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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Tebra Billing & Payments
Score 8.9 out of 10
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Tebra Practice Management (formerly Kareo) provides cloud-based management and billing solutions for small medical offices. Some key features include: Patient Management, Scheduler & Patient Reminders, Insurance Billing & Reporting, and Patient Billing & Collections.
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.
In my experience, problems with them adding incorrect fees to pad their bills coupled with their unethical business practices such as locking you out from accessing your EMR at the drop of a hat prevent me from recommending Kareo to any practice. Reliability is paramount. Kareo's use of unethical business practices (locking you out from your EMR or disabling your EMR all together) can result in a physician being sanctioned by the medical board (inappropriate medical record keeping) or financially destroy a small practice leaving them with NO ACCESS to their ERAs/patient billing accounts etc leads me to NOT reccomend their products or doing business with them.
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.
Kareo stays up to date on insurance changes which allow for smooth transitions.
Kareo asks for feedback and has a place to go and request changes or additions that would make our job easier.
I love that you can submit a help ticket or call, if you prefer, with any questions or problems that you may have. They are always very prompt with their follow up.
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
Where to start...for one, during my start-up with a "success coach" and trust me, I use that term broadly, I had to f/u on every single issue that came up. I was told she was taking care of my electronic lab enrollment, after waiting 3 months and reaching out to my success coach, Kayli, countless times, I only was told when contacted by management that my Quest lab access had been denied after 2 weeks because I was never told to independently create my own account with Kareo- after asking/emailing/calling multiple times trying to figure out the process. So needless to say, I have NO electronic lab access 4 months after signing with Kareo and they are now just starting the process.
Prescriptions- I had reached out to Kareo, no exaggeration, over 10 times to figure out why I wasn't receiving prescription refills. Spent countless hours on the phone with "support line" that could never give me an answer- to any question. And never f/u either until I directly insisted to my salesperson to have management contact me directly. I had a patient go to the hospital due to not having their medications because apparently their pharmacy had sent refill prescriptions over 3 times which I never received. Only after talking to management, did they look into further and then inform me that I had 3 locations in the system (?? I have ONE location). They were all prior addresses of offices, one from over 4 years ago. To date, again, 4 months after paying a year up front, I can't receive refill requests. And the solution proposed to me by management was to call my prior EHR and request they delete my prior addresses. And I cannot contact my prior EHR because I was in a large group that restricted the account to only 2 individuals in a group of 18 doctors to even have access to talk to them. So I can't resolve the issue, Kareo after 4 months instructs me to call them myself, and the prior EHR doesn't even recognize I had an account with them because it was under a group practice name.
Online booking- I thought this would be an amazingly efficient add-on. What they don't tell you is you can only designate "increments" of appointment times. Kareo will tell you it syncs with your existing schedule so that online bookings are only in vacant time slots. I had new patients selecting a time increment of 15 minutes, existing patients selecting 45 minutes (with a deductible) and any increment over 15 minutes (which the patient can select at their own will, being if you choose 15 min increments, it will offer appointment length for 15 min, 30 min, 45 min, 60 min etc with no outline of the appropriate time length) will over-book your schedule. So if you have a 10-10:15 slot, the patient can select a 45 minute appointment that starts at 10 (Because that 15 minute slot is open). But then will overbook the patients at 10:15 and 10:30.
It created utter chaos in my practice. My office manager spent more time calling patients to inform them they had booked an inappropriate time increment, they can't book a new appointment for 15 minutes, we don't accept their insurance...the list goes on.
There is no way to restrict the increments or who can book an appointment.
Messaging- I can't view what incoming messages from patients are sent to whom. And neither can my office manager. And the patient gets to select who to sent the message to, either the "provider" or "location." And 9 times out of 10 they send to the "provider." So as a physician, I am inundated with patient messages simply wanting to book a new appointment or reschedule. As a physician, obviously prioritizing my time is important and my office manager can't view these messages.
The list goes on, unfortunately. "A/R" reports only allow them to calculate a theoretical A/R based on your self-pay rates to patients, not individual contracted rates with insurances. So my A/R has an inflated number, which I can't even quantify by how much, because the A/R is based as if every insurance patient paid as a self-pay patient. Seriously, no one thought this through?
Can't send multiple controlled scripts at once electronically. Have to enter, go to separate site, enter code, be redirected back to KAreo then re-enter another med, be redirected to separate site, enter code, be redirected...Any other EHR I've ever used (and I've used around 6 between residency and private practice) you could enter multiple Rx, but then check the meds you wanted to send and then enter ONE code for, say, 2 controlled scripts. Kareo, you must enter separate codes one by one.
I could go on but will choose to hope for all reading, you get the general point...
Kareo Medical Billing is very user friendly and the support they provide allows users to get their questions answered quickly and efficiently. The wait time to receive help is usually pretty good and most of the time we can ger our questions answered. We have found that is the tech help is unable to answer our question, they will attempt to find a colleague who is able to help!
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.
We have used several Practice Management programs which our doctors have chosen. Kareo is far above those in ease of use, efficiency and reporting. Training takes very little time as the program is intuitive. Licensing cost is reasonable. Our doctors enjoy the integration with the Kareo EHR and our staff appreciates the integration from the EHR to the practice management. It makes their job easier.
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.
