athenaIDX is an on-premise or cloud-hosted enterprise RCM solution that helps health systems, hospitals, billing services, and large practices optimize financial performance and successfully adapt to healthcare payment reform. It is based on the Centricity medical practice and EMR software that was formerly owned and supported by GE Healthcare acquired by Veritas Capital in 2018, spun off into a new entity (Virence Health), and then rebranded as a product of athenahealth (also a Veritas…
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Billtrust
Score 7.0 out of 10
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The Billtrust suite of AR solutions helps make sense of customers' ever-expanding invoicing preferences, their growing use of digital payments, and AR teams' valuable time. Accelerating the order-to-cash cycle benefits both sides of the B2B transaction.
I couldn't recommend IDX to anyone. Most of the reviews on this site appear to be for the program that broke off from Athena IDX, Centricity Practice Solutions (CPS). CPS is a much more capable program managed by Unlimited Systems (a separate company) that should NOT be confused with Athena IDX (managed by Athena Health). It's possible that Athena IDX was usable in the 90s compared to other peer programs at that time, but there are so, so many better, modern solutions available now for far less money. This software is priced at the enterprise level with a level of quality that is below budget tier with an ancient feature set to boot.
For a simple invoice-based organization, especially with multiple stores, Billtrust is an appropriate fit. While lacking in design and intuitive functionality, Billtrust got the job done as far as receiving payments from customers. However, if you are in a subscription-based business or one that invoices on a frequent repetitive manner, Billtrust may not be the best solution.
One of the best things about Centricity is it is flexible. We are able to add a data point behind a term (CPS calls this an observation term) and track any data needed. These observation terms also allow us to pull information forward and display information needed to make a good decision or used to decrease errors. For example in our history forms given to the patients one of the questions is side of injury. This affected side displays on our EMR forms which helps providers and prevents mistakes.
CPS integrates with other programs. We are paperless and use DocuSign to send each patient their history, ROS and all new paperwork. This allows us to import the history into the forms and has saved us from adding extra staff (FTEs) to room and take history. The history form can be completed at home or in the waiting room. Each section has a observation term behind it and allows it to be placed into the note at the correct section. Since we have a fully integrated product we do not have to have another program to enter or transfer our charges from the EMR to the PM side of the program.
Our notes look great! We did a lot of customization which gave us the detail and look we wanted. It seems like a lot of work at first, but the outcome has so much efficacy. We increased our providers without having to increase our staffing and it is due to he efficiencies we gained by using the EMR.
One other note, Centricity is flexible but that means it is complicated. You can not have flexibility without it be complicated don't let that stop you the end results can be great.
Billtrust's customer service always replies within 24 hours, leaving the case open until it is verified to be resolved.
The customer portal our credit managers access is exceptionally well designed, allowing us to see when an invoice was delivered, and even when the end-user opened it. There are built-in reports to answer almost any question.
Statements print only current open accounts, would be nice to print a total statement for patients so they can see if payments are split between open and closed/zeroed out accounts
We have a longstanding good record of invoice delivery and a high number of customers who are accustomed to the look and feel for logging to make payments
We deal with our customer's AR personnel to help resolve issues with our open invoices. They can help us but seem to be lacking in the overall understanding of the Billtrust software and why things may work the way they do. We have some accounts that are active that we have been unable to add to our corporate account, and as a result, these bills must be paid via check, and we are not currently receiving statements. It would be great if they had more robust customer service or maybe different criteria for creating accounts.
Training consists of overly specific points with no general process considerations. Trainers will regularly go 'into the weeds' on pointless edge cases while the meat of the training still needs to be addressed.
Athena IDX is more reliable than other platforms. It rarely has latency challenges where it has to be intermittently shut down or updated. It is accessible on multiple devices and overall, easy to use and navigate.
For a less tech-educated workforce, Billtrust did the job and required minimal developer resources on our end. Also, while Billtrust lacked in several arenas relative to Stripe, it was good for us since we were not a subscription-based business. For the price, Billtrust was a good solution for our invoice-to-pay business.
Extremely expensive software for the limited feature set. We're talking millions of dollars with off hours support (anything outside of 8-6EST) that starts at $1200 for the first hour and $300 for each hour afterwards.
Multitasking isn't a thing unless you assign more licenses (thereby increasing your costs). Users can quite literally only have one IDX window open at a time unless you assign more licenses. This slows down everyone as there are plenty of times where examining different parts of a patient's profile is useful.
Reporting has been nearly impossible as we use modern reporting software. IDX's analytics site is firmly stuck in the 1990s and lacks decades of innovation present in something like Power BI.
Nickel and diming philosophy. A limited API server costs ~$10k/month. Setting up a new facility in IDX costs you and requires a 4 month lead time. Many more instances of this.
10 day reduction in our DSO resulting in increased cash flow
Savings in printing, ink, folding, stuffing, and postage over in-house production, and additional savings with every customer that changes from paper to electronic delivery methods
Increased payment application by batching payment types by day into one file
Enhanced knowledge base for staff through webinars, Twitterviews, conferences, classes, and contact with customer support allow our staff to utilize our tools fully
