Technical Support for PracticeWorks Users

On December 23, 2004, Lighthouse PMG began offering support for users of PracticeWorks Office, Charting and related programs. This offering is the result of frequent requests by PracticeWorks users who felt they weren't getting their money's worth from their PracticeWorks support fees.

There are significant limitations to this offering, which you must understand before making any decision regarding your support agreement with PracticeWorks:

What We CAN'T Do

1. We can't create version upgrades to the PracticeWorks programs. These can come only from PracticeWorks.


2. We can't promise to be available for any set hours. If we're available when you need help, we will help you, or we'll help you as soon as we're available, but we're under no obligation to be available. (Occasionally, we're all involved in a seminar or company meeting, which will make us unavailable for a day or two, possibly more, at a time. In general, we will be available most weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time.)


3. We can't promise to solve your problem. (But if we can't, we won't charge you for trying, unless you authorize it.)


4. We reserve the right to not even attempt to solve your problem, or to not attempt it over the phone. Some hardware and networking problems are simply too complex to solve any way other than "hands on." (In such cases, we'll work with your local computer technician for our normal billing rate. In extreme cases, we might arrange an on-site visit, which would have a totally different fee structure than remote support.)

What We CAN Do

We don't believe it's an exaggeration to claim that we at Lighthouse PMG know more about PracticeWorks than the PracticeWorks Support Staff. They're fine people - a few of them are absolute gems - but collectively, they don't have the same PracticeWorks expertise nor problem solving experience that we do. Our intimate understanding of how the program works allows us to zero in on the cause of most problems very quickly. We promise never to have you re-install the program, run the Data Integrity Checker, or (heaven forbid) restore from a backup unless we believe that's the correct course of action, with a successful outcome likely.

When you call us with a problem, we will first try to determine if it's something that you should even be asking us to help you with. If it's clearly a problem with your hardware or network, we'll tell you so you can choose to have your hardware/networking professional address the problem. (Unless you want us to address it, in which case we can.) If it's a known bug in PracticeWorks, we'll tell you that, and tell you if there's a simple work-around for the bug. If the problem is one that's going to take more than a minute or two for us to deal with, we'll tell you, and if you authorize us to proceed, charges will start accumulating.

You must be a current Lighthouse PLZ member (which means we have your credit card information on file, with authorization to bill you) before we'll even begin to diagnose your problem. All charges will be billed to your credit card immediately, and invoices will be e-mailed.

Charges are at the normal rate for all remote services: $195 per hour, billed in 1 minute increments, with a 10 minute minimum.

At the end of each support call, we'll determine if it was a billable call, determine the number of billable minutes, generate the charge to your credit card, and e-mail you a paid receipt.

What Should YOU Do?

We are not suggesting that you stop paying your PracticeWorks support fees - if you decide to do so, that decision must be 100% your own. But if you find that you rarely even need support, you may feel that paying for it as you need it makes more sense for you. Keep in mind that you will not get any future program updates from PracticeWorks after your support agreement with them expires. Also keep in mind the other limitations on our offering, as detailed above. You may decide to continue paying for PracticeWorks support, and use Lighthouse only in an instance when they aren't able to solve your problem, or if you would like a second opinion prior to doing something drastic suggested by them (such as restoring from a recent backup).

If you're paying for PracticeWorks on the subscription model - basically renting the program month-to-month - you can't stop paying for support or PracticeWorks will stop working after some number of months (that was what you agreed to when you "bought it").

What Else?

Lighthouse PMG exists to help dentists run their practices more profitably, in large part by helping them get more out of their computer systems. One of our specialties is dentists who have PracticeWorks - since we're the guys who created it. If you have PracticeWorks and think you could/should be using more of its capabilities - even if you're totally satisfied with PracticeWorks support - you should see what we can do for you. Please check out www.lighthouse-pmg.com.