Laquita Johnson’s Story
Laquita is the Coordinator of the Cancer Data Management department at South Georgia Medical Center. Her department is part of the Pearlman Comprehensive Cancer Center, the major cancer treatment center in South Georgia and North Florida, and a facility nationally acclaimed for its unique design and holistic approach. With a staff of only two people and one volunteer, they handle a database of about 11,000 cases, and growing.
At South Georgia Medical Center, they had been using CansurFacs registry software for years, even after the software was bought by Impac Medical Systems. In 2002, however, Impac told users they had to convert their registries to the new replacement product, Précis-Hospital.
“When we converted, that’s when we started having a lot of problems,” said Laquita. “There were bugs in the system, and some of our cases got messed up. There were two or three weeks we couldn’t even sign on, we couldn’t work.”
She and her co-workers tried to cope, but they were not happy with the new software.
“The program was just not user friendly. They had all of these tabs to click on, and it was easy to get confused. And I have to say, the tech support was lousy.”
Unfortunately, it only got worse from there. Problem after problem appeared, interfering with registry operations.
“We just could not make any progress because of all these problems. We were sitting here doing basically nothing for almost four months. We’re still trying to catch up.”
Finally, they decided to look for other software. They wanted software that was easy to use, and had good support and features. After reviewing several, they switched to CNExT in March of 2003.
“We liked that we could just go in and use it, we didn’t need to have a manual there,” said Laquita.
“The screens were very easy to understand and you could navigate thru the program with no problems. It was just user friendly.”
They were also pleased to deal with a CNExT technical support person in their own time zone.
Another influential factor was C/NET Solutions’ new automated casefinding module, the Cancer Alert System. South Georgia Medical Center has already purchased CAS and is eagerly awaiting its installation.
Laquita and her staff felt that the conversion to CNExT went very smoothly, and have been happy with technical support. They like CNExT’s customizable reports, as well as some of our other unique features. “The built-in edits are a very big plus for us,” she said. “The Georgia state edits and the NCDB edits are built in, so we don’t have to run those extra edits before we submit our data. That is something we really enjoy, and it saves a lot of time.”
But the big difference is in their lives is CNExT’s reliability. “We’re just so glad to be able to work,” she said. “It’s a lot less stressful than before, and we can make progress.”
C/NET Solutions isn’t like other software companies – we work for you, not for profit. We’ve been a leader in the cancer registry software field for over 25 years. Without the threat of buyouts or mergers, we’ll be here to meet your needs for years to come.
