athenahealth EHR

Vorteile

I loved using Athenaclinicals. It has lots of helpful learning modules to help train staff. Creating reports was a big help as well.

Nachteile

Clearing claim holds is a challenge because the language is not alwats easy to interpret! Offering learning modules would help.

For the most part excellent. Upgrades and updates seem to have slowed down and I think Athena has leaned more on the Market Place Vendors and less on enhancing included offers. I have made suggestions over the years and have given up as I do not feel the suggestions postings are something that Athena has been able to keep up with.

Vorteile

Claims scrubbing software. Our claims go out clean and are paid quickly. Support with MIPS. Reporting capability. Athena Text messaging. Versatility, software runs on any device. Athena text messaging. Monthly account manager calls and metrics. Partnership. Ease of creating order sets and working in clinicals. Market place partnerships are great and enhance the software and functions. Not afraid to be disruptive and things up looking for best and innovative practices.

Nachteile

Collector and Communicator insurance card copy do not communicate. Hoping one day soon you will be able to interface with EPIC. The reporting is so good that sometimes I need more support to ensure I am selecting the correct criteria.

We are a Family Medicine Residency which makes managing the clinic more complex for us than most clinics because our providers are all part-time, there's Faculty over site of the Residents, and they are learning. We went live 2 1/2 years ago with 75 end-users and have been very successful with Athena. Implementation took about 2 1/2 months and was up to full schedules within 5 weeks of go-live. We've added on Dulcian CCM software which has helped us earn a lot of income doing CCM just documenting time we were missing in our old EHR. We've also implemented electronic check in which has helped get more historical information in our charts and more screeners completed on our patients. We realized a 1 FTE decrease in Medical Records and have realized savings in other areas.

Vorteile

There are lots of bells and whistles built into the software and they are moving towards releasing more and improving all the time. Free interfaces make life so much easier for us! Athena listens to users when developing the software, they are visionary with future software needs in order to meet MIPS requirements. Implementation was big but there were people helping us through each step. We have an amazing Account Manager and meet with him once a month to go over open issues and discuss financials. Athena is overall a very forward-thinking company. Athena Marketplace has lots of add-on features to help make your staff's lives easier. We've acclimated well.

Nachteile

The tickler system for follow up visits are subject to user errors and need constant review. However, honestly, most recall appointment tools usually do because patients just don't return on time or try to get as much time in between visits as possible. Task assignment over rides (TAO) take some getting used to and are hard to filter for some incoming document situations. I wish there were more filters on the TAOs. Our patients feel like we over-communicate with them so if you go with Athena, make sure you start asking the patients their communication preferences from the first new appointment they schedule with you. It's important to get phone calls unchecked if they do not want reminders in several ways for the same thing. Call campaigns to get patients back in for visits are embellished with their wording and can contradict what you said in your message. ie: You do not need an appointment to get your labs drawn. Then Athena adds You are due for an appointment in the email and you don't even know they are saying that to patients so something to watch. All software has things we wish were different.

Overall, Athena is a good EMR / EHR to use. You can also sign up for their billing portion and pay less to an RCM team so it gives you good options.

Vorteile

I like the fact that it gives clients the ability to both have an EMR / EHR and also outsource billing at the same time.

Nachteile

Sometimes the Athena team doesn't talk or convey information back to the billing management team. This can cause confusion in cases like accounts that have been sent to collections.

Athena has a great and robust reporting module especially helpful for practices attesting for meaningful use and PCMH, the problem with this is that it is difficult to do on your own and requires a Customer service ticket which takes a long time to get answered.

The charting is easy once you get your templates setup. If you do not do this on the front end (during implementation) getting help to do later is impossible and you will need help as it is not very intuitive. Many templates were lost during one of their upgrades without warning so it has been difficult to rebuild them. We have grown and added locations while on Athena and because they are your primary biller if they do not verify all of the credentialing that you send them you cannot bill. This was problematic because you cannot directly talk to the persons doing this there is always a go-between with Athena.

I love the EPCS for patients requiring a schedule, as a pediatrician I have quite a few ADHD pts and nice not to worry about assessing where prescriptions really lost! No need for paper. However, with one of their upgrades, I can no longer save medications so must write sig and quantity for every medication each time which is time-consuming.

Lastly, the promised billing has failed our practice. The workflow was to be we would not need a biller and get increased revenue with clean claims. We see a large Medicaid population and were not told that they had virtually no experience with that and even going to them with specifics as to the problem it would still take upwards a month to fix. Not only have we not gotten rid of our biller but increased his time as many Medicaid claims he submits thru the portal yet Athena charges us for this. The account managers are unavailable in meetings vacations or no longer with the company.
Pros: Reporting, Easy charting once template is created, EPCS, Integration of charges to the superbill
Cons: Customer support, E-prescribing, Not reasonable expectation to not need a biller, Overpriced, not a good fit if you are a practice that adds services, providers, or locations, must use their bank to receive payments and then it takes 1-2 days to get transferred to your business account