athenaOne Reviews

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

EpicCare EMR

Reasons for Choosing athenaOne

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.

Reasons for Switching to 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.

Pros

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

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Alternatives Considered

EpicCare EMR, eClinicalWorks and Practice Fusion

Reasons for Choosing athenaOne

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)

Switched From

MedInformatix

Reasons for Switching to athenaOne

The overall package just overwhelmed the competition at the time.

Pros

Lots of billing intelligence and assistance.

Cons

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

Alternatives Considered

CareTracker

Reasons for Choosing athenaOne

We needed to have the clinic and hospital on the same platform

Switched From

CPSI EHR

Reasons for Switching to athenaOne

cost

Pros

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

Cons

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

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

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

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

Cons

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.

Pros

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

Cons

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

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

Ease of Use, Rarely any system downtimes or system issues, Receptive customer service and account managers, Transparency you can see everything that has happened and who did it

Cons

This product is the most costly that we have used, however, we have definitely made more in revenue by using Athena than not.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

Practice management reports and features are in abundance if that is your priority. The reminder call system does what it is supposed to. Community section in resource hub lets you know that others are just as frustrated and upset. Most of the customer service reps are very pleasant and helpful when the functionality or configuration is there; of it is sub par and missing, they do apologize.

Cons

The clinical documentation product is terrible. Supports physician- based practices vs rehab/OT/PT (though clients can see comments on product for all disciplines). Lack of quality templates that are compliant with regulatory agency requirements. Lack of feedback options. Lack of support. Account managers do not actually help to manage any issues you have with product. Very time consuming to call in for support repeatedly. Athenahealth clearly does not review feedback on community resource hub. Individuals that process Athenafax can be lazy and not process items with documents clearly identified with Athena identifiers/ printing, leaving in review for practice to handle (extra work). Honestly...too many cons to list.

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

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

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

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.

Cons

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.