athenaIDX vs. Kareo Practice Management

Athena is a well-suited electronic medical record system for those professionals that work in a medical center, hospital, clinic, and/or outpatient clinic that need to provide frequent and accurate documentation for insurance providers and all other members of the care team. It might be less appropriate for a small agency.

Incentivized

I can't imagine who it is appropriate for- unless you could care less if you get prescription refill requests from pharmacies, send portal messages to patients but they have no clue they have a new message to read. It's not ideal for large or small practices. Allow them to overbook your schedule with "new patients" that are on insurance plans you don't even accept for a 15 minute time interval...So if this the flow of your practice- this is the EHR for you. Otherwise, steer clear.

• 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.

Incentivized

• The integration with the clearing house is excellent.
• Setting up a practice is straightforward and fast..within 24 hours.
• Reports can be exported to Excel which is particularly helpful for forecasting trends.
• Customization of billing codes makes Kareo functional for any type practice.

Incentivized

• 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
• Ability to create custom reports

Incentivized

• It does not auto balance accounts which would be helpful for us when patient's have a credit on one line but then a balance on another line.
• The reports could be broken down a little more detailed

During my medical rotations I have used multiple products similar to Centricity, but I found Centricity to be one of the easiest to use and one of the easiest systems to learn

Incentivized

Kareo is plain and simple. NextGen always says you get what you pay for, however, NextGen is expensive for anyone and Kareo does the same thing for a fraction of the cost. Kareo gives our time management back to the office personnel. Everything is user-friendly, which NextGen could be if it didn't have so many steps to complete on task.

Incentivized

• Medication Management has taken a negative impact on our clinicians, the ease of use changed into a complicated process.

Incentivized

• Kareo has enabled our billing company to increase revenue for our clients by 10-12%.
• The efficiency of entering data has allowed our company to reduce staff.
• Being able to customize permissions for the staff increases accountability of the employees.

Incentivized