CCHIT’s Physician’s Guide to Certification for 08 EHRs includes a list of 10 questions you should ask your prospective vendor. What are Sevocity’s answers?
1. Tell me about your company. How long have you been in business? How many employees do you have doing development and offering technical service?
A: Sevocity is a division of Conceptual MindWorks, Inc. (CMI). CMI has been in business over 18 years. Sevocity has 5 developers/programmers and 3 additional staff providing technical service.
2. How many physician practices do you serve? What size are they? May I speak with a few of them?
A: Sevocity currently serves over 600 users. Our customers range in size from 1 provider practices to those with over 100 providers. Prospective customers are always welcomed and encouraged to speak with our existing customers.
3. How do you license your product-for a term or perpetually, by physician or user?
A. Sevocity is an Application Service Provider (ASP) product. We offer 1, 2 and 3 year terms with renewal. Our customers’ data is guaranteed via the contract to be made available in an industry standard format.
4. What are your maintenance or support fees? Do they cover product upgrades?
A: Our monthly fees are $450-$525 per provider and include everything – all features and functionality, ongoing training, 24/7/365 support, maintenance, upgrades.
5. What are your service policies and guarantees?
A. We provide live customer support 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for all customers at no additional charge. Our contract guarantees system availability and we have consistently exceeded those availability requirements. Sevocity’s availability is constantly monitored by automated systems and personnel. The best industry standards are followed to ensure system availability, back-ups and redundancy. As a result, we consistently average system availability of over 99%.
6. In addition to what I can expect from CCHIT Certified interoperability, what will I pay for other desired interfaces to products or sources of information?
A: Sevocity never charges for standard HL7 interfaces and there is no limit on the number of HL7 interfaces a practice can have in place. This includes Practice Management systems, labs, equipment, etc. We believe the term Electronic Health Record implies interoperability and that low (or no) cost for interoperability is fundamental to making interoperability a reality.
7. Are there third-party costs for modules or components bundled with your product? Will I need to buy some third-party products independently to make your product perform as demonstrated?
A: There are no 3rd party costs for Sevocity or any of its functionality. Sevocity bears the cost of all 3rd party components. The cost of using these features and data is included in the regular monthly fees.
8. Tell me about your implementation and training services. What do they cost? How long will it take until my practice is successfully up and running using your product?
A: Implementation and training is $800 per provider and includes workflow analysis, hardware analysis, customizations and web training. Most customers use only web training, however, on-site training is available for an additional $1500/day plus actual travel expenses. We are able to take most customers live within 30-60 days of contracting. After go live the transition period depends upon the practice, personnel and the ramp-up method selected. However, most practices are fully using Sevocity within 90 days of implementation.
9. Are you willing to put these terms in a sales agreement?
A: Yes. Our standard contract addresses the majority of the questions in this document.
10. What are your plans for staying up-to-date with CCHIT’s certification requirements?
A: Sevocity plans to be certified each year. We also plan to certify for Child Health for 2008. Our next release is October 11, 2008 and will include a majority of the 2008 requirements. Our following release is scheduled for 1Q 2009 and will include the remainder of the new 2008 requirements and at that time we will apply for 2008 certification.