The need to maintain a fast and efficient business process has never been more important. Efficiency and productivity are critical to profitability. Over the years, we have added many new features to CPR+ to help customers keep their businesses moving quicker, saving time and money. At the same time, our customers have grown larger, and so has their data. More patients, more deliveries, and more invoices. It all adds up. And we recognize that, while the development of new features is important, so is simple responsiveness of CPR+. In recent issues, we've written about how customers can take steps to keep SQL Server humming and improve the performance of CPR+ as a result. So now let's tell you what we're doing on our side.

Two weeks ago we began a CPR+ performance improvement project. The purpose is simple--speed. Identify the slower areas in CPR+ and speed them up. To tackle the project, we've segmented three developers from our product development department to spend the next eight weeks on nothing but improving CPR+ performance. To identify the areas in need of improvement, we've consulted with customers to find out where end users are seeing slowness, and we've used some software tools on customers' systems to identify areas where we can make the greatest improvements.

As we make these performance improvements, we will include many of them in interim release versions of CPR+. In fact, some of you have the first few already in CPR+ v8.5f. The performance improvements fall in two categories: (1) improvements to specific end-user functions in CPR+ and (2) improvements to back-end processes that will impact many different areas in CPR+.

In the first category, here are the areas we've tackled so far:

In the interest of our IT readers, I will list the items in the second category. But in the interest of fair disclosure for those who, like me, are squarely outside of the IT arena, I am about to use the term
varchar.

We've identified several other areas that we will be looking to improve in the next six weeks of the project, including

• Processing ERN's
• Posting a Cash Batch
• Discontinuing Prescriptions; and
• Invoice Creation.

All of the performance improvements will be listed in the CPR+ Customer Portal as items are assigned to a version, so keep watch.

We'll continue our work to make sure that CPR+ keeps pace with your business... even though my movie reference in the title of the article does not.

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Beginning in April 2012, Medi-Span drug interaction information will be available by download only.

Customers who wish to continue receiving Medi-Span CD's in April 2012 and beyond must complete the Medi-Span Delivery Order Form and return it to Erika Evans via fax to 614-543-8848 or email to erika.evans@cprplus.com. A $25/month fee applies.

Click Here to View and Print the
Medi-Span Delivery Order Form

No action is required for customers who no longer wish to receive Medi-Span on CD.

Medi-Span download instructions for CPR+ v8.3a and higher are below.

If you need assistance downloading Medi-Span data or updating CPR+ to a version that supports Medi-Span download, please contact the CPR+ Customer Support Department at 877-277-4876 or support@cprplus.com.

To Download Medi-Span Data
(CPR+ v8.3a or higher)

NOTE: Please disable screen savers prior to updating Medi-Span via FTP. Contact your IT Department for help.

From the Main Menu, select Inventory (6) > Medi-Span Options (8) > Install / Update Medi-Span Data (1). When the menu appears, check the box next to Download Update and click Continue (F2), ignoring the CD drive letter option. (Please note that downloading drug images may greatly increase download time.)

The CPR+ File Transfer Menu will pop up, as well as a status bar that states 'connecting to the FTP server'. This will check if the current version of Medi-Span has already been installed. If it is not the current version, it will update the Medi-Span data file until it's complete.

Next, update the inventory with the new information in the data files by selecting Inventory (6) > Medi-Span Options (8) > Update CPR+ Inventory w/Latest AWPs (2).

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