athenaOne Reviews

“Good!”

Pros

The system is pretty good and is intuitive as well. The training is given before making it live, but I am still in the process of learning it. The more I explore and use its different features and functionalities, the more I am liking how it works and does everything.

Cons

I believe that they can still improve a lot more if they work hard.

“Easy to use.”

Pros

Athena is great and is easy to use once you’ve been trained to work on it. The billing and reporting feature is great, and that I don’t need to maintain a spreadsheet for all this. The forum is very helpful where you can add questions or issues and get your answers rather than having to call them.

Cons

I would really like if they could offer customization of the system and online forms according to the specialty practice, it is annoying when other specialty things pop up in the patient chart, and the online form also has a lot of irrelevant questions, so it would be better to be able to customize it according to the printed forms that we have, if possible.

“Review”

Pros

It is easy to use, and I like the registration process and the way it is detailed. Patient care gets better with their portal which is accessible by patients as well. The communication between patient and provider becomes easy. It gives appointment reminders as well. More time is saved by using this.

Cons

Searching information can be troublesome. The system is very detailed and has a lot of features and functionalities but for someone running a small business consisting of 1 doctor, it isn’t suitable. It is mainly designed in a way that could cater multiple practitioners, so for me it wasn’t the best option.

“Great layout”

Pros

The system is nice, you can get everything done with it. The layout is great and I really like how it is designed the pages and the drop-down menus. The product is quite detailed. I only use a small part of the system, and I can easily access all the patients and provider information which is amazing.

Cons

There is an excess of same information pages, and I have access to information that I shouldn’t be having access to, so they need to do something to verify things to be secured and sharing access related to tasks performed.

“Excellent EMR &amp, Billing”

Pros

The software is easy to customize and has improved our workflows mainly because we can easily tweak the templates.

Cons

I cant think of any cons as the product works very well according to our needs.

“Before signing, understand everything”

Pros

It is simple and easy. The system is intuitive and usable. The training is always given prior going live. But we’re still learning the program everyday by using it. You just like it even more while using it. The patient portal is great, and the overall system is amazing. We are getting used to it day by day and how easy it has made things for us.

Cons

Before making the system live, one needs to make sure that everything that they require is properly set up. Otherwise it’s just a mess. We tried pushing the live date for one week but, yet it wasn’t ready. After setting it up and making it live we got to know that there were still many features that it was missing, and we had to revert things back. Athena should do a thorough practice test of the workflow before making it live.

“It’s a good system”

Pros

It is simple and easy. You can do everything through the system like messaging, writing notes, prescribing etc. It’s a pretty good system.

Cons

Everything that you do, you need a bar code for it, otherwise it won’t be done, and having a bar code for everything really bugs you. Switching through pages is a mess, especially when you haven’t saved anything and want to switch, all the data entered would be lost.

“2 months of using Athena”

Pros

It has been 2 months of using Athena and we’re still using it. It is simple and easy once you’re trained well. They do state a 6% increase in collections in all their advertisements which caught our eye to get it, and with no doubt I must say not only 6% our collections have gone 15% up from what it was last year, and I believe that it mostly is because of Athena. Athena is doing a good job.

Cons

The system kind of takes longer in processing than our previous system and is slightly unorganized. And I also feel that we are kind of bound to the system, because we have to do everything on it, but I guess that wouldn’t be a problem knowing that our collections are well handled.

“Review”

Pros

The customer support team is great, they are prompt in responding and are super friendly as well. The ability to monitor performance is nice.

Cons

The settings of this system are not intuitive at all. The messaging system of Athena is completely unorganized, and is so messed up, that it often gets hard to get. The auto population feature is inconsistent and makes everything inefficient, due to which the search process gets longer and annoying.

“Promise of a palace and gives a hut”

Pros

The training that was given to us was very helpful and knowledgeable. The training is always given before you start using the system, which is nice, so that you could learn it all before. The system can be customized according to your requirements. Meaningful Use certification was easy to get.

Cons

Before you sign up, they make a lot of promises, but when it comes to the point of delivering their promises, that doesn’t happen. The system is full of glitches and there’s a lot of clicking you do before you can get something done. Getting connected with their support team is a horrible experience, make an appointment and so. Even after getting connected they would promise to fix things but we’ve yet not seen anything that has been fixed for us. It has been 4 months using Athena and billing is a mess. The embedded E&M coder isn’t reliable as well.

“So many issues”

Pros

The platform combines EMR, billing and care management which helps me tackle PCMH, meaningful use and other complicated government or insurer requirements. Its first-pass billing and payments generally run smoothly and efficiently when there aren't mistakes. The pricing feels fair for the level of service offered.

Cons

I think the underlying code is a real mess. That poor foundation shows up as recurring glitches in the interface, frequent incompatibilities and sluggish performance. When I look at job boards or former employee comments, the same complaints keep popping up which tells me these are not isolated incidents. There are a lot of built-in features that in my view, increase the risk of human error and create real patient safety concerns and over the years I've watched the company refuse to truly acknowledge or remedy these problems.. To me this UI would be unacceptable in aviation and I believe healthcare should be just as safety-focused. Medication lists are a particularly frustrating example as they're hard to read, cluttered and don't clearly show what the patient was taking before the visit versus what has been started, stopped or changed during and after the encounter in any user-friendly way. I see this as one of the most dangerous parts of the product, though there are other safety-related shortcomings as well. When a refill request comes in, it requires clicking through multiple screens to find the medication history before I can responsibly refill which effectively encourages clinicians to skip that critical step. And if you do follow the proper workflow, you can feel like you're being penalized by the system for taking the time to do the right thing. The vendor's support area includes a so-called community where users can theoretically share tips and solutions but in practice it feels like an echo chamber, people who post repeated negative feedback reportedly get banned and if you don't accept their strict Terms of Use you can't even view or participate in that space to get help or learn about updates. After visits I'm spending roughly 10-12 minutes documenting per patient on average because I refuse to rely on boilerplate notes, I want to document care personally and accurately. I tried to get dictation through their partner Dragon which I believe would cut my documentation time to around a minute but despite my first request two months ago and several follow-ups (both through athenahealth and externally), I still haven't heard back. They also say that if you buy Dragon directly you won't get full interoperability with their system. Right now I have effectively zero interoperability which is a major problem. There are simply too many clicks everywhere. I even know another local provider who switched to a different EMR for these reasons. The patient portal is another sore point as patients can't upload images so they can't quickly show me a mole they're worried about, an incision site, a pill that looks different or a rash. Those are the kinds of simple, time-saving exchanges other EMRs support but athenahealth does not which creates extra work for patients and clinicians alike.

“Complete solution”

Pros

This is an all in one solution. It makes my practice feel like a resort, since I have billing, a communicator, my EMR and consistently truly amazing behind-the-scenes support that's always working hard for me!

Cons

I experience delays when having small details customized to my practice.

“Their team knows their stuff”

Pros

I find the platform extremely user-friendly and easy to use. Every system has its own quirks but whenever one pops up, the CSC team jumps on it and they genuinely know what they're doing and resolve issues quickly!

Cons

When it comes to the billing side, it can sometimes feel a little confusing especially since we do a lot of write-offs which complicates things. Still, I find the CSC helpful whenever I run into a roadblock.

“Impressive support”

Pros

I'm really impressed with the support team, they're phenomenal and the software itself is very smart. The reports and metrics I can pull with virtually no effort are exceptional. Seeing exactly how long patients spend moving through our different office departments and understanding how quickly providers document visits at the time of service has been eye-opening for me, to say the least.

Cons

Honestly, I felt that the setup training could be much more comprehensive than what we received.

“They didn�t keep their word”

Pros

There are automated elements that in theory reduce staff time.

Cons

The sales process was my biggest frustration. There wasn't any demo I could explore on my own to test and confirm the salesperson's promises before I signed and handed over a large, non refundable deposit. I discovered later that several crucial items I'd been told were part of the EHR and billing package simply weren't included. For example, the kiosk feature that would let me go genuinely paperless and the promised access to a certified coder were absent. What really surprised me was that the salesperson seemed to not even grasp the difference between a billing specialist and a certified coder which left me feeling misled and uneasy about what had been sold.

“Not recommended”

Pros

What I appreciate most about this product is its billing module. I find it efficient and the billing back-office team are competent. To me, it's obvious this system evolved from billing software instead of a clinical record. If your priority is revenue over patient care, you might pick it. Otherwise I'd recommend searching for alternatives elsewhere.

Cons

The medical-record side is very time-consuming and it's complicated. Filling out the electronic chart routinely adds around twenty extra minutes compared with the old paper chart. I strongly advise avoiding AthenaHealth's EMR.

“Simple to handle”

Pros

I really like how simple it is to use. The reporting tools are powerful and the customer support never disappoints.

Cons

My only real complaint is the cost. Pricing is always a concern for any product when reimbursements are shrinking but in my experience Athena's fees are still among the more reasonable compared with other vendors. Honestly, that's the only negative I can come up with.

“I regret choosing it”

Pros

Because it's web-based, I can access it relatively easily from virtually anywhere I have an internet connection.

Cons

I'm frustrated by the layout and overall workflow because it feels very complex. It makes me click through far too many screens to complete routine tasks. It also pushes an excessive number of items into my task list. For example, when I send a letter to a referring doctor and sign it, it still lands in my task box labeled REVIEW AGAIN and then I have to finally approve and send it. That creates a massive pile of tasks for me to sort through at the end of the day. Another workflow annoyance is ordering labs. After creating the order you have to hit a button labeled "sign orders" and then also click Save to actually send it. Why are there two separate steps instead of simply saving and sending? Also, every fax that arrives to our number now gets routed into Athena and forwarded to the provider named on it. My staff used to triage those faxes, handling med refills and appointment requests and only bringing things to me that truly needed my attention. Now I'm the one sifting through them all which feels like a very poorly thought-out change. Finding older notes and lab results is also difficult. We switched from UroChart so we could better manage multiple clinic sites and I regret that decision. UroChart had a much better EMR workflow, with notes, labs and reports laid out on an easy-to-read timeline that was simple to access and visualize.

“Better than the alternatives”

Pros

I've been using EMRs for a long time and in my experience, this one stands out as far superior to any other system we've tried. I find their reporting features far more powerful than anything I've seen before and the ongoing support they provide is excellent. When we let our clinicians choose the replacement, they all independently picked Athena which reinforced our confidence in the decision.

Cons

The training and the prep they provided during our transition were excellent and set us up well. I did wish a live, on-site specialist could have been present during our go-live to calm nerves, though the phone-based go-live assistance ended up working satisfactorily because they could remotely see the exact screen we were using. We did face one frustrating limitation. I couldn't import any of our legacy charts into the new platform so we had to manually abstract and enter the data we needed.

“User-friendly product”

Pros

I've found it to be very user-friendly, not full of needless complications. It's simple to use and the billing side is extremely clear. We started using the athena communicator for the patient portal and it's been a lifesaver as it cuts down on work and patients really appreciate it. Since we put the system in place, my office has become efficient, well organized and runs smoothly like a finely tuned machine.

Cons

There isn't much to complain about. However, I do feel some of the cardiology templates could be refined and would benefit from better customization options.