A roundup of Athenahealth EMR Pros and Cons

Athenahealth EMR is a cloud-based software that provides services for healthcare organizations. Athena EMR is currently linked with a network of 160,000 providers. The platform offers tools and features that are following HIPAA and enables clinicians to automate their practice. This solution launched its first medical practice management solution to cater to the reimbursement problems incurred by the women's health and birthing practice in San Diego, California. From that point forward, Athenahealth has been presenting various solutions, for example, electronic health records (EHR), care coordination, appointment management, medical billing, patient engagement, medical billing, and population health management.

The software offers a patient portal for patients to review history, track billing, schedule appointments, and sign forms. Appointment Reminders are conveyed through telephone, email, or instant message; patients can even be notified when test outcomes become available on the patient portal. Athenahealth also comes with a continuously updated rules engine. EMR Athena offers enough flexibility to allow users to automate their practice management with top-of-the-line tools such as population health management, custom benchmarking, medical billing, patient engagement, responsibility monitoring, and proactive trend analysis.

Core Features

ü Population Health

ü Patient Engagement

ü Electronic Health Records

ü Care Coordination

ü PQRS Quality guarantee

ü Revenue Cycle Management

ü ePrescribing

ü Dedicated service teams (e.g., Clinical Intelligence team)

ü Order Transmission

ü Guaranteed quality program through Merit-Based Incentive Programs (MIPS)

ü Epocrates

ü Practice Management

ü More Disruption Please (MDP) program

ü Medical Billing

ü Secure Text Messaging

Pros and Cons

Pros:

· The solution is known as a "disruptor" in the EHR industry.

· Easy to use software

· Permits 3rd party applications to be coordinated into Athenahealth and allows users to access them through Marketplace by Athenahealth.

· It offers an easy-to-use patient portal.

· An all-inclusive EMR system.

· It allows users to add diagnostic pictures to help with monitoring wounds instantly.

· It includes Practice Management solutions with low up-front costs.

· Users can easily switch between doctors and offices.

· Users can instantly add diagnostic pictures to help with monitoring wounds.

· It comes with an intuitive design, detailed interface, and large fonts.

· Offers features including claim tracking, denial management, and checking patient eligibility

· Provides a full suite of features to help practice management clinicians.

· athenaclinicals module helps with streamlining medical documentation.

· It provides an electronic health records (EHR) database.

· Web messaging or Email feature allows patients to access their doctor's office easily

Cons:

· Difficult to assimilate the reports

· Some problems with the robustness of Athenahealth's billing system. Users are required to research their practice needs while considering their billing services.

· Ongoing billing services are somewhat costly

· Expensive for small practices

· The message board takes longer than expected to respond.

· System updates are sometimes confusing and can disrupt the operational workflow

· Some functionalities are challenging to learn and understand especially for

· beginners

· Recommendations from the User Community need consideration

· A lot of scrolling within the patient chart

· Batches can be confusing when posting

Unique Selling Point

As of now, the vendor has integrated various 3rd party applications into its platform, which can be accessed through the Athenahealth Marketplace.