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…
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.
The best scenario is a small non-profit clinic who needs a great EMR but cannot afford one like EPIC. I might also recommend this to colleagues who are starting a small business because I think PF would be a good, easy, and more affordable to get up and running. I think this EMR makes less sense in the setting of large academic institutions who need lots of easily manipulable data and a huge amount of support.
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.
Document storage- You can upload documents and attach them to specific patients. As well as flag documents that need to be signed, and assign them to specific doctors.
Charting- Very detailed integration for charting.
Reporting- We really enjoy the reports we can pull from within the software.
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 always get a return call within the time stated. There are many available topics on the forum and it is often easy to find the issue you are seeking more information on. When we have tried the live chat feature we have been satisfied with the timeliness and response.
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.
NextGen is hard to use as far as medical records. Practice Fusion is user friendly. There is a great knowledge base for questions asked. Practice Fusion takes all the guess work out of the day.
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.
