Imagine you pay a builder $65,200 up front to put a door between two rooms. Then they lock the room you already paid for. That is the Dazos story with Cardinal Treatment Center and eClinicalWorks.
If this article is still up, Dazos has not addressed the situation.
This page is the dated file. It is not a court ruling. It is what Dazos wrote, what Cardinal paid, who sold the prepaid year, and what happened when the login was cut on September 11, 2026. There is no link to Dazos on this page. We do not pass search juice to people who act badly or try to harm a client.
Name who sold the prepaid year
Sam Hessler was the eager salesperson. Kayla Nielsen, Regional Director, sent the paper. They were on the same calls and the same threads. The product they were selling was not a generic login. It was a custom Dazos-to-eClinicalWorks integration so Cardinal could see appointments, billing, and marketing profit in one place.
The day before that late call, February 26, 2025, Kayla Nielsen wrote Dennis and Elliot Drake (copy: Sam Hessler) that she had spoken to David and “we can commit to doing the bidirectional integration with eClinicalWorks for $10k on a 6 month timeline.” Push patients to the EHR. Update those patients back into Dazos. Push encounter data back as related activities. If eCW could not receive data from a CRM, they would not hold Cardinal to that $10k custom build. That is the product they were selling. Sam Hessler was on the copy list.
On the night of February 27, 2025, after a late sales Zoom titled “Dazos | Cardinal,” Kayla Nielsen wrote (copy: Sam Hessler): “Appreciate the late night call.” She attached a February pricing proposal, threw in Marketing Reports “completely free ($2,750/month)” on top of the other February discounts, and resent a DocuSign so Cardinal would sign that month.
That same night, at 3 a.m. Pacific, I wrote Michael Maryash what the sales desk had just made plain:
- The most important part of the deal was “the integration of ECW with Dazos — data going both ways” plus billing, so we 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. I wrote the reason in quotes: this is just to “book revenue” for their investors on paper.
- “They are quite eager to do this deal today, of course.”
I told them, on those calls and in the follow-up, that a 100% prepay was the thing I did not want. If the door never opened, Cardinal would have already handed over a full year of cash. Sam Hessler still pushed the close. On the February calls he needed this booking for their capital raise. Kayla Nielsen kept the DocuSign moving. Calendar holds named “Dazos | Cardinal” and “eClinicalWorks & Dazos Integration” from February through April 2025 show shessler@dazos.com accepted — including February 14, February 18, February 25, March 21, March 28, and April 28. The July 1, 2026 Zoom recap with Sarah Diegnan says the profitability tracking had been discussed on those earlier Zooms with Sam.
The 30-day, no-payment paper did not survive. By May 14, 2025 I was writing Kayla Nielsen (copy: Sam Hessler): “I know we’re committing to $62,500 non-refundable, up-front.” On May 20, 2025 I told Michael Maryash the year-one number had become $65,200 prepaid, including the eCW integration, with no refunds for Year 1. On May 21, 2025 Dazos’s own mail to me was subject-lined “Dazos Raises $25M.” On June 5, 2025 Cardinal prepaid $65,200.
What I feared is exactly what happened. The money left first. The working eCW door did not. A year later Marcel Scheurer 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: The Series A / “book revenue” sentences are from my 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 $65,200 prepaid figure is in my May 20, 2025 summary to Michael and in the June 18, 2026 and August 10, 2026 letters Dazos received. Zoom’s own 39-minute recap of the July 1, 2026 call with Sarah Diegnan says the profitability tracking had been discussed on earlier Zooms with Sam. Zoom transcripts of those 2025 sales calls are not pasted here as verbatim quotes. The same-night email is.
Two rooms. One is the clinic’s patient chart software, eClinicalWorks (eCW). The other is the Dazos CRM. The custom door between them was the product. Without that door, the CRM cannot see live clinic data the way it was sold. Cardinal already had eCW. Cardinal paid Dazos for the door.
Follow the money
On June 5, 2025, Cardinal prepaid Dazos $65,200. That number is in the May 20, 2025 summary to Michael Maryash, the June 18, 2026 letter to Sarah Diegnan, SVP of Customer Experience, and the August 10, 2026 letter to Marcel Scheurer, Dazos CFO. It includes the custom eClinicalWorks integration.
On June 5, 2026, Dazos issued invoice IN-4797 for $55,200. Paying it would take the total to $120,400 before Cardinal had a working production door. Cardinal has not paid it. The invoice is formally disputed. Do not pay it.
Name every person on the file
| Full name | Role on this file |
|---|---|
| Sam Hessler | Sales. On the February 27, 2025 late-night call. Copied on Kayla Nielsen’s pricing mail and the Exhibit A redlines. The person I told I did not want a 100% prepay. |
| Kayla Nielsen | Regional Director. Sent the February pricing proposal, the Exhibit A redlines with Sam, and the DocuSign that became the prepaid year. |
| Naomi Williams | Implementation Manager. January 2026 “tail end of finalizing.” February 2, 2026: production EMR value “has not yet been realized.” |
| David Farache | Integration side. November 7, 2025: Dazos had “released the integration.” On Sarah Diegnan’s July 23, 2026 eCW-login list. On Marcel Scheurer’s September 2 investigation. |
| Kenny Correa | Sandbox. November 26, 2025: “everything is now working as expected.” December 23, 2025: signed sandbox sign-off. Also on Sarah’s eCW-login list. |
| Sarah Diegnan | SVP of Customer Experience. July 1, 2026 Zoom. July 15, 2026: “Our product does not integrate with eClinicalWorks.” September 11, 2026 courtesy notice to the clinical team. |
| Marcel Scheurer | CFO. Year-2 invoice. August 21: “performing as contracted.” September 2: still must “create the integration.” September 11: account “is being suspended.” |
| Jonathan Lin | Billing. June 16, 2026: reminder sequence turned off. On Sarah Diegnan’s September 11 cutoff CC. |
| Anna Kelley | Earlier billing pause / extension on the Year-2 file. |
| Nelson Fernandez and Lal Kumar | Named by Sarah Diegnan on July 23, 2026 as two of the four Dazos users who needed eCW logins, with David Farache and Kenny Correa. |
| Michael Maryash and Albert Shklyar | Cardinal owners. September 7, 2026: no Year 2. |
| Laura Marants | Cardinal-side eCW / eBO provisioning. Confirmed eBO July 23, 2026. Accounts issued by August 31, 2026. |
Watch the year, with full names
Dazos did not stay silent for a year. They ran an eClinicalWorks ticket, Task#38051844, “Dazos – eCW Create FHIR API Integration.” eCW staff were on the mail. Sandbox tests were scheduled. Activation steps were sent. Here is the sequence, in their words or in letters they received and did not correct on the thread.
from:@dazos.com after:2026/09/11 still returns only those two threads. No Dazos reply after the September 12 restore-and-preserve letters.Put their sentences next to each other
This is the part a fifth grader can check. Same company. Same account. Same integration. Full names.
| When | Who | What they wrote, or what I wrote the night of the call |
|---|---|---|
| Feb 28, 2025, 3:14 a.m. PT | I, same night as Sam Hessler / Kayla Nielsen’s late call | They are closing the month for a Series A. The same-day signature is to “book revenue” for their investors on paper. They are quite eager to do this deal today. |
| May 14, 2025 | Me to Kayla Nielsen, copy Sam Hessler | “I know we’re committing to $62,500 non-refundable, up-front.” |
| Nov 7, 2025 | David Farache | Dazos had “released the integration.” |
| Nov 26, 2025 | Kenny Correa | Internal testing verified “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. |
Sarah Diegnan’s July 15 mail is not a mystery. She said the reporting path they actually ship is CollabMD into IQ. eCW was a different job. That is an honest product sentence. It cannot sit next to a year of “released” and “working as expected,” a prepaid custom integration, and a Year-2 invoice for the thing that, on September 2, still had to be custom-built and parked on a roadmap.
Read what the July 1 Zoom covered
The July 1, 2026 Zoom is in the mailbox as “Meeting assets for Dazos problem,” duration 00:39:42. I hosted it so Sarah Diegnan and Cardinal were in the same room. Zoom’s own recap (their AI summary, not a court transcript) matches the later mail:
- I said Cardinal’s goal was to track marketing profitability by tying revenue from appointments back to marketing. I said that had been discussed on multiple previous Zoom calls with Sam.
- Sarah Diegnan split the work into “live,” “out of scope,” and third-party-dependent. The appointments module that would make the profit math work was, on her screen, out of scope.
- I said a CRM that cost about $65,000 a year had not been functional, and that asking for more money before the sold door worked was the problem.
- Sarah Diegnan said she would take the scope question to co-founders because of the contract.
Two weeks later she put the product sentence in writing: Dazos does not integrate with eClinicalWorks. That is the call, then the email. The 2025 sales Zooms with Sam Hessler are the ones I pointed her back to. This IP cannot log into Zoom’s recording locker, so those earlier calls are cited from the calendar (Sam Hessler accepted the February–April 2025 Dazos | Cardinal holds) and from the February 28 email written the night of the late call, not from a pasted transcript.
See how the cutoff was done
On September 2, Marcel Scheurer offered a partial payment “to buy some time” and named September 9 as the suspend date. Cardinal said no. Cardinal asked for a complete data export first.
On September 11, Sarah Diegnan did not write only to billing. She wrote a “courtesy notice” to the Cardinal clinical team that finance would suspend the instance that day at 4 PM EST “due to non-payment.” Marcel Scheurer wrote me that the account was being suspended, that suspension does not release the legal obligation, and that restoring access requires remitting payment immediately.
That is a collections move on a disputed invoice, sent into a clinic. I asked them, in writing, to restore the instance, preserve every Cardinal record, and keep payment mail off clinical staff. Michael Maryash and I stay the only people for that correspondence.
Gmail on September 14 still shows no Dazos reply on Marcel Scheurer’s suspend thread or Sarah Diegnan’s courtesy-notice thread after those September 12 replies.
Keep two facts apart
Dazos spent July and August 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 eCW FHIR ticket, the sandbox sign-off, the “released” and “working” and “tail end” 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 August 31 I wrote that Laura Marants had issued the accounts and that Sarah Diegnan had our cooperation. On September 2 Marcel Scheurer confirmed Sarah Diegnan and David Farache completed the investigation. Their finding was not “the platform performed as contracted.” It was “the next step is the custom development work to create the integration.”
Read what Cardinal asked for
Cardinal’s position, in writing, is simple:
- Do not pay IN-4797. There is no second term to collect if the sold integration was not functional and the required renewal notice was not produced.
- Do not charge the card on file. Authorization was withdrawn.
- Restore and keep the Cardinal Dazos instance, or if it is already dark, turn it back on and say so on the thread.
- Preserve the data. Export it in ordinary machine-readable files before any delete or archive.
- Keep collection mail off the clinical team.
On the $65,200 already paid: Cardinal’s reserved claim is that Dazos collected a full-year prepayment for a system whose central deliverable was not delivered. That is a commercial dispute. Counsel, not a blog post, will try it if it has to be tried.
Check the brochure against the private mail
On September 14, 2026, the Dazos homepage still told buyers the platform will “sync in real time with your EMR” and listed “Real-Time Integrations” that “sync directly with your EMR.” That is the public promise. I am not linking it. The Cardinal file is the private one: July 15, does not integrate with eClinicalWorks; September 2, custom development still to create, then a roadmap.
If you run a treatment center and Dazos is pitching eCW, ask them to put the integration name, the go-live date, and the refund rule in the same signed paper as the invoice. Do not prepay 100% because a salesperson has a capital raise to book. Then keep the emails.
Ask the questions this file answers
Did Cardinal pay Dazos?
Yes. $65,200 on June 5, 2025, prepaid, including the custom eCW integration.
Who sold the prepaid year?
Sam Hessler, with Kayla Nielsen sending the DocuSign and pricing. I told them a 100% prepay was the risk. On the February 27, 2025 call they needed a same-month signature to book revenue for a Series A. That is in my 3 a.m. mail to Michael Maryash the same night.
Did Cardinal pay the second-year invoice?
No. IN-4797 for $55,200 is disputed and unpaid.
Did Dazos say the eCW integration was finished?
Yes, in 2025 and early 2026, in the words above. Then Sarah Diegnan wrote that Dazos does not integrate with eCW. Then Marcel Scheurer wrote that the integration still has to be created.
Did Cardinal refuse access so Dazos could not work?
No. Laura Marants confirmed eBO. Four named Dazos users were requested. Accounts were issued. Marcel Scheurer confirmed the investigation ran after the logins arrived. The finding was still “create the integration.”
When was access turned off?
Sarah Diegnan’s courtesy notice: September 11, 2026, 4 PM EST. Marcel Scheurer’s mail the same afternoon says the account is being suspended. Cardinal asked the same night for immediate restore. No Dazos reply is on those threads as of September 14.
Is this a patient-care story?
eCW is the clinic chart. Dazos is the CRM. Cutting the CRM login is not the same as turning off the chart. It is still a vendor using a live clinic system as collections leverage on a disputed bill. That is why the restore-and-preserve ask is in writing.
Why is there no Dazos link on this page?
A dofollow link is a living recommendation. Dazos cut a prepaid client and then went silent on the restore ask. We keep the names and the facts. We do not send them authority. The rule is when trust ends, the endorsement link ends.
Keep this checklist
Two doors. We can run the same money-versus-door check for you: the software subscription audit. You can run it yourself from the list below. Access work uses the client access checklist and how to grant website access.
If you are in a CRM-plus-EMR deal:
- Put the integration, the six-month functional test, and the opt-out in the signed paper, not in a slide.
- Do not prepay 100% because the salesperson has a raise to close. If they need to “book revenue” this month, that is their problem, not your risk.
- Save every “it’s released” email. Those sentences are the file.
- Do not let a late access request rewrite a year of non-delivery.
- Dispute a renewal in writing before the due date, and again when reminders start.
- If they threaten suspend, demand the export first, in a dated format, on the thread.
- Do not send clinical staff into a billing fight. One owner, one thread.
That is the same method as a Quick Audit: metrics, then analysis, then one action. The metric here is money paid versus a working door. The analysis is the quote table. The action is refuse Year 2, keep the data, and write it down where a stranger can read it. The operator review of this engagement is the Dazos review.
Dated from Gmail and from Zoom’s July 1 recap. No patient data. No card numbers. No link to Dazos. Restore the instance, produce the Year-2 notice, or make the prepaid year whole, and this page will say so. Until then, the file stays public.
Parent method: how we write a sourced record. Writing rules: article guidelines. Related: software subscription audit, boil the ocean, client access checklist, how to grant website access, when trust ends, the link ends, and verify from the outside.
Marker: DAZOS-ECW-FACTS-2026-09-14 · DAZOS-HESSLER-PREPAY-2026-09-14 · DAZOS-GUIDELINES-SEO-2026-09-14. Compiled September 14, 2026 from Gmail threads 1954ae9281767ed9, 196b22a19821a2c7, 196ee68c0aa9a411, 196f2d725183f16a, 19feb2156bc3471b, 19e95f3df4c66350, 1a092114d0045288, 1a09207d8cc4533a, 19bc425aed1878bb, 19bfb73cbeee2481, 19a84037038199c4, 1955dcdd42d7277e, and Zoom meeting-assets mail 19f1ff08e3d63ee9. If a date or quote is wrong, the next edit is the email, not a memory.
Originally published .