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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DrChrono
Score 8.9 out of 10
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DrChrono in Sunnyvale offers what they describe as a complete EHR, Practice Management, and Revenue Cycle Management Solution - Available on iPad, iPhone, and Web. DrChrono offers solutions for speciality practices as well.
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.
Templates are customizable and you can take pictures directly into a patient's chart. DrChrono is less appropriate for this reason: they have been working on enrolling my company for Medicare electronic billing for [seven months]. [As a result], I have been unable to bill for any Medicare patients for [seven months]. The only person I have talked to was in India [and] ([the] email address ended in .india). I have had to call Medicare to try to figure out how to complete the enrollment process, [and I ended up with this response from Medicare: "DrChrono needs to [stop being lazy and do something]!." I lost [a] significant [amount of] money. [...]
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.
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
[Onboarding] trainers and tech support do not know the program.
[All] DrChrono calls are from blocked, [unknown], or their personal numbers. [Looking] at [each] caller ID, you have to answer every call because they do not register as DrChrono.
DrChrono [uses] [Google] phone and [I could] not understand what [a] trainer [said] [when I called them]. [I could not hear what the trainer said] over the noise of other conversations on [Google] phone.
[I] [had] absolutely no way of talking to tech support in person.
[Tech] support tickets [are] unanswered.
[They] do not know how to enroll providers to bill Medicare electronically.
[There was] absolutely no accountability.
[The] platform was constantly down [and was very frustrating].
[There was a] consistently, delayed submission.
[Every] day, [I got] an email about a problem that they are working on.
[Weekly] issues for platform [was] addressed for slowness.
Tech support needs [to have professional people answering tech problems, needs to be reliable, and be responsive whenever someone has issues].
[The] tutorial videos [for DrChrono] are from several years [ago] and no longer apply to the [most] current platform layout.
[The] help browser [is] nonfunctional.
[Tech support is not well trained. You can not talk to anyone in person and they often do not answer tech tickets. Onboard trainers do not know their system. Customer often figures out the answers before the training rep. Between the accent and the noise of Google phone, my entire training session was asking her to repeat what she said. When they are rated lowest of the group for tech support, it is for a reason].
I am glad I am not always affected by the platform problems. You get daily emails notifying you they are working on slowness, ERA submission problems etc
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.
When being trained on the billing program, rather than start at the beginning and "TRAIN HOW TO USE THE PROGRAM" the trainer kept asking me what questions I had. I kept saying I don't know what I don't know. Her response was, ok, were done then. You don't have anymore questions. The only thing I could think to do was ask her to explain each item in each drop down box, but she would just read out loud the drop down choices and ask what questions I had. This pretty much sums up their training.
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.
TheraOffice has the best tech support and onboarding training. WebPT is also good, but their charting templates lack customization. RehabOptima and Casamba are straight forward and reliable. I am currently stuck with DrChrono.
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.
Negative: I have lost reimbursement due to the time for tech support to address ticket and the max claims submission time.
Negative: I have [not had any medicare revenue for seven months] due to DrChrono not knowing how to enroll for Medicare Electronic Billing. This issue still has not been resolved.
Negative: Lost time due to the platform being down or running slow.
