Do Commenters Think I’m Stupid?

I don’t think I want to know the answer to that question literally, but sometimes I wonder when sales and marketing people from an EMR company come to this blog and place comments like the following:

A free practice management software solution for medical practices

[EMR Company] is a free practice management software solution for medical practices. It is the only software a clinic would ever need as it supports all internal clinic functions including scheduling, registration, billing, EMR, reporting and all external interactions with payers including claim submission, ERA and eligibility verification. The software is built to allow communication with external agencies such as billing, transcription, appointment scheduling vendors. Since it has extensive functionality, website has free tutorials and free customer service to help customers become proficient with the system.

With an integrated database and automated workflow, [EMR Company] increases productivity, velocity and accuracy within the clinic. It is deployed as hosted solution eliminating the need to purchase expensive hardware or backup solutions. All communication is encrypted to protect patient information. [EMR Company] is unique in that it does not use a web browser; instead it has the familiar, intuitive Windows based interface. [EMR Company] automatically self-updates with the latest version, which are generally released every 2 weeks. Since it is not browser based, [EMR Company] can directly interface with compatible desktop products such as scanners and mobile charge capture software.

[EMR Company]’s business model is truly unique – it does not charge for its software modules (except optional EMR module – $35/month), customer service and setup. However it supports itself by charging a small fee for each payer transaction, typically less than what you would pay your clearinghouse to submit claims electronically.

For more details go to [EMR Company]

Some EMR vendor (who I’ll leave nameless) tried to post the above comment on my post about EMR forums. I don’t mind a signature from an EMR company with a link to their website if they’ve provided at least some sort of decent comment about the post. However, outright advertising their company on my blog comments is crazy. They obviously don’t understand that I can remove/mark as spam any comments like that. Plus, comments use the “no follow” tag and so they aren’t getting much SEO benefit from it either.

I don’t expect this to stop, but expect that more and more people will do this in the future. Don’t. It doesn’t do any good. If you want to advertise on my site contact me or leave a comment. It doesn’t cost that much and you’ll be getting highly targeted referrals from people researching EMR.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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