Responding to something from the linked Patreon post:
> Blackboard (as well as Epic and SharePoint) are classic examples of software where the user and the purchaser are different and the purchaser basically doesn’t care about the user, so you don’t expect the software to be good and it would be a bit of a surprised if the software didn’t deliver a bad user experience. But it was even more surprising to me that someone working on some of the most reviled software out there could think that the software was widely loved.
I worked briefly at Epic and the attitude there seemed to be more like "yes we know people hate Epic but they're wrong". :P People there didn't think Epic was widely liked!
(The explanations given were basically, 1. people hate Epic because their IT department configured it wrong, if they configured it in a more suitable manner they wouldn't have these problems, and, 2. it's not Epic per se that's the problem it's all EMR software, if you think Epic is bad you should see the competition, they're even worse. I'm not sure that second one is really such a good excuse, but, that was what I remember hearing.)
A close acquaintance was on Medicaid, and then got a new job and was moved off of Medicaid onto an insurance plan they were paying for. Medicaid is administered by insurance companies; the same company administered both their Medicaid plan, and the plan they were now paying for.
As it so happened, within a week of this occurring they needed urgent care, badly, no joke. We have basically three choices here (at least, which would take this insurer), and none of the three would see them, and the reason was the same in all cases: 1) they no longer had Medicaid, and 2) the provider couldn't let them pay cash and sort it out with the insurance company themselves.
It took three days calling the insurer, providers, the State health exchange, finally getting the insurer on the phone DIRECTLY with one of the providers... at a clinic rather than in admin... the insurer directly telling the clinic administrators that the person was insured and the insurance company would give them a claim number right now, or something like that... before we could get them in to see a doctor.
When we got to the clinic they looked them up and STILL told them they couldn't see them we had to demand to speak to an administrator and basically THEY COULDN'T CHECK THEM IN TO THEIR APPOINTMENT in their computer.
All of these providers used Epic. I made some additional phone calls and had some additional conversations, made a writeup, and sent it to the insurer, the benefit exchange, and the provider who ultimately saw us. Never heard anything from anyone.
> Blackboard (as well as Epic and SharePoint) are classic examples of software where the user and the purchaser are different and the purchaser basically doesn’t care about the user, so you don’t expect the software to be good and it would be a bit of a surprised if the software didn’t deliver a bad user experience. But it was even more surprising to me that someone working on some of the most reviled software out there could think that the software was widely loved.
I worked briefly at Epic and the attitude there seemed to be more like "yes we know people hate Epic but they're wrong". :P People there didn't think Epic was widely liked!
(The explanations given were basically, 1. people hate Epic because their IT department configured it wrong, if they configured it in a more suitable manner they wouldn't have these problems, and, 2. it's not Epic per se that's the problem it's all EMR software, if you think Epic is bad you should see the competition, they're even worse. I'm not sure that second one is really such a good excuse, but, that was what I remember hearing.)