athenaCollector vs. NextGen® Practice Management Solutions

athenaCollector would be well suited for smaller practices. It is well suited for larger practices, however some turn around time/system maintenance becomes more challenging. The product is well suited for a fast paced work environment. Ease of use of the system makes it easy to navigate and not get lost.

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

• Ease of scheduling appointments, checking patients in, and entering charges.
• The system is very user friendly and navigation throughout the system is not complicated.
• Reporting tools are setup in a format that the average user can use.

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

• Reporting for payer contract variances is weak for an organization as large as ours.
• Custom report development can get pricey and take some time to develop.
• A few of the spin-off products, such as the Dashboards, are not as customizable as our organization had hoped they would be.

Incentivized

• 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

The ease of use is far superior than any other similar billing systems product I have used. Navigation throughout the system is very self explanatory. Training time on this system is 1-3 days depending on users role (prior to additional on the job training within the system specific to the users role). Other systems have had software training for a week or more.

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