Each year CPR+ delivers one major upgrade that is announced and demonstrated at their Fall user conference.  2009 is no exception and this year the buzz is that CPR+ is releasing LIFE (Line Item Financials).  Simply put, this breaks out each invoice into multiple claims.  Gone is the limitation that you can only have money due from one payer at a time.  If you want to collect a co-pay up front from the patient prior to billing the insurance company, with LIFE you can do this without putting the money in unapplied cash.  There are many other reasons that this is a very good and needed upgrade.

However, it will not come without some serious consequences.  Consider this:

1. Line item financials will require a data conversion from your current data formats to the new data formats and there is no turning back.
2. The process changes required in your business are so significant that customers who wish to “get a LIFE” are required to go through training.
3. The 3 tables in the database that hold all of the invoice data will be expanded to 9 tables.  All custom reports you have written against these three tables will have to be reviewed, rewritten and retested as part of the implementation process.
4. The changes are so major that CPR+ is allowing customers to upgrade to 8.3 without “getting a life”.

There are more consequences, but these are enough to indicate that this is a serious upgrade.   When you ask for major change from your software vendor, what do you get?  Major change.  This is not like the interim updates and program fixes that are received throughout the year.  Read the release notes, listen to CPR+, pay attention, invest the time in testing and training and most of all, make sure you “need a LIFE” before you “get a life”.

Rock-Pond Solutions is working hard to stay on top of the changes at the data level.  We are identifying all of our reports that need to be changed and offering new versions (no cost) to our customers who need reports that support the new structures.  Our advice?  Be sure and call us before you “get a LIFE”.  You’ll be glad that you did.