I will outline how I view the 5-star model and elaborate further on my decision to give 2-out-of-5 stars:
1 star for Customer Service - For which I gave them NONE
1 star for Quality of Product - For which I gave a star because I believe they may resell a quality product;however, their customer service leaves a lot to be desired
1 star - For overall knowledge - I gave them a star on this one, for which I'll explain
1 star - Delivery - If I could give a negative star (black hole?) I would
1 star - Project Management - For which I gave none
The good: I do believe they resell software products that are great quality and to the job, have nothing terrible to say about the product line, they choose to resell quality. I do believe, for the offices which do not have internal knowledge of billing and procedures, they're a great fit and their knowledge about billing will be of great benefit; however, this is where all the good ends with my experience...
The bad: No one listened, at all! In fact, I made it very clear we're not in desperate need of fixing anything, we just needed new software which didn't crash, was ready for the transition to ICD-10, and could expand on the logic we currently use to help automate tasks and help make billing easier. I gave MICA Information Systems the holy grail of all information we could have given any VAR. This information was everything about our practice, our providers, our carriers and everything inbetween! Most VARs would kill to have someone provide them such great detail of information on day one of a project; however, MICA decided to just ignore it. This wasn't just related to the EMR, but the entire process from integrating our IT systems with MICA, all the way to training!
Customer service was non-existent, I was always chasing someone around to get answers or to get something done. The sad part about all of this is just how small MICA information systems really is but the lack of communication which actually takes place! No one even knew the current status of anything, seriously! Every single time I was asked about our VPN, which I had to force to get built and tested long before implementation; however, each and every person mentioned we needed to get it setup! In an office of less than 20 people, this is unacceptable and shows how uncoordinated projects are handled at MICA. If people not communicating internally was bad enough, no one bothered to listen to our needs, not even once. I explained for months what we were looking for and the process we needed to follow; however, Jim at MICA systems took it upon himself to implement his own logic, which was completely WRONG, not just a little, but his desire to push his will onto us was entirely incorrect and would NEVER had resulted in a working system! It is one thing to be arrogant and be absolutely right; however, it is really interesting when you're overly arrogant and incredible wrong, which Jim and MICA were both at the same time...sad.
Delivery was horrible, plain and simple. Over a series of numerous emails was I delivered bits and pieces of all the credentials needed to access specific systems. Even after requesting, as a paying client, to receive all this information in a single document I was met with resistance and still provided, yet again, numerous emails with bits of information in each I had to concatenate myself. Training was horrible, absolute nightmare. Only one person knew his stuff, I believe his name was Greg; however, everyone else, including almighty Jim, provided the worst training sessions I have received to date and that includes 10 years in the IT sector. Delivery ties back to customer service, for which NO ONE knew the status of ANYTHING; thus, each time we got training no one was aware of what was going on, leading me to question how they even thought we were remotely ready for go-live if no one in their office was confident the system was ready? To boot, we advised MICA and Jim, months upon months in advance, our training had to be done after hours as we're far too busy during the day to train, something he understood but apparently, like everything else, Jim just ignored.
Project management was non-existent, no documentation, no clear schedule communicated to anyone, no status updates to the customer outlining where they were in the process, and no answers to emails were given when we requested status updates so we could prepare our systems and staff. Even the simple things, like a single document with all of our credentials and access information, was non-existent.
Now, my personal opinion on MICA Information Systems: I believe they do well in the segments they serve and towards the specific clients for which they serve; however, they begin to fall apart when faced with clients they're not accustomed to. What do I mean? It appears Jim, in all his glory of being the single most arrogant know-it-alls I've ever met, wants everyone to accept what he believes is best for them or you should read more