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Alberta · changing EMR

Read our paperwork before you read our pitch.

Alberta’s Physician Comprehensive Care Model requires a physician to be live on CII/CPAR before applying, and PCPCM panel payments are derived from CPAR submissions. So the first thing that matters about any EMR you are considering, including this one, is where it stands with Alberta Health.

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Alberta Health · vendor intake CII/CPAR conformance

Applicant
Arxeon Inc. — Calgary, Alberta
Product
Qlynic
Filed
13 August 2026
Scope
CII/CPAR · eDelivery · Alberta Netcare Portal
Prior approvals on file
Accuro · Ava · CHR · Healthquest · Juno · Med Access · Okaki · PS Suite Eight vendors are conformed. We are not one of them yet.

Application open

In queue no date yet

Not finished, and marked that way on purpose — the same entry sits on our company record, and it gets a date the day conformance is granted. We would rather you saw this here than found it in month three.

On PCPCM — wait for the date

Your panel payments depend on CPAR submissions today. Moving to an EMR that cannot make them yet puts that income at risk, and nothing further down this page is worth that. Read it if it is useful. Do not move yet.

Everyone else — this is not your constraint

Specialist practices, walk-in, private and allied clinics are not bound by PCPCM panel payments. For you the real questions are the ten-year retention rule, who holds custody of the chart, and what a migration costs in lost days.

The obligation

You can leave the EMR. You cannot leave the records.

Switching system does not restart, shorten or transfer away what you owe. The chart has to stay retrievable for years after your contract with the old vendor ends — and for a child, far longer than most clinics expect.

Retention from a 2026 last entry CPSA standard

Adult patient

2036 or later

  • Ten years from last entry 2036
  • No second arm

Count ten years forward from the last thing anyone wrote in the chart. That is the earliest the record can go. A vendor contract that ends in five does not move it, and neither does the vendor.

Minor patient

2046 or later

  • Ten years from last entry 2036
  • Two years after they turn 18 2046

Whichever is longer governs. Below age ten the second arm wins, and a newborn’s chart has to outlive two EMR contracts.

0

The obligation travels with you, not with the software CPSA requires a physician who can no longer act as custodian to designate a successor custodian, and to have processes for the retention, protection, access, disclosure and secure destruction of patient health information. Changing vendor does not discharge any of that — so “can I still read these charts in 2046” is a question to settle before you sign, not after.

Source: CPSA — Patient Record Retention. General information about a published standard, not legal advice. Check the standard before relying on it.

The handover

Everything leaves. Not everything arrives.

“We’ll export your data” is two different offers wearing one sentence. Ask which parts of the chart come out as fields a new system can read — and which parts come out as a picture of a chart.

One chart, two exports The same nine things go in

Structured export Field for field

  • Demographics
  • Allergies
  • Medications
  • Problem list
  • Immunizations
  • Lab & DI results
  • Encounter notes
  • Appointments & recalls
  • Billing history

Nine fields in, nine fields out. An allergy is still an allergy, so it can be searched, sorted, recalled and warned on from the morning you go live.

PDF bundle One flat file

Nine fields in, one document out. A person can read every word of it. Your new system cannot read any of it, and neither can a recall, a report or a drug interaction check.

Ask the outgoing vendor What a bad answer costs

Which fields come out as data, and which come out as an image?
Whatever is missing from that list arrives as a picture. You will re-key it by hand or you will do without it.
What format, and is the layout documented?
“Our own format, undocumented” is not an export. It is a mapping project, priced later, by someone with no reason to hurry.
Who pays for it, how long does it take, and is that in writing?
An export scoped after you give notice is scoped at their leisure. Get the number while you are still a customer they want to keep.
Can I have a sample export before I commit to anything?
The first time you see the file should not be the week you go live. One sample chart answers every question above in ten minutes.
A PDF satisfies the ten years. It does not satisfy Tuesday morning. The bundle is not the enemy — it is a faithful copy of what the chart looked like, and it is often the cleanest way to meet the retention obligation above. What it cannot do is tell you, at 9:40 on a Tuesday, that the patient in front of you reacts to something. Take the bundle. Do not take it instead of the fields.

Not sure what your current export actually contains? Send us the field list and we will tell you which of the nine is missing before you commit to anything.

The paperwork

Your migration date was set years ago. By a paragraph you did not read.

Every switch has one date that is not negotiable, and it is not the day you go live. It is the last day you can give notice — and three more clauses quietly decide what you walk out holding.

The ordinary shape of a software agreement Illustrative — not anyone’s in particular

  1. Term & renewal

    This Agreement shall renew automatically for successive terms of equal length unless written notice is given not less than ninety (90) days before the end of the then-current term.

    Then this is your real first date

    Not the cutover. Everything in the next section is planned backwards from this one, and it was set years ago by a document nobody has opened since. Miss it by a week and the term rolls, and you wait a year.

  2. Export on termination

    On termination the Provider shall make available a standard export of Customer Data for a period of thirty (30) days, after which access may be discontinued.

    Two undefined words doing all the work

    “Standard” is whatever they say it is on the day. Get it defined against the nine fields above, in writing, while you are still a customer worth keeping — and note that thirty days of access is not the same as ten years of retention.

  3. Fees

    Fees for data extraction, transformation or migration assistance shall be quoted separately and are not included in the subscription.

    Quoted separately means quoted later

    By someone who already knows you are leaving, at a moment when you have no alternative and a go-live date. A number now costs you one email. The same number in week two costs whatever they decide.

  4. Custody

    The Customer remains the custodian of health information; the Provider processes it on the Customer’s instruction.

    This one is in your favour

    And almost nobody uses it. You are the custodian — the record is yours to demand, not theirs to release. The retention obligation runs against you, which is precisely why the means of meeting it cannot be optional.

Read it before you shop, not after you choose The best week to negotiate an export is the week before you sign your next agreement — with anyone, including us. Every one of these four is cheap to agree while a vendor is still winning you and expensive to raise once you have given notice. A vendor who will not put the definition of “standard export” in writing has already told you what is in it.

The clauses above are written in the ordinary shape of software terms to show what to look for. They are not quoted from any vendor, they are not your agreement, and none of this is legal advice — read your own contract, and get a lawyer to read it with you if the numbers are large.

The cutover

The clinic does not close. That is the whole problem.

A migration would be simple if you could shut for a week. You cannot — there are patients booked into next month, claims already in flight and a phone that rings at half past eight whatever else is happening. So it is run as a route with one hard edge in it.

Old system holds the record Qlynic holds the record

  1. T − 14

    The export arrives, and you do not trust it

    Load it and then go looking for trouble: a patient you know by heart, an allergy you know is recorded, a note from four years ago, a claim you remember arguing about. Anything you cannot find tonight is a thing you will not find in February either.

    Qlynic · copy loaded, not in use

  2. T − 7

    One book, not two

    From this date every new appointment is made in one system and one only. Two open books drift inside a day, and the drift is always discovered by a patient standing at the desk.

    Qlynic · future bookings only

  3. T − 1

    The freeze, named to the hour

    Announce the hour the old system stops taking entries, not the day. Then ask for the delta — everything written since the first export — because a fortnight of charting is sitting in there.

    Qlynic · delta requested

  4. T − 0

    The evening it changes hands

    The delta loads, the old system goes read‑only, and two people verify the same five charts separately. If they disagree about anything you have found your problem while there is still a night to fix it in.

    Old system · last entry 17:00

  5. T + 1

    The front desk is the risk, not the doctors

    A clinician reads a chart. Reception rebooks, checks in, takes payment and answers a ringing phone — four workflows before nine in the morning. Staff that desk twice over for a week and the week is uneventful.

    Old system · read only

  6. T + 30

    The tail nobody puts in the plan

    Claims submitted from the old system are still being assessed and can still come back refused. Someone has to keep watching those returns — and the ninety days run from the date of service, not from the date you switched.

    Old system · remittances still arriving

Decide the rollback before you need it Write down, in advance, the one condition that would make you stop and go back, and the name of the person allowed to make that call at seven in the morning. A cutover without a named threshold and a named person does not get reversed — it gets argued about while the waiting room fills.

Working out your own dates? Walk them through with us before you give notice to anyone — the order of these six is easier to change now than in week two.

The fork

Everything above comes down to one question.

Not which system has the better calendar. Not what it costs. One question about where your money arrives from — and for a good number of Alberta clinics the honest answer sends you away from us for a while.

Does your money come through CPAR?

Yes Then wait for us

A physician on the Physician Comprehensive Care Model has to be live on CII/CPAR before applying, and panel payments are derived from CPAR submissions. Qlynic is not on Alberta Health’s conformed vendor list. Arxeon filed vendor intake on 13 August 2026 and is in the queue for CII/CPAR, eDelivery and Netcare.

Moving today would put those payments at risk, and you would find out in month three. We would rather you heard it in paragraph one.

Reach me when it is granted

No Then the queue is not your problem

If you are not on PCPCM, not drawing panel payments derived from CPAR submissions and not relying on Netcare eDelivery today, nothing on the conformance list stands between you and a move.

Everything else on this page still does. Check what the export actually contains before you sign. Count the retention forward from the last entry, not from today. Name the freeze hour before you give notice.

Start with your export list

We would rather lose the sale than be the reason a panel payment does not arrive. That is not modesty — it is the only version of this company that survives contact with a physician who checks.

Talk to us about your dates Read our paperwork