Experience in thousands of practices has allowed us to develop a series of steps that make the transition as painless as possible, ensuring a high success rate. Once we have performed a needs requirement of your practice, we establish a time line for smooth implementation, including;

• Initial practice assessment
• Assessment of data set-up and conversions
• Staff and practitioner training
• The setting of a go-live date
• Follow up and support.

Eminance isn’t a 10 year old medical program with a few new features grafted on. It’s a new program, built from the ground up that’s specifically designed to help you maximize the benefits of technology in the practice today. In fact the feature set of Eminance was carefully selected to meet the key business factors.  Factors that were defined by practices needs in doing business in today's digital economy. To ensure a successful conversion to Eminance, effective planning is required. Our support and installation teams are geared to offer you the right advice to ensure a successful installation. Conversions from most software packages can be undertaken. If you are an existing Health Focus user and thinking of converting to Eminance, there are a number of factors to consider;

• Eminance is a new program. It operates on a totally different platform, and is not merely a revamp of older programs. Consequently, there is a new learning curve.
• We can convert existing users to Eminance, including tariff codes, stock and patient details. Each conversion is evaluated on its own merits. In most cases, we can convert to transaction level.
• On converting, we will license your Health Focus product for three months at no charge. This allows you to run two identical parallel systems for this period.
• The Eminance license fee is not the same as the Health Focus suite of programs, and carries a 25% premium. The extra fee is negated off the licensed coding and additional features and facilities.
• There is no need to upgrade if you are happy with your current program. While there will be no further development on the program, it will be supported in the years to come. Statutory changes and enhancements will still apply.
• Hardware may differ, as you don't need powerful workstations. The more powerful the server, the better the program will perform. 

Because of the nature of data conversions, we try to discourage the conversion of data. However, in exceptional cases, we do convert data, limited to the conversion of the patient master file. Each request for data conversion is judged and evaluated on its own merits. When converting data we require that the practice check the data before implementation, as we do not take any responsibility or accept liability for the accurateness of the conversion. The preferential method of data conversion includes the take over of balances, running the old system down. In the event that we convert transaction data, it is essential that the practice check the data before implementation as to the financial accuracy. When requesting a data conversion, first check with us, which files must be, sent for conversion. This should be accompanied with, in the case of transactional conversions, an aged analysis to allow us to verify the accuracy of the information. The conversion of data from one system to another is never an easy process and always leads to problems. It’s just the degree of problems that vary. This is particularly true of a program such as ours that offers referential integrity.

What is referential integrity ? Many programs allow you to delete an entry, without taking into consideration it’s links. For example, a patient can be linked to a medical aid, yet the program allows you to delete the medical aid. Our program will not allow you to do this, and consequently, needs the medical aid in order to add the patient. If the data that is being converted has links missing, problems can be expected.

What is converted ? When we receive data, we convert the data received. If corruption exists in the data, we have no choice but to convert the corruption, leading to possible problems down the line. The result of this is that duplicate data is unnecessarily stored e.g. town names that are spelt incorrectly and the size of your database can be larger than is necessary due to the conversion. Stock conversions may be a problem dependant on the type of system used previously.

Why convert ? We recommend that data is not converted due to the problems and additional work you can expect; and that you rather run your existing program down. We are willing to waiver the first three months license fee to make this easier on you. But if you do want to convert, restrict it to the patient master file.

What problems can you expect ? It’s more like the amount of additional work you can expect. For example, medical aids would have to be re-matched, allocations will be non-existent, balances will be transferred to only either the medical aid or patient portion, history or archives may become problematic, and off course, if there is no referential integrity, transactions will not be posted. These problems arise due to the fact that our program tracks payments to actual transactions and balances portions to the outstanding amounts on transactions. Often other systems are not able to supply this detailed information.

Practice disappointment  Often practices are not aware, or not made aware, of the potential problems of conversions and their expectation is that it will run smoothly and that all their data will come across without hitch. When something does not go right they are left feeling disappointed and therefore their first impression of our company and program is not a good one. Unfortunately, we have no control over the quality of the data being converted, which can lead to cash flow issues.

What action do I take ? When you receive your conversion, before starting with new data you need to;· Check that all the medical aids are linked correctly. Failure will result in the levies being calculated incorrectly. In most cases, utilities to do this are available. We also post a message to help you identify what medical aid the account belonged to previously.· Do some housekeeping to ensure consistency with addresses and postal codes. Once again, utilities are available.· Verify patient for patient and account for account the age analysis from your old system to your new system. Make all adjusting entries to bring it into line. 

Advantages of not-converting No-redundant information is entered on the database. This reduces the backup size. You obtain correct credit control information, addresses, phone and ID numbers. 

Preferred course of action. Convert the patient master file only, then manually capture the balances brought forward. Alternatively run the old system down.

Do

• Once converted, check the data against the pre-converted data.
• Make adjustments where necessary
• Run the system parallel for at least one month to ensure the validity of the information.

Don't

• Don't send the data to us without checking first. We will let you know which files to send.
• Don't assume that the data conversion is correct. We cannot vouch for the integrity of the data that we are converting from.