Most popular features of all Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals apps
25 reviewers had the following to say about athenaOne's features:
Document management for a large practice with multiple locations and two specialties is horrendous.
Pros
Co-sourcing of billing office.
Cons
Document management.
Rating breakdown
Time used: Less than 6 months
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Recommendations to others considering athenaOne
Do your homework. Call others w/ Athena and not just the groups they tell you to call. Map out your document flow not just once, not twice, but at least 6 times so you can anticipate bottlenecks and identify red flags w/ their document management process. Don't set up two departments (we have pain and neurosurgery) as it creates way more problems than it's worth. Make sure you fully understand how the buckets and spend a great deal of time on this aspect of the system.
I have had 46 years of medical office management with several different practice management and EMR systems.
Pros
I appreciate some of the charting and reporting features.
Cons
I feel it is extremely necessary for the front office staff to have the upper hand when making appointments and not having the balance or even the billing situation available while scheduling an appointment is a significant draw back to me.
Rating breakdown
Time used: Less than 6 months
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Recommendations to others considering athenaOne
By properly knowing your office unique needs, including those of any multiple facilities involved you can best determine which system is the right one. Some EMR systems are not the best practice management systems. I don't feel its necessary to settle the correct EMR and / or if necessary separate practice management software is out there. Keep looking until it you find the right one. Always call the references and ask specific questions - will it do this ? How does it do this? If they have learned how to work around a known system problem that's a red flag. Tread carefully this marriage should last several years.
The foundation is good, the support could be better.
Pros
Flows overall efficiently, well integrated system; scheduling, clinic notes, billing, patient portal.
Cons
The Past medical history section, flow sheets, quality management sections take a long time to load, the pages glitch and stall - really affect efficiency.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
We also experienced many issues with the reminder call service leaving blank or incorrect messages.
Pros
user friendly sorts electronic faxes electronic orders assists with MU reporting nice/patient friendly patient portal appointment reminders AR/productivity reports are easy to read and run
Cons
customer service is severely lacking chronic problems with posting payments EOB erros document issues the cost is crazy high issues with reminder calls not being sent correctly
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Occasionally
Pros
We would never go back to the old way of medical management after 6 months on Athena EHR.
Cons
The only negative I can give is that there is no way to view a patients e&m code history as I am coding the final billing slip.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 6-12 months
Likelihood to recommend
Recommendations to others considering athenaOne
Don't be afraid of change . Other vendors are free and you could see that as a bonus but in the end it could cost your practice money. We were hesitant to change because of the disruption we thought it would cause. But before we knew with a little hard work we have completely converted to electronic charting in less than 4 months and I would never go back. If you see a lot of PPO patients like our practice does you will enjoy the benefits of getting paid faster and through electronic payments. This is turn produces more weekly revenue and it is fun seeing our bank account fill up every week.
I think overall Athena continues to improve with updates and I have noticed many other medical offices have started to use Athena.
Pros
Recent activity in the patient's chart. Doctors have recommended the new streamline update because it makes it easier for them to dictate.
Cons
Unable to show patient alerts or reminders needed during an appointment. For example, the patient is in pain management but continues to ask for pain medication during an appointment.
Rating breakdown
Time used: Less than 6 months
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Recommendations to others considering athenaOne
Physician recommended. Staff still has minor complaints.
The billing information is limited to a certain number of codes per claim. For complicated patients with multiple problems the claims do not transition over to the insurance company.
Pros
Relatively easy to use after training and some oversite during implementation
Cons
It has little functionality for the large multi specialty group for customization.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Pros
The software beautifully integrates EHR, billing, and practice management functions.
Cons
Account Managers often seem unhelpful and uneducated. However, the Client Support Center (CSC) is able to take care of most questions and concerns.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 6-12 months
Likelihood to recommend
Recommendations to others considering athenaOne
We began our EHR transition with Practice Fusion, which was a trainwreck. Athena is the gold standard of EHRs, and working with them has dramatically simplified our lives and enhanced our practice.
This medical software has made all of our jobs much easier- takes loads of work off of you.
Pros
This system facilitates everything for you so that we are aware of these errors prior to scheduling an appointment.
Cons
None at the moment
Rating breakdown
Time used: 1-2 years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
When scheduling and entering insurance, a practice can immediately see if the insurance is valid (we barely remember those annoying calls to verify insurance), the medical record allows the patient to move through the office smoothly allowing everyone involved to enter the relevant information.
Pros
Reminder calls, insurance validation, eligibility and phone daily report, ticklers that remind patient to schedule an appointment if not done at check out, ease of entering/dropping claims, ability to generate useful and custom reports, day end review allows you to see if any claims need corrections immediately
Cons
Streamlined version seems to require more clicks and sometimes the co-pay is not applied to the date it is paid which can be confusing
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
I have used several different EMR/Practice management products and Athena is the best!
Pros
Athena can do most anything in their EMR/Practice Management product!
Cons
Percentage rate of collections can be a little high. Billing department can be a little hard to get a hold of, but over a great product.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Occasionally
Likelihood to recommend
Pros
Combination of billing functionality, EHR and practice management software.
Cons
It becomes a real problem for Athena to take weeks for Rules to make claim formatting compliant.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Pros
We rely on athenaHealth for business efficiency and for the documentation of our patients’ medical records.
Cons
We can document well, but cannot FAX directly from the system.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Likelihood to recommend
Recommendations to others considering athenaOne
Strength with athena is the ability to adapt to the changing healthcare environment. All providers are always on the same version of athena. Document management is the best in the business.
The full benefits are amazing, we have been able to be more efficient in every aspect of patient care. Faster scheduling, easier insurance verification, and less overall paperwork.
Pros
We love getting paid faster and being able to track the revenue cycle of claims.
Cons
Sometimes getting things done from the Athena account management can be a hassle.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 1-2 years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Recommendations to others considering athenaOne
Be free from paper and billing agencies, start using Athena and become what a practice should be.
Athena benefits are practice with efficient billing, scheduling and payments processing.
You can also sign up for their billing portion and pay less to an RCM team so it gives you good options.
Pros
I like the fact that it gives clients the ability to both have an EMR / EHR and also outsource billing at the same time.
Cons
Sometimes the Athena team doesn't talk or convey information back to the billing management team.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Mine was in relation to workflow for entering charges.
Pros
Auto eligibility, worklist and bucket functionality, family billing, reports
Cons
Posting efficiency and reliance on claim notes being accurate.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 1-2 years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Recommendations to others considering athenaOne
Overall Athena has a great product that I would recommend to anyone!
Overall there are many good qualities with Athenahealth. I would recommend it to my collegues.
Pros
Scheduling is a plus also I like the reports area.
Cons
Billing Athena does not clearly state why claims are going to Hold
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Likelihood to recommend
Recommendations to others considering athenaOne
Athena is friendly usable and that this EMR would be a 10+ if they would fix some glitches
Pros
It is so easy to customize and extremely user friendly!
Cons
Could use a few more staff members in their quality management department that are familiar with FQHC's.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Not worth it
Pros
Can’t tell if anything you might think is an all service practice management but not really customization is limited as well as expensive when you add everything you need
Cons
You are not in control need a biller coder on staff and still have to pay 7 percent.
Rating breakdown
Time used: Less than 6 months
Frequency of use: Occasionally
Likelihood to recommend
Pros
Has everything an EMR needs to have from Registration, Clinical Documentation to Billing.
Cons
There are too many steps and clicks to try to get to a patient's chart. Slow response from customer service.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 6-12 months
Frequency of use: Weekly
Likelihood to recommend
Our practice has been using Athena for our practice management software for over 10 years and we implemented the Athenaclinicals EMR in 09/2012.
Pros
Also they stay informed about the latest regulations and changes so that we can focus more on treating our patients and managing our practice.
Cons
They feel they have to click more "buttons" and complete more "steps" to get to their end result eg. check-in, processing documents, charting.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
We went from an EMR that inserted other patient's information into current patient's chart and was difficult to sort out from a billing standpoint to AthenaHealth and have been thrilled.
Pros
The ability to run reports for Meaningful Use, Patient Centered Medical Home, financial reports, etc to see how we are doing with patient care and with our business.
Cons
Fitting some of the templates to apply to pediatric patients can be challenging.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 1-2 years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Recommendations to others considering athenaOne
I have trained on 3 different EMR systems and AthenaHealth is definitely the most user friendly system for providers.
We also utilize their practice management/billing options which improved our cash flow.
Pros
Relatively easy to use EMR for documenting patient encounters.
Cons
Hard to get custom reports unless you pay for additional support.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Recommendations to others considering athenaOne
Overall a quality product that works well with our family medicine/urgent care office. I would recommend this products to others.
