW. We invested in a fax server $2400 - and we can receive faxes and easily place them in a patient record. We failed 4 prior EMR's, but not this one. ECW has OUTSTANDING customer service! Also, many training videos and personal managers to help you navigate the building of your practice.
Much better than NextGen, Athena, and other stragglers that still exist - although Practice Fusion can be strong. A clinic needs a strong receptionist, biller, and IT help.

I can see that some of these reviews go back almost a decade, yet nothing has changed. We've been using eCW for 5 years now and it has unfortunately made me hate coming into work now. My frustration level is unbelievably high over everything that has gone, is going and continues to go wrong with this system.

IT support is a complete joke. You can NEVER get someone when you NEED them... you will always have to wait for them to call you back at THEIR convenience, which is in rare cases about 30 min, in some case days, but in most cases hours.
Every ticket seems to require them to log in and take control of my computer. Sometimes it requires them to maintain control of my computer beyond the phone call. I can't do my work when this happens. They also make changes that affect the whole practice, at times, when they are "testing" different settings to get something to work.

We are never informed ahead of time that there will be any kind of updates that affect staff's ability to do their job. Multiple times there has been updates that caused security permissions to change… So, if a user has the ability to update medications and eCW has changed a user security setting that allowed that and put that permission into a new security setting instead, then the user can't update medications until they are given the new permission that allows that. Problem… There are hundreds of security settings that I would have to scroll through and attempt by trial and error to find… IF I even knew that this is what the problem is in the first place! Or I could put a ticket in and wait hours for them to call me back to tell me "All you have to do is..." like I should have known what the issue and solution was ahead of time. We walk into these surprise updates all the time, and they can leave users unable to do their job. What's worse is that they ask ME if we just had an update!

They do not document ticket resolutions factually. They pick some macro that says they educated me on how to put some order in, or how to navigate the EMR, etc. that has nothing to do with my problem, rather than document the actual resolution to the issue.

ECW is insanely difficult to integrate with other programs, like a 3rd party check-in system. Do not be fooled, no external system can do any more than eCW can do itself. Rule of thumb, if eCW can't do it, neither can anyone else do it in eCW. It does not play well with others.

We waited 1 year for the Credit Card on File feature to work. It was changing the expiration date year to the current year instead of the actual year, so if a cc expiration date was 4/2024, the CCOF would save it as 4/2022. For a year, they would call me, ask to get logged in to my computer, ask me to show them the problem, then tell me they are elevating my ticket. After about the fifth time doing this I asked him to stop giving it to the person who keeps dropping it back down to his level. After a year it was finally fixed and it worked for 4 months and about 2 weeks ago it reverted back to changing the date again.

And prescriptions... now apparently we are supposed to know proper NDC codes for prescriptions. I was informed by eCW that it was the practice's job to map new NDC codes to medications. What?!? We are a medical practice, not a pharmacy! We know what a medication will do to (hopefully) help a patient, we have no clue what NDC code is supposed to go with what medication. The problem is that the medication will not get sent without the mapping.

I could go on, and on, and on, and on, and on... and I feel like "frustration" is a mild adjective for how I truly feel.
Seriously, if you are considering this system, just know you will likely come to regret it quickly.

TERRIBLE EMR! This is up there with Meditech. Not user friendly whatsoever. I'm fairly tech savvy and can learn to navigate and troubleshoot things on my own, but the amount of useless buttons, drop down menus, and windows to get anything done is time consuming and NOT user friendly. Poor integration between everything. I used Practice Fusion in my previous position and it was so well integrated with patients' charts that there was little stress in navigating through SOAP notes, labs, prescriptions, outside records, etc. Being able to create your own templates was so easy. With ECW there's just too much to click and figure out if the button is going to do what I want it to do. When I would hire on new providers at my last job, the set up was FAST. I could also schedule quick sessions with their tech support to train our new providers on how to use the EMR. Also, you can integrate an electronic system so that when it is received through your eFax (Updox), you can send it from the fax to the patient's chart WITHOUT HAVING TO SCAN IT. What a concept. I was surprised when I was told at my new job that MA's still scan documents. I feel like that would make their work flow more streamline and faster to get outside records for providers to look over. Less off everyone's plate.

With ECW, they said it's going to take up to 2 weeks for me to be able to e-prescribe. Also, I need to submit my actual signature to them which has taken 2 weeks so I can't sign my SOAP notes. Practice Fusion electronically signs everything. It has been a NIGHTMARE at my new job because now I'm going to have to go back and sign all my charts since my signature hasn't been put in the system yet.

The amount of time for me to write prescriptions, orders, and look over document has doubled since having to use ECW. I'm hoping the physician I work for will consider using Practice Fusion (and no I don't get money to promote that).

ECW just needs to be scrapped overall or COMPLETELY changed to a system that fits into present day.

I've used Cerner, Epic, Vista, Athena, and now tragically stuck with ECW. It's the saddest, slowest, outdated, user-unfriendly software to date with a myriad of flaws on a fundamental level. Let's see, no smart search, so you better type in "Ultrasound: Abdomen" EXACTLY or otherwise you get nothing. Want to order anti-CCP? Well they don't call it CCP; you have to type in "Cyclic citrullinated" to find it. Oh yeah, the default search setting is "Begins with," so you can't type "citrullinated," it has to be "cyclic." If you want amlodipine-olmesartan, you type "amlodipine besylate-olmesartan," otherwise nada. Have fun typing in "atorvastatin calcium," I mean who cares what salt it's bound to? Also, the first thing that pops up when you type amlodipine is not "amlodipine besylate" but "amlodipine benzoate" which is rarely used. In fact, you get a long list of meds when you type in something, most of which just aren't used in practice. Certain choices actually take you to a blank list, meaning the name is in the database but you can't actually order anything. So this is a big time waster for me. Speaking of nomenclature: ECW calls imaging "Diagnostic Imaging" and injections "Therapeutic Injections" in case you confuse therapeutic imaging with diagnostic ones and diagnostic injections with therapeutic ones. The best part is, they just call it "DI" and "T. Inj" without telling you what it is, and no doctor ever uses these acronyms, so you're kind of left in the dark. Guess what CDSS is? I still don't know what that crap means. You see, the folks at ECW have no relevant experience at all, so they just make up stuff that don't exist in clinical practice. Did I say it's also slow? Every click takes like 5 seconds. Logins take forever, telling me it's "building" my "user experience." More like, impeding patient care. Drug interaction warnings pop up before AND after you prescribe something, even on patients on no meds. I tried closing the order window real quick, but still pops up after. Great stuff. Re-ordering meds don't work because ECW keeps dropping the drug name. ECW defaults metformin and glipizide to daily dosing (standard bid). Good luck ordering a cream, because ECW doesn't tell you what quantity (mL) it comes in. I had so much fun looking up the mg and mL for every topical Rx. When you sign a note you have to click Done and then Lock it. More steps = better? Not sure. Everything is so goddamn slow. You wanna see some labs from 6 months ago? Close your current Lab window and find the one you want. No moving/adjustable windows, and you can't access ANYTHING ELSE while you're ordering, so you gotta remember every detail about that patient. Otherwise you have to close out of every window, which is often 2 or 3, to get to what you want, and then go back in. When you e-prescribe, you type the name of the drug you want, CLOSE OUT, GO BACK IN, then fill in the dose/schedule/refills/etc. Also: you can't change the diagnosis attached to a drug (and this is before signing, mind you), no drag-and-drop, nope, you have to DELETE it and start over again. Who thought of this stuff? I can't stand this trash anymore and I'm changing jobs ASAP. Hey ECW, I hope you go out of business!

EClinicaldoesn'twork, as wel called it, is very likely the worst product I have ever purchased. In this day and age of electronic devices and software that utilizes artificial intelligence, eCW or eCDW as we say just shows what a dinosaur it is. Compartmentalized, buggy, slow and crash prone, you have to click like crazy to get anything done, each time you click or change screen subjecting you to a crash. Not to sound one sided but I would say every freature, and that is a mixture of FREAK and feature, that is how bad this software is, is prone to fail. I am not kidding, whether it's the portals, interfaces, ordering system, labs, DI, whatever it is, almost every day it feels like we have to work around some feature of the software that just doesn't work.

Thankfully we had a server. For the first few months we did their online but were advised by multiple other victims of this software that the server is faster; it is. With their online cloud software any interference between your office and the eClincialdoesn'twork server will subject you to spectacular crashes and delays which is what happened to us. Don't get me wrong, this still happens using our own server but at least the problems are those inherent to this piece of junk, 1980's software 25 years past when it should have been low level formatted out of existence and not cloud based.

Their sales job is excellent, they over-promise but after that it's nothing but under-delivering. Pretty much every element of the software is awful. It's easy to learn because everything is clearly labeled and intuitive, it's just that the archaic interface and operation is very clunky so I would pretty much rate every element involved as tied for dead last. I am not sure I like anything about it so I will just say I hate it all the same as it's much easier to say that.

Furthermore, I will add that using eClinicalworks is downright dangerous to patient care. If a Doctor or other healthcare provider worked this badly they would have long since been sued, disbarred, lost their license, gone to jail and suffered catatstrophic legal consequences. Unfortunately eClinicaldoesn'twork, despite their minimal settlement from the DOJ last year, is still let loose upon the healthcare system and unfortunate unsuspecting American public. The only shockers there are not just how the DOJ did not close them down and slam them in jail like they deserve, but that it took them that long to apply such a minor slap on the wrist. There is no justice in this world.

I think the only thing eCW does well, other than its sales pitch of course, is confirm every negative stereotype of South Asians and Indians. That they do well, because when you call them no one speaks real English and the few mumbled accented words they provide are useless. They validate everything you say, agree slavishly without actually saying or doing anything useful. You have to spend hours waiting for them, talking to them as they uselessly click around all while you have to see patients that you wind up giving up and just dealing with the awful way it works, or as we have said since we "went dead" (not live) in the Spring of 2007, doesn't work, or eClincialdoesn'twork.

The sad part is that no other software that we have tried is much better. In the kingdom of the blind, those who are good liars and act to pretend having eyes that work are king because no one is there to prove that they are not. The truth is though, eClinicaldoesn'twork. Some day I hope they get theirs, until then, we are one click from an important eprescription not arriving, one click from a note disappearing, one click from important data not appearing, one click from disaster and a patient getting hurt. No thanks to eClinicalworks, I feel like the "thin blue line" and all the patients have from getting hurt because of this crappy software is me.

Stay away.

DO NOT USE eCW's RCM SERVICE (billing service)!

We used to bill in house and it was about as good as it could be, eCW's sale's team pitched how wonderful their RCM service would be at collecting, After about 30 years of all different kinds of "outside" (not in house) billing services their RCM was *THE WORST* They did not collect dime one for over 3 months. And payment on claims was typically 6 - 8 weeks, When we billed in house using eCW tools to scrub to clearing house ON the day of service we would get paid by Medicare within 2 weeks!

Not only did RCM mess up claims, they would leave them in the "problem" bucket and let give us a heads-up.

One particular problem was they were never, ever able to collect anything from Medicaid! We showed them repeatedly.

Emails about what they were doing simply went unanswered. We switched to them in January 2015, by mid March 2015 the average days in collections was 59! At one point, average days in collections exceeded 100 later in the year. Their solution was to write off the stuff they could have collected but didn't, then days in collections fell to about 50.

My impression is that eCW tried to move to RCM has been an attempt to increase revenue in the tightening world of EHR/EMR's, Actually before the move to RCM, I felt that the coordination of the EHR with the billing module which you could use relatively easily in house was pretty good.

RCM did such a very poor job of collecting on our bills (zero from Medicaid, very, very slow to recover from all the others, and don't get me started about VA HealthChoice) that it literally caused the closure of my previously thriving practice.

If I could give them negative stars I would. For a practice that used to make a very healthy practice, they left me over $30,000 in debt.

While they could not collect what was owed to us, they certainly hammered us to pay them for the crappy job they were doing!

This is the second to the worst I have ever seen ( Streamline is worse) the problems are too many clickings to get anything done- the e prescribing is extremely clumzy so that it takes a very long time to get anything done- I do like very much that it FINALLYwill let you know the prescriptions were sucessfully sent. Such irritation and hoplessness!
I just FEEL so much resentment and misery that I have to use this program and I refuse to work full time at this job ( though they have offered) because of the e clinical programl. Our EHR is a big part of the fabric of our lives- and a constant irritating sour note lowers the quality of our days
It seems each section was written by a differerent comittee and they paste them together with numerous clickings
We shouldn't have to go back and explain again WHY we prescribed what we did when it's already in the NOTE! REALLY!

One Doctor in a nearby town suffered from depression - after e clinical was introduced he tried- but eventually committed suicide. This was the last straw!

DIFFICULT to erase some things if it gets put in wrong
The review of systems so awkward its easier to just type things in
I better go back and finish my notes on E Clinical now I could go on for another hour on how this could have been done better for ease and elegance

I can't begin to tell you how frustrating it is to use. We are hosted (means the data rests on their servers). We have constant connection problems that they cannot fix. I don't believe it is connections so much as their servers are just overloaded or something like that. All other internet-based apps and connections we use work well. We have tested and retested our connections through our own IT department as well as from our ISP and it always tests out at peak. When you ask for technical assistance the techs are polite but usually very difficult to understand because of thick accents.

It is embarrassing to use this software, making patients wait while we restart it over and over and over again. If we don't restart the application before scanning insurance cards or drivers licenses the system crashes to desktop and we have to reboot the computer before proceeding. They have worked endlessly on this issue without resolution. Even a new computer with a new install did not resolve this and many other issues. Constant FTP server login failures. Freezes, disconnects, crashes to desktop. Productivity suffers a great deal just because of the constant performance failures of this software. Stability rating for this software would be 0 stars if possible.

The interface is clumsy and not very intuitive. In many things the information you need to get to is tucked away in separate screens that cannot be accessed from where you are at that time, forcing you to close down multiple layers of screens. The answer for them is to open another ECW and run two or more at the same time. It's clumsy and could have been avoided if they had thought about work flow when designing. This is just an example but clumsy work-flow is seen throughout much of the design. I would rate the interface at 2 stars.

While writing this review I tried to get a patient checked in and scan his drug card. I restarted ECW before scanning because long, painful experience has taught me never to try without doing so. Even so, on trying to scan the back of the card the software lost connection to the scanner forcing me to restart once again. Without exaggeration I would estimate at least 20 to 40 restarts during an average working day and can be more on heavy days. I would estimate FTP login failures at least at 10 per day.

Overall I would strongly recommend not using this EMR.

01/13/2006 Update:

After the Service Pack update now we have a new issue! It crashes to desktop spontaneously. What makes it even more fun is that if you are in an appointment setting dialog at the time of the crash (like what happened to me this morning) the window is locked for access when you get back so you cannot check the person in or out or update anything within the dialog window. This locking feature is something added with the latest update. It's a good idea since it keeps people from overwriting what you are doing but it's not well thought out. Progress notes are locked in this way as well as appointments. However, the Telephone Encounters are not! This is where we see the most danger of overwrite since Telephone Encounters are the place in each chart that has the most chance of being accessed by more than one person at a time. As per usual, ECW is clunky, not well planned or executed.

3. 17. 16 - It only gets worse. Now it tells me every morning just as we are opening for business that it cannot log into the FTP file server. This has been going on for several days now. Of course, that means no documents or files that rest on the remote server can be loaded. Nice! Please, this software is pure junk. Avoid it if at all possible.

We have been open for 26 minutes and I have restarted ecw 4 times!
8:30 am -- restart number 5! Docs won't attach to DI orders. Worse than usual. Glory! Using rabid hamsters high on meth to work the charts would be a more organized and efficient way of managing charts than ecw!

4. 5. 16 -- I'm on a mission at this point to make sure that anyone thinking of using this software is fully aware of the misery he or she is about to bring down on their selves and those around them. When trying to process an incoming referral there is NO WAY to add a doctor or clinic from the referral source without completely backing out of the incoming referral screens. This is just idiotic. Here you are trying to enter an incoming referral from a doctor or clinic you've not had contact with yet and you are several screens deep in the incoming referral process -- but you cannot add to the practitioner's database from here! You actually have to retreat out of several screens, back to the base ecw to access the practitioner's database and enter that information in, then return to the patient's chart and restart the incoming referral. It is absolutely insane. No designer in his or her right mind would do this.

I think it is VERY interesting that ECW does not have a rep that scans these reviews and replies. Either they just don't care or they are so ashamed of the product that they can't bring themselves to try to defend it.

9/21/16 Edit:
Well, we have been blessed with an update! Now, when one of us is in an encounter and the program crashes (as just happened to me... for the umpteenth time) when I try to get back into the encounter I was working on, I can't because it is "locked" by me! Brilliant!
Please, save yourself, your sanity and your soul by staying as far away from this torturous plague from the pit of hell as you possibly can. It is nothing but frustration. I am now contemplating joining a monastery in order to save what little is left of my emotional health.

Thought: if we would make captured terrorists use this program if they won't talk during interrogation I believe it would be more effective than waterboarding. Just a thought.

Edit 9/27/16
Just adding this to give you an idea of the support issues I've dealt with over the years. When we first got ecw we were able to use the handy little button labeled "Cancel" in the document management screen to cancel faxes from sending if we realized that we had a wrong number or such thing. After an update some time later that button didn't work anymore. We would get an error saying that it could not connect to the fax server. So, I put a ticket into ecw to get it fixed. They worked on this issue for a couple days, with multiple connections to the tech department and several people looking at it. Could not fix it. Gave up on it for a bit then tried again a few months later. Same result. Eventually, after several tickets we were told this function never worked and that it could not be fixed. We were actually told that this was never functional even though I explained that we used to use it! Could get nowhere with them on this issue.

A few days ago our local tech support was in house updating our virus protection. I asked the young lady if she could take a look at this issue. She had it fixed in under 5 minutes.

This is a typical story when dealing with tech support from ecw. Terrible language barriers, lack of knowledge and willingness to fix the issue. I wonder if other EMRs are like this?

If there is a negative star system, this would be negative 5 out of 5 stars. Horrible service. We were with ECW for 4+ years, and could not stand its non-existent support and customer service. We were pushed to sign up for support with a local company that even sucked more. We then switched to ECW headquater support, and just like other reviewers noted, they have no desire to help u, and they probably route the calls to India, because we could even barely understand their English. THey have no knoweldge of HL7, PQRS, MU, and they could barely help u on those after transferring u multiple times. Now, we cancelled the account, and eventhough we bought our software for a lot of money a few years ago, they tried to charge us for a quarterly support fee just to access the charts. I fought hard with them, and finally was waived for fees, but then my administrator account login got locked. Tried to get help from them, and they said there is only 1 person in the WHOLE ECW that could possibly unlock it, but she was gone for the week. This company grew too fast with little meris. I suspect whoever wrote a good review out there either is paid by the company to do so, or really have no clue of what a real job of an administrator or clinician does. We switched to Athenahealth and it was *******% better. I think ECW deserves a class action from all cancelled account holders again them on charging us a maintaince fee (this is like Microsoft said u cannot use your office 2007 until u pay it quarterly which is impossible.) U should be allowed to access and you your own software until one day u no longer needs it. There is a always a legal risk too of not able to accessing the patient's charts, and ECW said they don't care.