VIDEO: athenahealth – Top Features, Pros, Cons, and Alternatives

athenahealth is a cloud-based, medical practice management software system that can help you manage a number of different care coordination & EHR software functions from one platform. If you’re in the market for a medical management software solution, you’ll want to consider athenahealth. But if you’re just starting your search, we can help. Use our Product Selection Tool at technologyadvice.com to get a free list of medical software recommendations.

Click the annotation in the top right corner of your screen to get started. athenahealth helps medical practices and hospital systems of all sizes, from startups to entire healthcare systems, manage their healthcare services. Its web-based platform provides an easy way to perform physician billing; practice management; and EHR, or electronic health record, services. The platform also allows for the creation of billing rules and back-office services that can help make generally time-consuming tasks much easier.

This also includes the constant monitoring of privacy regulations by staff members to make sure the software and its users stay compliant. athenahealth’s platform also provides telehealth services and revenue cycle management, and it has mobile capabilities for access on the go and even assigns users a dedicated advisor to help improve the practice’s efficiency with the platform. athenahealth promises no hidden fees and only collects fees when their clients do.

In other words, they collect a percentage of their client's revenue. For a personalized quote based upon an organization’s needs, potential clients are asked to contact the company directly via their website. athenahealth comes with a number of features to help practices manage their healthcare functions. Of the many functions athenahealth performs, the platform specializes in EHR management. With athenahealth, medical practices can create workflows that streamline patient visits by providing an efficient way to prep patients prior to being seen by physicians and an organized way of documenting any patient issues.

Physicians can also consult with other clinicians to better formulate healthcare plans for patients through the application’s medical record sharing capabilities and also their connection with both the Carequality and Commonwell services. athenahealth simplifies the process of keeping up with current regulatory practices in the industry by keeping a team of experts on staff that continually update the platform with the most recent regulatory information.

With athenahealth’s athenaOne application, physicians can even access patient records on the go in order to prepare them for upcoming appointments. It also has built-in speech-to-text dictation as well as a telehealth option to connect with patients as efficiently as possible. As an all-in-one solution for medical practices, athenahealth is able to handle scheduling patients with support for automated reminders. Moving into the process of patient check-in, athenahealth can use information collected from the patient prior to or at the time of service to verify insurance eligibility in real-time. athenahealth can also review claims for errors prior to them being made in order to support its 93% first-pass resolution rate claim.

Finally, athenahealth can offer real-time reports for billing departments in order to better understand how they can achieve better results. From the beginning to the end of the patient cycle, athenahealth gives medical practices the ability to better engage with patients. The platform enables patients to self-schedule and offers the ability for patients to pay for visits online. The platform can also help patients take better care of themselves by sending automated reminders about upcoming appointments, immunizations, and annual checkups.

And athenahealth can empower medical practices to further engage with patients by allowing them to operate automated multichannel campaigns. athenahealth also gives patients the ability to access their own clinical information online. Through their online portal, patients can contact their care team directly or view test results after completion. Pros and cons athenahealth is a top-rated product, but it still comes with its pros and cons. Pros Of the various functions athenahealth covers, most users consistently praise the program’s EHR functionality.

Users also appreciate that the platform scales easily to accommodate large practices with multiple physicians, and multiple users have mentioned that the software is easy to use. Cons Some users have stated that customer service workers are not adept at using the program themselves. A few users have also mentioned that the price is expensive for smaller practices, and multiple users have complained of software glitches or user interface slowdowns.

It’s a good idea to get multiple quotes before choosing a medical practice management solution. If you’re interested in athenahealth, you might also want to consider DrChrono, eClinicalWorks, Kareo Clinical, and NueMD. Still not sure if athenahealth is right for you? Use our Product Selection Tool at technologyadvice.com to get a free list of medical software recommendations. Click the button on the left to get started.