O Billing, Where Art Thou?

Here at SOAPware we get a large number of calls inquiring as to the status of our Billing application with the #1 question being, when will it be released. I wanted to take a few moments to talk about the past, where we are and where we are going with this application.

To put it simply the Billing product has been quite the adventure for us over the past couple of years. We originally licensed a billing system to integrate into SOAPware but during that process we had a key member of our team pass away. This was certainly a shock to us all, and obviously delayed our progress towards having an integrated Billing system. We decided at that point to seek outside help to complete the integration in hopes of getting Billing to market as fast as possible. As we neared completion of the project though, we started to see what we felt were some rather large problems that would have to be addressed.

Without going into too much detail, we started to understand that the technology that the billing system was built on (which was different than what SOAPware is built on) presented some logistical problems in terms of installation on newer operating systems such as Vista. It also became apparent to us that there were a number of licensing concerns beyond the Billing and SOAPware applications that was pushing the price of the product into a range that we weren't comfortable offering to our customers. Because of these and other factors, we decided to stop development on what could be considered a nearly completed product. These types of decisions are very difficult to make but it's one that had to be made for the betterment of the Billing product and SOAPware as a whole.

From that point, we went back to the drawing board and started over. We began work last year creating our own Billing system built on the technology that our entire product line is built on. We quickly found out though that we now had a different problem on our hands. SOAPware (the EMR software) needs constant attention. Things are changing so fast in the medical world that as a development team we are always working on adding new features and addressing standards such as CCHIT. We were trying to add new features, address standards, and develop Billing in very short time frames. Important issues, such as quality control in SOAPware, were falling through the cracks.

Once we identified that the quality control was becoming a major problem in SOAPware, we had stop, go back to the drawing board, and figure out a way to do all the things we want while maintaining quality and production throughout our product lines. This effort is what Dr. Oates refers to in his latest blog posting . What this means to billing is that we now have a dedicated team working on the billing product to ensure its success, and a dedicated QA team to insure it's quality.

Back to the question of when billing will be released. We get this question on a daily basis and it's been a difficult one for us to answer because of the fast changing nature of the EMR side of the software. Now that billing has a dedicated team, we can more acutely estimate our resources and dedicate time towards the project. The answer to when it will be released is that it is very likely to be the 4^th quarter of 2009. If that estimate changes for whatever reason we will let you know through the blog as soon as we know. It's our intent, moving forward, to keep you as informed as is possible on the status of our billing product.

If you have taken the time to read all of this, I hope that you take the time to sign up and follow this blog. Over the next few months, I will post updates on the Billing project with the intent of keeping you as informed as possible. If there is any specific issue you would like me to blog about pertaining to billing, please let me know.