Verdict: we would not buy Dazos again for an eClinicalWorks clinic that needs the integration before paying, and we would not prepay 100% of year one. Cardinal Treatment Center did.
If this article is still up, they have not addressed the situation.
This is an operator review, not a brochure. Sam Hessler was the salesperson who made the big promises. What we feared from a full prepay is exactly what happened. Dated facts: Dazos cut access after Cardinal prepaid $65,200. We are not linking to Dazos. A dofollow link is a living recommendation. The rule is when trust ends, the endorsement link ends.
Score the engagement, not the homepage
| What we bought for | What landed | Operator score |
|---|---|---|
| Custom Dazos-to-eCW door | Sold as bidirectional. A year of “released” and “working.” Then “does not integrate.” Then “still has to be created.” | Fail |
| Sales honesty on prepay | Sam Hessler and Kayla Nielsen pushed a same-month close for a Series A. The 30-day / no-payment paper died. Year one became non-refundable, 100% up front. | Fail |
| Year-2 billing | IN-4797 $55,200 while the sold door was still a roadmap item. Disputed. Unpaid. Do not pay it. | Fail |
| Collections conduct | Sarah Diegnan emailed the clinical team a “courtesy notice” that finance would suspend that afternoon. Marcel Scheurer wrote the account “is being suspended.” | Fail |
| Would we refer them | No. We keep the story. We do not send them a link. | No |
Name the salesperson who sold the prepay
Sam Hessler was the eager salesperson. He was on the Dazos | Cardinal Zooms. Calendar holds from February through April 2025 show he accepted — including February 14, 18, and 25, plus the March 21 and March 28 eClinicalWorks integration discussions and the April 28 sync. Kayla Nielsen, Regional Director, sent the paper and copied him.
On February 26, 2025, Kayla Nielsen wrote (copy: Sam Hessler) that she had spoken to David and Dazos could “commit to doing the bidirectional integration with eClinicalWorks for $10k on a 6 month timeline.” Push patients. Update them back. Push encounters. That was the product.
On February 27, 2025, after a late-night sales Zoom, Kayla Nielsen wrote (copy: Sam Hessler): “Appreciate the late night call.” Marketing Reports free. DocuSign resent. Sign this month.
That same night, at 3:14 a.m. Pacific, Dennis wrote Michael Maryash what the sales desk had just made plain:
- The most important part was “the integration of ECW with Dazos — data going both ways” plus billing, so the clinic could judge marketing, clinicians, and profit.
- “They are closing out this month for raising a Series A round, so they seem to have legitimate urgency to get an agreement.”
- They wanted a signature that day, with a 30-day cancel and no payment until terms were finished. The reason, in that same-night mail: this is just to “book revenue” for their investors on paper.
- “They are quite eager to do this deal today, of course.”
We said, on those calls and in the follow-up, that a 100% prepay was the risk. If the door never opened, Cardinal would already have handed over a full year of cash. Sam Hessler still pushed the close. He needed to book this revenue for their capital raise.
The 30-day, no-payment paper did not survive. By May 14, 2025 Dennis was writing Kayla Nielsen (copy: Sam Hessler): “I know we’re committing to $62,500 non-refundable, up-front.” On May 20 the year-one number was $65,200 prepaid, including the eCW integration, with no refunds for Year 1. On May 21 Dazos’s own mail was subject-lined “Dazos Raises $25M.” On June 5, 2025 Cardinal prepaid $65,200.
What we feared is exactly what happened. The money left first. The working eCW door did not. A year later Marcel Scheurer, CFO, billed Year 2 anyway. When Cardinal would not pay a second year for a door that still had to be built, Sarah Diegnan and Marcel Scheurer cut the CRM login.
Proof ledger: Series A / “book revenue” sentences are Dennis’s February 28, 2025 3:14 a.m. mail to Michael Maryash, the night of the sales call, forwarding Kayla Nielsen’s mail that copied Sam Hessler. The $10k / six-month bidirectional promise is Kayla Nielsen, February 26, 2025, copy Sam Hessler. Zoom’s 39-minute recap of the July 1, 2026 call with Sarah Diegnan says the profitability tracking had been discussed on earlier Zooms with Sam. This desk cannot log into Zoom’s recording locker, so those 2025 sales calls are cited from the calendar and from the same-night email, not from a pasted transcript. Full timeline: the Dazos facts file.
Put their own sentences in one row
| When | Who | What they wrote |
|---|---|---|
| Feb 26, 2025 | Kayla Nielsen, copy Sam Hessler | “we can commit to doing the bidirectional integration with eClinicalWorks for $10k on a 6 month timeline.” |
| Nov 7, 2025 | David Farache | Dazos had “released the integration.” |
| Nov 26, 2025 | Kenny Correa | “everything is now working as expected.” |
| Jan 15, 2026 | Naomi Williams | “we are at the tail end of finalizing the eClinicalWorks integration.” |
| Jul 15, 2026 | Sarah Diegnan, SVP Customer Experience | “Our product does not integrate with eClinicalWorks.” |
| Aug 21, 2026 | Marcel Scheurer, CFO | “The platform is performing as contracted.” |
| Sep 2, 2026 | Marcel Scheurer, after Sarah Diegnan and David Farache looked | “The next step is the custom development work to create the integration between eCW and Dazos.” Roadmap. Not in the next couple of weeks. |
A fifth grader can check that table. Same company. Same account. Same integration. You do not need a lawyer to see that “released,” “working,” “tail end,” and “performing as contracted” cannot sit next to “does not integrate” and “still has to be created” — not after a $65,200 prepaid year whose central deliverable was that door.
Watch what the July 1 Zoom actually covered
The July 1, 2026 Zoom is in the mailbox as “Meeting assets for Dazos problem,” duration 00:39:42. Sarah Diegnan was on it. Zoom’s own recap (their AI summary, not a court transcript) matches the later mail:
- Cardinal’s goal was marketing profitability by tying appointment revenue back to marketing. That had been discussed on multiple previous Zoom calls with Sam.
- Sarah Diegnan split work into live / out of scope / third-party-dependent. The appointments module that would make the profit math work was, on her screen, out of scope.
- Dennis said a CRM that cost about $65,000 a year had not been functional, and asked not to bill more before the sold door worked.
- Sarah Diegnan would take the contract question to co-founders.
Two weeks later she put the product sentence in writing. That is the call, then the email. We are not embedding the recording and we are not publishing a Zoom passcode.
Use this file two ways
We can run the same money-versus-door check for you. You can run it yourself from the questions on this page. Both links return a live page.
- We do it: the software subscription audit and the client access checklist.
- You do it: the six asks below, plus how to grant website access if a vendor is waiting on logins.
Say who this review is for
If you run a treatment center, a behavioral-health group, or any clinic on eClinicalWorks, and a Dazos salesperson is pitching a custom integration plus a prepaid year so they can book the quarter, this file is for you.
Ask them, in writing, before anyone pays:
- Name the integration. Bidirectional, or read-only. Appointments, or not. Billing, or not.
- Put the go-live date and the six-month functional test in the same signed paper as the invoice.
- Refuse 100% prepay because someone has a raise to close. If they need to “book revenue” this month, that is their problem, not your risk.
- Keep every “it’s released” email. Those sentences are the file.
- If they threaten suspend on a disputed renewal, demand the data export first, on the thread, in ordinary machine-readable files.
- Do not let payment mail go to clinical staff. One owner. One thread.
That is the same method as a Quick Audit and a software subscription audit: money paid versus a working door, then one action. Here the action is refuse Year 2, keep the data, and write it where a stranger can read it.
Keep two facts apart
Dazos spent July and August 2026 saying they could not investigate until they had eCW logins. That access delay was real. Our project lead was injured. Laura Marants had to provision unique accounts. We did not hide that.
A few weeks of login coordination in summer 2026 does not erase the year before it. The FHIR ticket, the sandbox sign-off, the “released” mail, and Naomi Williams’s February admission that production EMR value had not been realized all happened before Sarah Diegnan asked for those four user accounts. On September 2, after the logins arrived, Marcel Scheurer’s finding was still “create the integration.”
Ask the review questions
Is Dazos a good fit for an eCW clinic?
Not on this file. Sarah Diegnan wrote that their product does not integrate with eClinicalWorks. Marcel Scheurer then wrote that the integration still had to be custom-built and parked on a roadmap — after Cardinal had already prepaid $65,200 for that door.
Who sold Cardinal the prepaid year?
Sam Hessler, with Kayla Nielsen sending the DocuSign and pricing. We told them a 100% prepay was the risk. On the February 2025 calls they needed a same-month signature to book revenue for a Series A. That is in the 3 a.m. mail to Michael Maryash the same night.
Did Cardinal get what it paid for?
Cardinal’s stated position: zero usable production value from the sold eCW door. The CRM login was later cut on a disputed second-year bill. That is not a working engagement.
Why is there no Dazos link on this page?
We do not pass juice to people who act badly or try to harm a client. Names stay. The endorsement link does not. Hub: Dazos eCW Cardinal facts.
Restore the instance, produce the Year-2 notice, or make the prepaid year whole, and this page will say so. Until then, the operator review stays public. No patient data. No card numbers. No link to Dazos.
Parent method: how we write a sourced record. Writing rules: article guidelines. Related: software subscription audit, boil the ocean, client access checklist, when trust ends, the link ends.
Marker: DAZOS-REVIEW-2026-09-14 · DAZOS-GUIDELINES-SEO-2026-09-14. Operator review compiled September 14, 2026. Hub and full names: dennisyu.com/dazos-ecw-cardinal/. If a date or quote is wrong, the next edit is the email, not a memory.
Originally published .