Finding the right EMR software for your medical practice is not an easy task. What type of EMR software do you need? Generic or specialty-specific? With or without practice management? What’s the budget? These are all questions that might be thinking of when choosing your EHR software. This article talks about two of the top-tier EMR software, namely Athenahealth EMR and eClinicalWorks EMR software.

You might even be thinking that most EMR software provide the same services anyway so why does it matter which one you choose. Yes, most of the services that they offer are similar; however, there are also some services unique to EMR vendors. For instance, eClinicalWorks offers the industry’s first AI assistant names Eva that helps simplify clinical workflows to a great extent. Similarly, Athenahealth, in addition to its EMR module, provides a complete suite of services that you might need in your medical practice.

Here’s what we’ll be covering in this blog:

What is Athenahealth EMR?
What is eClinicalWorks EMR?
Athenahealth EMR vs. eClinicalWorks EMR

What is Athenahealth EMR?

Software Finder Rating: 4/5 based on Athenahealth reviews.

Athenahealth EMR is a Massachusetts-based company that provides network-enabled services for healthcare providers and practices along with point of care apps within the US. Moreover, Athenahealth EMR software is built on the foundation of providing high quality, accessible, and sustainable healthcare for everyone. To help turn their mission into a reality, they offer five different modules that include:

athenaClinicals: An EMR/EHR module that helps streamline clinical workflows and enables faster charting, among other features.

athenaClarity: AthenaClarity handles all of your financial and operational management health.

athenaCoordinator: With athenaCoordinator, you can simplify coordination with your patients, staff members, and other physicians.

athenaCommunicator: You can now conduct conference calls and meetings with other practitioners and patients for consultation with AthenaCommunicator.

athenaCollector: In addition to managing your administrative tasks, athenaCollector is a practice management module that helps simplify, streamlines, and automate workflows and operations.

Athenahealth EHR enables you to focus more on your patient without having to worry about routine administrative tasks such as documentation, complex charting, etc. Their cloud-based database helps centralize your data and streamline documentation without any manual input.

Athenahealth EMR Software (AthenaClinicals)

Instead of managing and maintaining physical patient files in your cabinet, you can create patient profiles for each patient and update information at any time through Athenahealth EMR’s database. They also provide numerous security protocols with their cloud database so you won’t have to worry about any safety concerns and patient confidentiality. You can also choose to give access to patient information to selective staff.

Here are some of the pros and cons of Athenahealth EMR software.

Pros:

User-friendly and engaging dashboard and patient portal.
Provides a complete range of network-enabled services for healthcare providers.
Can be integrated with various 3rd party apps with Athenahealth EMR for improving patient care.

Cons:

Their billing solution is not up to the mark in terms of robustness.

Pricing: athenahealth EHR's pricing starts at $140 per month per provider, which is below the average industry price. However, their complete suite of services can cost anywhere between $400-$700 per month per provider.

What is eClinicalWorks EMR?

Software Finder Rating: 4/5 based on eClinicalWorks reviews.

eClinicalWorks EMR is a cloud-based service provider that focuses on providing cloud-based healthcare IT solutions that reduce costs, minimize errors, and improves the quality of care. Additionally, their services include a full-fledged EMR/EHR software, practice management, revenue cycle management, managed billing, patient experience, and telehealth services.

Founded in 1999, eClinicalWorks EMR software started off with a single mission; to makes practices paperless and provide every connection they might need. However, they’ve grown into a much larger player within the healthcare IT industry with revolutionary features such as Eva and Healow.

eClinicalWorks EMR Software

eClinicalWorks EHR software also provides services such as medical billing, automated appointment reminders, e-prescriptions, patient scheduling, charting, etc.

Here's a list of pros and cons for eClinicalWorks EHR:

Pros:

Provides their own telemedicine app called Healow.
Offers free of charge conversion packages to new users.
Includes on-site training for small practices.
Completely customizable user interface.

Cons:

Ticketing system is not as effective as it should be.
Don’t offer effective customer support.
Can be costly for small to medium scale practices.

Pricing: eClinicalWorks EHR's license starts at $499 per month per provider.

Athenahealth EMR vs. eClinicalWorks EMR

So far we’ve talked about the various advantages and limitations of the two EMR software; Athenahealth EMR, and eClinicalWorks EMR. At this point, you might be wondering, which one is better? The answer to that question is not as easy as it sounds.

If I were to claim that one EMR software is better than the other one, that would be an inaccurate claim. Why? The effectiveness of an EMR software, or any software for that matter, is how well it’s able to integrate with your infrastructure and improve your clinical efficiency. So it depends on what are your requirements for an EMR software.

For instance, Athenahealth EHR focuses on enabling practitioners to provide accessible, sustainable, and quality healthcare services for everyone. On the other hand, eClinicalWorks EHR focuses on providing cost-effective solutions that improve the quality of patient care for practices.

If your practice’s requirements are to be able to reach out to patients effectively, Athenahealth EMR would be a good choice. However, if your practice’s requirements are to streamline operations and simplify clinical workflows, eClinicalWorks EMR would be the more suitable option.

Which One to Choose?

So, which one should you choose, Athenahealth EMR or eClinicalWorks EMR? In the end, it all depends on your practice’s needs, size, and budget. With Athenahealth EMR software, you have the option to automate clinical and non-clinical tasks and improve patient engagement. Similarly, with eClinicalWorks EMR software, you can streamline your administrative and routine processes and improve clinical efficiency.

Check out some of our other EHR comparisons:

Athenahealth EMR vs. eClinicalWorks EMR: Comparing Top-Tier EMR