athenaOne Reviews

Pros

The user interface is very friendly and everything is set up to guide you through easily while entering patient information.

Cons

Sometimes the add on software like the label printer and document printer would stop working, but that is rare.

Pros

User friendly- and great for creating personalized templates and schedules

Cons

Needs a training curriculum for new users- and follow up training

Pros

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.

Cons

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Severely outdated terminology for certain medical diagnoses making simple common diseases difficult to find in search feature.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

Pros

The Customer Support!! It’s fantastic. The software is a very close second

Cons

The price but it is completely justified.

Pros

Enhanced collector capabilities. User friendly. Invested in success of clients. Very supportive.

Cons

There isn’t anything that I don’t like.

Pros

The EMR has good templates, the patient portal is pretty good. Implementation was the worst, they use these people who live in other countries who have the most minimum knowledge so implementing this was as stressful as using their RCUM. I had to ask for someone else because my go-live date was due and this guy could not answer my questions.

Cons

The RCM and billing service is the worst. Don't even attempt it.

Alternatives Considered

ObGyn-Cloud, DrChrono, CharmHealth, AdvancedMD EHR and PrognoCIS

Reasons for Switching to athenaOne

You could downgrade at anytime Billing services seemed legit (I realize not so anymore)

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

Ease of use and ability to locat3 and share payment records electronically

Cons

Collection follow-up and payment posting needs improvement

Pros

For me personally, it was ease of use. Understanding how to navigate between modules.

Cons

The one main feature that’s missing is an encounter interface.

Pros

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

Cons

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

Pros

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.

Cons

Customer service / claim scrubbing, customer service center

Pros

ease of use, it really is good.
work on multiple charts at one time
rarely glitches or down time
Athena is certainly closer to a "practice fusion"...
very user-friendly..set up more like navigating to/through a web browser/site then "medical-based program"
can use your own templates, but they claim to have many (i ONLY use my own- never even once tried athena's)
CS is NOT like most reviews are stating... I have used the Athena CS/help/claims helpline many, many, many times, and 90% of the time, issues gets resolved quickly.

Cons

the cost of course. the larger you are/more pts/billing, perhaps better the rate you will get.
that is the only thing for me really.... do I want a free based software that I may or may not like, and then pay for a biller? or pay for my own cloud-based billing software....? and then, of course, you have to check up on everything.... hmm. Its less worry and less need for staff if you ask me. Again, I just started out and although I have a steady flow of pts, my opinions may change if I were seeing 45-60 pts/day with a staff of 5-10 behind the counter....
For me, now, I am more than comfortable with Athena. I like them and I like the program.
Only real con I see (which I think u can manage/manipulate/pay for on different basis) the pt statements. Meaning, pts that owe the office money... Athena apparently sends out THREE (3) statements per month (..think ?this is correct). The issue is, the office has NO CONTROL over which statements go out. For a real example, I had a pt call the office re his bill/statement for $. Another patient called in for one that had a balance of $ of course probably copays and coinsurance, however, Athena completely misses sending other statements for much larger balances. So, it's kind of random. I have multiple pts with an outstanding balance or even $!

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

The only thing I think has been really good has been its interface with labs and imaging

Cons

User ability and support: It is impossible to get any one on one help. It takes days to weeks to get someone to respond to a call. They require you submit these 'cases' when you have an urgent need which don't ever get addressed. It has been a nightmare. They are very expensive and so not worth it for what you get.

Pros

Customer support is really responsive and easy to get ahold of. Unfortunately, the level of expertise of the customer support staff is variable, so often, they do not know the answers to the questions we have. Billing is a pretty common area of issue here.

Cons

I was assured that this program had a lot of podiatry based templates and that they were simple to modify. However, there are very few templates for my specialty, and trying to make or change a template is frustrating! It takes an hour at least to do one template. And, you cannot use the same template choice more than once in a template, so if you are trying to chart two feet, good luck!
The EMR takes forever to implement (11 weeks). I think that our implementation manager did not do a very good job of setting us up, so we have been having to try to learn everything on our own, which is frustrating and time-consuming when we are busy trying to see patients.
There is a lot of typing that has to be done during patient visits, which takes a lot of time and slows my pace and ability to see as many patients as I would like. Trying to just put in CPT codes takes forever. Also, save your work every minute because there is no auto-save on this program and I have lost so much information!
Do not believe it if you are told that Athena does your insurance credentialing for you. We have had to do it all ourselves. And you cannot pick and choose what claims are dropped for payment; it is all or nothing, so have a lot of working capital available while you credential.
EFT (electronic funds transfers) have to be done through US Bank. We use Wells Fargo, so I have to do money transfers, which take a couple business days to process, and that is a real pain. We have also found out the hard way that unless we track each individual claim ourselves, secondary insurances may fall through the cracks, leaving money on the table that we have to find and process ourselves. I fear that our income is not going to improve (contrary to their claim that they improve collections by 8%) and, in fact, that we will potentially lose money.
Our paper usage has increased substantially. You cannot just scan documents into the program. You have to fax them to Athena, and they sort them and place them into the patient's chart. However, you have to have a front cover and back cover bar code for each fax you send them so that a one-page fax becomes three pages.
E-prescribing is hit or miss, so I have to double check that all e-scripts actually have gone through. Also, we get numerous complaints about how complicated the patient portal is.

Pros

I have worked with and launched four other EHR's. When people ask me what I like most about AthenaNet, I tell them that "Athena just makes sense."

We have a very busy medical practice seeing over 35 patients each day in our clinic along with answering over 60 triage messages on the phone or through the patient portal daily.

Since our Athena "Go Live" 2 1/2 years ago I have been able to reduced practice overhead while increasing revenue, all while providing a manageable clinic day for our providers and staff. At the end of each day, all messages and calls are returned to patients and the days charts completed.

Our success has been mostly do to Athena's ability to streamline our patient visit process from check-in to check-out, plus communication with patients outside of the patient visit.

Our check-in process with co-pays, scanning insurance information and updating demographics, day of visit medication updates, and insurance verification have significantly reduced check-in time.

Providers are able to view imaging within the patient's chart allowing clinical decisions and patient concerns addressed during the visit, along with orders placed using custom templates and patient information printed with patient identification barcode on each page that we designed to create an efficient process at intake, exam and check-out all in the exam room. In addition, billing and dictation are typically completed either during the exam, or before the end of that day.

Cons

The CSC process needs to get better. With the new CSC Create a Case process issues and problems are difficult to get resolved with one phone call. Many times my issue needs to be escalated, not able to be solved by the person on the phone.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

Pleasant customer service reps
Athena will submit claims

Cons

Time consuming
Posting team makes many errors
Not user friendly
Charting is very difficult
Intake is time consuming

Pros

The prompts that help with RAF scores and star ratings is useful. I like the minichart feature and the meds data that pops up so I know what meds pts have been filling or getting elsewhere. I like the format for the assessment/plan and ordering of labs/studies/meds. I like that you can trend data like vital signs and labs.

Cons

THE BOX TO VIEW RESULTS IS A SMALL WINDOW IN WHICH YOU CAN ONLY SEE A LITTLE PART OF THE LABS AT A TIME AND HAVE TO SCROLL FOREVER TO SEE THE WHOLE THING. PLEASE ATHENA CHANGE YOUR VIEWING SCREEN FOR LAB RESULTS.
The scrolling action for everything is cumbersome and wastes so much time; there should be tabs that take you to each part of the note- the "jump to" feature is not the same and only works when you're working from the "exam" tab. It's hard to find old labs/notes/results unless you scroll, scroll, scroll through past notes. The more times the pt has been there the more scrolling you have to do to find things. There is no tab for imaging studies/labs/consults, etc.
**There is also no way to mark the incoming labs/documents/etc in your inbox to know that you've already viewed them; you may want to hold on to them for some reason but if you can't label that you've viewed it, the next time you open your inbox you keep reopening the same ones to check if it's an old or new document. This wastes time because each click takes a while to load. The system often seems slow even though our internet connection is fine. Jumping from one thing to another causes you to lose the window you were in.
There is no easy way to mark charts you want to make reminder notes for yourself on; you have to make a pt case each time and that crowds your pt case box. When someone replies to a pt case or sends a lab/imaging result back with notes it ends up back in my box but not marked as read or unread and sometimes I dont open because I think it's still the same old note/result I'm saving.
If I want to make suggestions to Athena there's no one to talk to about these things.

Pros

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.

Cons

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

Pros

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

Cons

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!

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Pros

It used to provide very comprehensive service and was easily navigable. It also used to have American employees who were concerned with fixing their mistakes.

Cons

They have apparently gone cheap on programmers and customer service agents, outsourcing to somewhere in southeast asia. What used to be quick and easy now is time-consuming and laborious. We've had to hire an extra employee because of one unfortunate change that Athena made two years ago, getting rid of the calendar sidebar so that you have to refresh every time you want to go from a patients chart back to the daily calendar to process all the patients. They promise over and over again they are working on fixing it. Two years later, they still have figured it out.