athenaClinicals vs. NextGen® Practice Management Solutions

Works well for family med and peds primary care. Would not be well suited to wound healing/hyperbaric medicine practice in current configuration as the specific documentation requirements of wound management and hyperbaric treatments don't mesh well with the layout and forms that I observed.

Incentivized

To start, Nextgen PM is NOT well-suited for companies who are looking for a could-based product—you will be required to house this software on your own server (this will force that company to maintain their own infrastructure). The solution is great for a company looking for a PM/EHR combo that communicates well with each other. The two modules are owned by the same company and does not require a costly API/bridge to be built between the two programs.

Incentivized

• Quality programs - able to see what measures are outstanding for the patient
• Reporting - able to report on multiple financial reports as well as clinical information
• Standardization of clinical information - the system forces users within the same specialty to use the same templates (as a starting point), therefore it is easier to standardize protocols and treatments of care

Incentivized

• Ability to save favorite phrases and templates to make charting more efficient for providers.
• Ability to interface with Question Diagnostics for certain laboratory tests.
• Ability to send and receive tasks to other user(s) on the system as well as send future tasks and reminders to yourself.

Incentivized

• The schedule needs to be improved. You should be able to see the schedule in a day, a week , in a month view and be able to schedule directly from the schedule.
• It's difficult to name items because they are traditionally corrected very quickly

• The software requires annoying/disruptive updates.
• The software is housed on our own server. We have found that cloud-based solutions are much more convenient.
• At times, the system is a bit "slow."
• The canned reporting/BI tool is not as malleable as many of the other solutions we have used and/or trialed.
• We were able to achieve cost-savings through some other systems.

Incentivized

Overall the system is good. Actually, this was supposed to be the universal EMR when it came out during the Bush administration.

Incentivized

They are always there. Friendly and organized.

For a surgery center application, it is much better to use a system that is uniquely designed for surgery centers. Using Athena as a less than desirable work around has been a frustrating experience.

Incentivized

NextGen was more scattered and less streamlined than either Allscripts or EPIC

Incentivized

• Nextgen did a good job of transitioning our practice away from paper health records.
• I believe that the Return on Investment would have been much higher had we gone straight to a cloud-based tool.
• By getting our feet wet with Nextgen, we have a pretty good understanding of Practice Management software. In other words, we could plug and play with most systems on the market.

Incentivized