Hi, I work in tech support on the Medilink Assist national help desk supporting MedilinkXP (Medical Billing with eClaims / Appointment book software) and Medilink Clinical (Clinical Progress notes, Pathology requests and Medical Script prescriptions for patients software).
The Medilink practice management suite is a proprietary software solution for Windows only with a price tag of around $2500 for single user and $550 for additional workstations along with $297 to keep the software up-to-date. The Clinical module is around $1400 with additional workstations around $300. The average specialist practice has around 3 users of the billing/appointment software and 1 or two clinical modules (for each provider practicing there). GPs and larger specialist practices have a much greater number of reception PCs and practicing doctors (some of which need to access the database remotely) so it can get quite expensive, even though they do have a generous amount of money to spend on the practice. The main concern is storing patient records in a proprietary format, talking about the biggest supplier and main competitor, HCN, with their practice management software, PracSoft, and clinical software, Medical Director, used in the majority of GPs, or BlueChip, used in the majority of Specialists (not to give away any inside information about Medilink); their products are subscription-based and you must have a current yearly subscription to use the product; not that there the product isn't good in a year's time, it's just in read-only mode; HCN's way to make sure everyone is up-to-date (as medical information and Medicare schedule rates change over time). Exporting patient files, with the patients details (name, DOB, sex, Medicare number, etc.) from HCN's software is possible as they can be exported from the program as a delimited text file (patients.out), but the patient's billing history, etc. cannot be imported into another medical practice suite and the database isn't accessible without HCN's access (logged in with a valid logon). Now, this type of software is the perfect candidate to be on an open platform (which some medical practices use Linux to store a flat-file database on), and with simple google seaches I've found some open-source Medical Billing/Appointment book practice management suites, but they were all on 0.x releases and unsuitable for the Australian medical billing system, with no mention to Medicare. Has anyone found anything for Australia; I'd be interested in following the development for a Linux/multiplatform open-source practice management suite suited to Australia's medical/Medicare standards. I post on behalf of myself, for my interests and the community's interests only and not an employee of Medilink. Thank you, Armin Marth -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
