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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Dentrix
Score 9.2 out of 10
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Dentrix is a practice management software for dentistries that supports both the clinical and business sides of a practice. Dentrix helps build a practice with integrated eServices — dental software that adds new capabilities to your system — and "Dentrix Connected" products from dental technology companies.
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Pricing
athenaIDX
Dentrix
Editions & Modules
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
athenaIDX
Dentrix
Free Trial
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No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
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Community Pulse
athenaIDX
Dentrix
Considered Both Products
athenaIDX
Verified User
Professional
Chose athenaIDX
Athena IDX is more expensive, has less features, is less modern, interfaces with our modern systems poorly and has actively created more manual work across the company. Each of the systems above are better in every conceivable way compared to this program.
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.
Dentrix G7 is better suited for small private dental offices that are not doing federal FQHC data reporting every year. G7 doesn't allow for the full capturing of all FQHC data that is needed as the enterprise edition does. Dentrix G7 also is not suited well for mutliple site dental offices as that is not technically supported. There is a work around requiring a Windows terminal server to setup Dentrix as a server application. Any businesses that have multiple dental offices are better suited for the Dentrix Enterprise edition which does allow for this and hosted Dentrix.
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.
Easy to look up, edit, delete, break and make appointments. This is great when you're on the phone with someone and are able to quickly locate them in the system and see what appointments they have.
Easily make changes to providers information, colors or schedules. This is nice because we tend to have fill in hygienists and we can change their colors so it will not indicate the same colors as are our normal staff.
Easily print reports and deposits from the office manager. This helps us keep track of new patients, aging reports, unscheduled appointments, unscheduled treatment, continuing care appointments and so much more.
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 used Dentrix support and they seem to be helpful. We are able to schedule meetings as needed within a short time frame, and are usually able to resolve any issues we may have within 1 or 2 calls. There doesn't seem to be as strong of a user community around Dentrix as there is with Epic.
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.
I have previously used Eaglesoft and Easy Dental. I have found Dentrix to be very comparable to Eaglesoft, and myself and my team feel that it is relatively essay to use and seems to have a low learning curve for new members added to the team, at least in my experience.
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.
