athenaOne Erfahrungen

Vorteile

It is easy to use, fast and transactions are safe. As of today, I did not encounter any patient that complains when it comes to their billing statements with athenaone software. The statement enters through a link sent via SMS and email, in that way the patients will have choices in whatever mode they want to use to access their medical bill.

Nachteile

The only thing I would suggest for improvement is that once the patient settled the bill, they cannot review back immediately the previous bill posted but from the admin side, if there are any query from the patient, all the details can be accessed and viewed by the health care staff so it is still east to assist the patient.

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.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

EpicCare EMR

Warum athenaOne gewählt wurde

The technology was not keeping up especially in the electronic exchange of records area and making sure we'd have all the tools we needed to meet MIPs.

Gründe für den Wechsel zu athenaOne

More freedom to do what we wanted with the product. We're a clinic and Epic was more of a software to use for a hospital system.

Vorteile

1) You can access the phone number from the chart.
2) You can reference visit notes while creating a patient case.

Nachteile

Having to click multiple places to get to a document that you used to be able to automatically view and print is extremely inefficient. Many useful features that were used on a daily basis have been completely taken away. Athena reps were also rude and untrained. One of our employees actually had to show them how to do something. This should have been tested in a test environment before rolling out live. IT should talk with the daily users prior to making a significant change like this.

Vorteile

I have seen this software grow over the years and now have friends using it within multiple different services lines in the healthcare industry. Some of the key pros I can think of quickly include:
- Flexibility, (features and design allow of different service locations, and different physicians within the same practice to see/edit EMR information to fit the individual)
- Transparency, (live EMR, Practice Management, Quality Management information is real time)
- ACCESS, simultaneous information access by multiple personnel in the same (or different) practice location
I personally use the product to manage primary care, imaging, laboratory, and physical therapy business lines simultaneously
- Communication with team members and patients by methods of preference (patients can select how they prefer to receive communications (phone, email, text or all)
- Customer service, both online and by phone access the clients get answers to questions quickly.
- Fantastic Online training syllabus. Staff and watch interactive videos to learn new (and more efficient) techniques to use the software in daily tasks. The training material is available 24/7 and moves at the pace the employee prefers.
- Remote access, key team members and physicians can access the information from anywhere at anytime greatly improving communications.

Nachteile

Advancement requests,or recommendations for improvements, from clients are rated and scored by clients across the system, which is a great design!

Recommendations from the User Community require time to develop, grade, prioritize and implement. Eventually, the highest costumer rated recommendations get attention and are implemented with accuracy; just takes time.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen

EpicCare EMR

Warum athenaOne gewählt wurde

I had Medinformatix and Praxis previously. The reasons I switch to Athena were many but primarily: -to improve the information/documentation workflow for the physicians; giving the physicians more control of the process and how they view the data. - gain access to better reporting and transparency on the financials, practice management side - modernize the communication with patients via a certified HIPAA portal -achieve complete compliance to government quality standards (e.g. Meaningful Use, MIPS, etc....) -active online / offsite backups - instance access to alternate (live) server should downtime ever be experienced (for me, only twice in over 8 years)

Gründe für den Wechsel zu athenaOne

The overall package just overwhelmed the competition at the time.

Vorteile

Lots of billing intelligence and assistance.

Nachteile

They focus heavily on the ambulatory side, and not as much on the hospital side.
Also- long wait times for customer support.

Vorteile

It's nice to be able to communicate with my doctor through messaging as opposed to messages back and forth with their support staff.

Nachteile

It honestly just has I would say an "ugly" look and feel to it - it's not easy to navigate and isn't that helpful when many of the features are turned off

Vorteile

Admittedly, the software is easy to use and offers meaningful use suggestions. The five step patient visit is simple to understand. The patient portal is nice, however, the patient facing portion could look more modern. Billing is easy from a practitioner standpoint. It also is starting to integrate with other EMRs so occasionally we can pull labs and imaging from other participating systems.

Nachteile

Setup was arduous to say the least. Also, once claims are submitted, that's another story. I was sold that this software was all-in-one. They LIED. This is NOT the software for a small practice. They act as if I have an army of billing people when they told me that Athena was all I needed! For example, there was functionality that we needed to be aware of to find an important document from medicare. NO ONE told us and this document languished in some digital box. If we were a hundred person organization, I could pay someone to sit and manage the 20 or so boxes where they put communication. As a result, we got kicked off medicare for THREE months until I found out and remedied the cause.
I was assigned a 'customer success rep' and had to find out who it was because she never scheduled a call. The previous THREE other reps were no better.
They treat small practices like we don't matter.
If you have less than 100 employees, FIND ANOTHER EMR.

I'm in the market for another.

Vorteile

It is fast; automatically saves most of what you type in; does not crash very often (3-4 times/year); email support requests usually answered within 24 hours; online help knowledge base is comprehensive and it has a good search engine.

Nachteile

Not designed for mental health EHR, patient management, communication. Primary care clinicians say it's "pretty good" although "EPIC is better". Most behavioral health clinicians do not like Athena (based on support forum polls and Athena even admits it if your decipher the corporate-speak.) Athena rarely designs workflows, templates, and processes for Behavioral Health. They cobble together features and processes used by primary care clinicians and staff and tell us it's designed for Behavioral Health. If Athena employs mental health professionals I've never seen them on video presentations or as authors of "how to" resources or anywhere else.

Vorteile

Everything except RCM. It is an easy software to use.

Nachteile

There is so much about RCM that is bad. I am currently doing the majority of the work because it is taking 2 to 3 months for payments or correspondence to be posted. They are taking a percentage of our revenue and I am the one doing all of the work. It is completely unfair. They blame it on the pandemic but that makes no sense since this is a new problem.

Vorteile

One of Our provider are using this for appointments booking and EHR and it’s easy and simple then we use other software to create a charge for a internal medicine

Nachteile

Booking of appointments is very easy Thing to do and write a medical notes also a time saving thing in billing

Vorteile

Easy to use from a claims submission stand point after that it goes down hill fast.

Nachteile

Do NOT let Athena co-source with you and do your claims follow up and payments!!

Vorteile

Customer service is terrible. Getting claims processed through them is difficult and even has been delayed - but they take no responsibility for it. Their monthly billing is inconsistent and usually riddled with errors. Staff won’t send our concerns up to higher management to assist / address. “We don’t have anyone who would know the whole account” (ie silo). We look forward to changing EMRs in the next several months.

Nachteile

Customer service / claim scrubbing, customer service center

Vorteile

Facesheet shows all of the pertinent information on each patient before an encounter is open.
AS LONG AS the clinical staff have updated the chart correctly.

Nachteile

I am stating this as a personal opinion that does not represent my present or past employer. I have used this EMR for FIVE (5) years in front office. back office, management, and reports. There are too many workarounds for the providers and support staff. Their logic in reports is insane. Data does not pull accurately, so charts have to be manually checked to see if a measure is actually satisfied. Calling the CSC in FIVE years, has resulted in ONE (1) helpful specialist, the others always have to put in a further review case, which never gets answered logically. I ask specifics and am given back elusive answers that leave me feeling inept, and I know it is this system, not my experience or understanding. ACO and UDS reporting is LOGICAL. The number of patients in a measure, like tobacco screening and cessation, is the denominator. The number of patients that have been screened for use and cessation education is the numerator. Easy to understand. Except Athena report logic doesn't pull accurate data. I have had to manually look at charts to see if the work was done by the clinical staff and change my data reporting that way before I report it out, and as of yesterday, out of 564 charts that "need data" in this report, 75 out of 100 satisfied the measure within the chart but not within the report. This is one example of the problems with the Athena logic, and why I would never recommend this to any FQHC that needs to report data to CCPM, ACO or HRSA.

Vorteile

I like that athenahealth is always getting ahead of new changes in the medical community so that we are easily transitioned into, say, ICD 10. I like that athenahealth is really pro-active in helping the medical practices to streamline their office to meet these changes head-on without fear of being left hanging out to dry on, say, getting paid on time. I like that athenahealth provides you with a terrific support group of CSC folks who will take your calls or read your questions/inquiries and find the answers for you. I mean, honestly, I usually don't have time to go and look for the answers myself in the library and training videos (although for those who do have the time, these are great tools) so I am so very, very glad that I have a great support team behind me. I like that athenahealth allows us to share medical information for our patients, after their consent, to other medical practices and/or hospitals easily because the patient's medical care is the most vital aspect in this service community. I like that athenahealth is really very respectful of the fine line between helping the practice flourish and not stepping on toes or overstepping their role.

Nachteile

Lately, when using the message board for asking questions that aren't too urgent, I find that the response takes more than a couple of weeks. It used to be that the turnaround time was a week at the most. When the response is so late, I forget what my questions were and I have to go back to re-investigate so I can resolve the issue. I've read a lot of other posts about calling in and being put on hold for a long time. When we first started with athenahealth, I did not have that trouble and I was calling upwards of 10x a day on a daily basis for a while. Lately, I rarely call but thankfully, I haven't been put on hold for more than 5 minutes. And I still do like having the ability to call when my question is urgent and I can get the help I need right away.

Vorteile

The organization of certain sections was done pretty well.

Easy INR managing.

Fairly good growth charts w/ automatically calculated percentages available.

Good implementation of external screening questionnaires, meaningful use, etc.

Ability to create auto-texts, templates, etc.

Nachteile

Glitchiest product imaginable: text formatting issues, superimposed text transferring to next screen, text failing to scroll to next line causing entire paragraph to look jumbled up, poor copy-paste, small view screens/boxes, stubborn dragging/sorting of ICD diagnosis code boxes, frequent slow-downs, freezes, sudden unpredictable crashes failing to save one’s note work.

Severely outdated terminology for certain medical diagnoses making simple common diseases difficult to find in search feature.

Abysmal medication refill system. 3, 5, sometimes even 10-15 min. to address 1 refill request (inexcusable). Very difficult to confidently say whether a prescription has actually been filled or not.

Medication lists are just a complete trainwreck. ‘Medicare monthly order form’ is not a medication that should EVER need to be reconciled.

System shockingly even was able to allow me to prescribe controlled substances under other doctors’ names unwittingly & w/o their consent.

Poorly interfaces w/ outside labs, pharmacies, hospitals, other clinics, etc. Does not communicate well w/ others.

Requires way too much daily hands-on maintenance work to keep organized, unsustainable for a busier practice.

Absolutely ZERO (& I do mean ZERO) helpful customer or IT support. Even had an Athena clinical trainor fly in to seemingly attempt to help, who only sat in the break room & fiddled on their computer the whole week & ultimately proved incapable of providing effective solutions.

Vorteile

Software is web based and accessible from any computer connected to the web. Integrates document handling as well as notes and billing into one package.

I reviewed a lot of products over the years and the basic design principle is what I was looking for.

Nachteile

Our experience was simply unfathomable. We were on this product for just less than one year.

Training and setup takes 3 months, not unreasonable but also they don't really understand small practices and how to train them. While various types of software are something I'm familiar with, and I found templates easy to make as well as modify, we were misinformed about what we were getting, and many of the bad experiences posted here were also experienced by us. We vetted this product as well as we could. We did a site visit, everyone we talked to was very happy with it. However, about the time we went on the product we understand that we were not alone in what followed, but it took weeks of searching to locate the others. Prior users, who had been happy also reported to us that they were struggling with it now. Another clinic in our town was struggling, one of their staff told me that they "hated it" but they apparently are not willing to speak out openly.

We were experienced EMR users, having used more than one product and having 13 years of experience.

Vendor training and support staff do not really understand their product, nor can they really help with other than simple questions. If there is a functional problem, you are just out of luck. They are just wasting your time online much of the time. We spent hours on the phone, week after week after week. Months of heavy, unbelievably hard and long days, working 15, 18, 21 hours in a day, and still unable to get encounters done. Over 100K in unsubmitted billings, unable to close the encounters. We kept customizing the workflow, adding encounter plans, adding templates, and the system kept getting slower, and slower, and slower, by the last month we were getting dropped off 20-30 times a day and the system was not responding to us for agonizingly long periods of time. Tech support absent, like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, saying everything is functioning well. We had one good month, only one, which deluded us into continuing to try to work with them. Three account representatives in 8 months, none of them did anything but the last one, who actually visited our office and told us we had not been informed of a problem using our OS and Athena, and that we "should have been told." Later, he retracts everything while on the phone with his supervisor saying "I was wrong."

My patients repeatedly told me that the patient portal was so slow that they just stopped using it.

They blamed our ISP first (we used it from 5 different locations with around 18 different computers), then it was our network, my staff, me, and in the end it was "something wrong with" my equipment but not a problem on their end. Complete and utter denial of a problem with the software.

My staff hours rose by a minimum 20-30% on Athena, not decreasing as we expected, my hours nearly doubled, my ARNP quit because she wasn't able to see patients fast enough to actually make an income, she was working 8-12 hours a day to see 8 patients. Staff informed me that misfiling of documents by Athena and their having to refile them was taking 2-3 times longer than if they simply filed them all themselves. This misfiling continued despite our efforts to get it corrected and despite some documents having the actual filing category in large bold print at the top of the page so they wouldn't have to figure it out.

We spent unbelievable amounts of time logging in, getting kicked off, getting unresponsive screens, and watching the "Wheel of Time" (apologies to the late Robert Jordan but he and his writing team haven't seen anything like the "Wheel of Time" that we experienced). It could take longer to submit a billing than it actually took to see a brief patient. It could take longer to document a visit for a complex patient than it took to see them.

This product could do it, but it was nonfunctional to much of the time.

We tried to get to talk directly to the technicians, they would not allow us, we tried to get in contact with the higher management and the people we were working with terminated our contract 11 months in, giving us the required three months notice. Three to four weeks later the system became essentially unresponsive most of the time, we had to either close immediately and declare bankruptcy or go back to our old EMR. We went back and pulled out of the mess.

It was to late though, I closed my practice just 10 days ago, after 14 years, I was not able to accumulate enough financial reserve to attempt another transition before ICD 10 goes into effect.

In my office, a 14 year old server, lowest cost Dell from 2001, single processor, 2 GB of RAM, handling outgoing faxes, importing incoming faxes from a Brother MFC, all incoming documents, an entire record system, a document handling library service with literally scores of thousands of documents in an electronic filing cabinet, with literally probably hundreds of thousands of pages of documentation, and my entire library of documents from 1998 onward, was able to easily outperform the Athena product.

I worked hard to make sure we had a good platform on our end, we had a gigabit network, new cabling, gigabit switches and ethernet cards, SSD's on all our PC's, and more ISP bandwidth than a nearby 90 bed nursing facility has for their TV, PC's, and their staff to use...all for a small 1.4 FTE solo practice with 5 persons using it.

It didn't matter, the system was not responsive.

Vorteile

We use AthenaHealth every day. The portal is easy to use and implement (users simply configure a browser, login). Their help desk is pretty decent. For a small to medium business looking for an Electronic Medical Portal for their staff to use, Athena would make a great alternative to larger options like Epic or Allscripts. It supports proprietary devices (payment processing, or card and check scanning devices) which can be a pain but makes purchasing and insurance scans and patient registration and charting easy overall. Updates seem to be fairly streamlined and well-communicated (happen quite often) and don't seem to impact care unless it's a larger update. Athena has a backup domain (if their site does down) as well as stack updates for troubleshooting down times with different components of the EHR which is VERY helpful.

Nachteile

Most changes are up-voted, which means that they are voted on by other agencies trying to get their changes implemented as most valuable. Things like Billing and Patient Care do not streamline well enough yet together--they work in two separate constructs, so our billing is constantly having to rework the way that they bill to fit the way Athena works with Patient Care. Troubleshooting with our medical assistants can sometimes be complex with Athena, so for more complex issues, the help desk might take you to two or three different folks to solve an issue. The Help Desk has become more complex making it harder to navigate ticketing. It was simpler to put in a ticket prior to the changes.

Vorteile

The implementation was easy to set-up. Athena was a big help in creating forms and letters. The tempplates are easy to set-up and modify as well. Once the forms have been created you can also make changes to them as well. The order of the check-in through check-out process is set-up in a way that is easy to navigate and goes in order of how you treat your patient. The best part is that Athena takes care of the MIPS, MACRA, etc data that is needed for Medicare without adding additional work for the staff. I like the fact that there are less documents that require scanning, since all of our faxes go directly into the system and are attached directly to the patient's record. The reporting options are also very good with this system.

Nachteile

I really don't dislike anything about the software, other than it would be nice to track letters that are sent to the patients. So you can print off collection letters or follow-up letters and it would automatically record that a letter went to the patient, without you having to make a notation.

Vorteile

from the clerical input, insurance checking/info response, patient input, dx order features, sign off and the visual, detail of the LIFEspan of a claim, orders require "circle completion," the ease of quality reporting requirements...i could go on an on with the amazing functionality features of this program.

Nachteile

it is expensive, but it eliminates the need to hire for areas of administration. what I would pay for 1-3 people to do, Athena provides an entire team of people, thus creating a quicker turn around time for appeals, the need to call insurance companies. the implementation period is overwhelming, and going live will make you question yourself and your desicion. but, so worth it.

Vorteile

Ease of completing progress notes. Really really easy referrals. Accessibility of lab and imaging results. Consult notes not lost. Nothing lost. Confirmations by the system. Eligibility checked repeatedly. They have an interface with all the labs already so you don't have to pay to reinvent the wheel.

Nachteile

I hate the letter format and cannot get it fixed. The financial piece promised much more than it actually does.

Vorteile

billing features are simple; insurance program automatically runs insurances to see if they are active

Nachteile

I've been in Ophthalmology for over 15 years. As a scheduling manager, the features are not user-friendly, as I have worked with 4 different programs. Look to NextGen for template applications & features. It would be great to implement them to Athena. There are color coded columns, ability to apply templates over templates without taking out exception days, ability to write a VISIBLE book note at the top of the doctor's schedule to alert the schedules, etc. Also, the features include looking a multiple doctors schedules at a time and even ability to view several different books or multiple doctors!

Vorteile

I like the fact you can Athena fax records but you can only fax 10 pages at a time through it. More than that it said it was to large to Athena fax. I like that it uses a scanner for ID cards and ins cards. Just keeps a pic of it, does not upload info from the cards while scanning

Nachteile

Most everything! Still need a biller! I don't know what really I am paying for with this large % they are taking from me.. We work most claims our self. When they say you have a manager to help, they just refer you to the csc.. Which is the 1800 hotline help. Most times they don't know the answer and 1 question takes 15 min to solve. They always say "let me put u on a 5 min hold while I find an answer"
When I need to schedule it is not user friendly. I have to delete an apt to reschedule. Not a good flow.
Now about refunding overpayments. The office has to do it! Again! This is the help Athena states.... When a claim develops a credit balance, the OVERPYMT kick code is applied and the claim moves to OVERPAID status. Then I need to review the claim and investigate whether a payer intends to recover the funds and then determine the appropriate response.
Refund
Takeback
Unclaimed payment

Clients are responsible for working claims with insurance credit balances (overpayments). This includes contacting the payer, reviewing EOBs, and initiating takebacks or refunds.

There is no support at all!!! Everyone points the finger. Manager says call csc.. And csc cannot get answers.

We did not get paid for 3 months when we started back in December 2015. And once I can actually get money and fill my savings again for my business I will be finding a new Emr! The worst financial decision I ever had was going w Athena and believing they are good with billing.
Once you start with Athena you feel trapped because you have to stick it out or you could go bankrupt. I will be glad to talk to anyone wanting to go with Athena and tell you about all my documented problems.

Vorteile

It is an EMR system to use, can communicate with patients on the portal but have not way of avoiding portal communication.

Nachteile

Lack of knowledge when you call for support at Athena. Many times I call for assistance and the have no answer and have to get back to you.
Inefficient.
They state you make more money with them since they have high rate of patient collection. However, we have more patients then ever before with outstanding bills and Athena fail to follow up on patients and these unpaid balances. There is no support for that.
Once you sign up for Athena they drop your support and will switch you randomly to new managers to start all over since they cannot follow through. It takes weeks to have a support session with anyone that has some knowledge of the system. They have too many clients and not enough support. After a while, you become numb to it all and give up hope that it will be ever efficient and make practicing easier.

Vorteile

Athena was the first EMR I used when converting from paper charts. There was a huge learning curve and only because of the expertise of a well trained hospital employee were we able to survive the transition. It slowed us down but our notes and billing were improved.

Nachteile

I wish you could open 2 windows at once like other EMRs. The reason I would never recommend this system is because they were unable to help us merge charts from one athena chart to another. We were forced to change our Tin number when our hospital was acquired by another hospital system. They said they couldn't carry information like consults,lab trends,imaging reports and pretty much everything we needed to make a smooth transition. I could understand if we were changing form Epic to Athena. This made no sense and in the ever changing medical environment with acquisitions happening on a frequent basis I would be very wary about using this system. It has been a complete disaster for me and everyone I know in our medical group.