athenaClinicals Reviews

Can be slow at times

Does not always pull in records from other facilities quickly

Quality measures sometimes hard to satisfy, must have exact documentation it is looking for

There are many areas where Athena can improve. The support for surgery centers is non-existent. I was told that 2017 was going to be the year of the surgery center with opportunities to improve the system for that application. This never happened and the team that was supposed to assist me was disbanded.

The list of prior surgeries is cumbersome and difficult to use unless you happen to know the CPT code for the procedure. We end up choosing the closest procedure that we can find and making a note to clarify what we are listing.

The medication administration module is hard coded and cannot be changed. There are options that are absolutely ridiculous but we are told that they must stay that way. For example, an IV fluid rate is set at ml per minute rather than the standard of ml per hour. IV start sites are anything from the hand to rectal. When you give a medication it assumes that you are doing so based on a verbal order and requires that you document the verbal order. We give meds based on written orders almost all the time.

The problem list could use a sort by date function. Long-time patients tend to aggregate a massive problem list, most of which is comprised of old resolved issues.

The provider schedule view settings could use more filters. At times while in the clinic, I was unable to see patients assigned to my provider due to other scheduled visits.

The cost is very high compared to other programs.

Some people find the program difficult to learn.

The billing software requires more work than is described when they are trying to sell you the program.

The sales staff that we dealt with had the vibe of car salesmen. At times very pushy and the room for negotiation grew at each interaction. The high cost first quoted is very negotiable but they "up charge" for many things.

Customer services and availability

Less clicks for charting one provider (had a ridiculous amount of click to complete a pre op visit)

Better dashboard

Medication updates - when changing the dose of a medication, the medication list should automatically update

Multi-user conflict - when more than one user is in the chart at the same time, it is possible that information can be lost

Autosave feature - this feature is actually available in their new version which we hope to roll out later this year

The ergonomics...the screen is very difficult to view - as the light colors do not provide for contrast.

The flow of the documentation can be difficult. It works down the screen vs. allowing users to jump easy. The "jump" function is at the bottom of the screen and the dropdown menu sometimes follows below the bottom of your computer screen.

It's very expensive for the added "behind the scenes" customer service you are getting. Many labs are now offering an interface for free which would put typical items that are faxed into a queue or their appropriate place. Many times the items that are "managed" by Athena are still having to be managed by the office buckets anyway - which is a selling point of Athena.

The templates that are built are far from intuitive. A point and click system is much easier for a busy physician...something that has a macro and pre-completed notes. Athena makes this process cumbersome, so many physicians are double documenting (paper, then EMR).

The schedule needs to be improved. You should be able to see the schedule in a day, a week , in a month view and be able to schedule directly from the schedule.

It's difficult to name items because they are traditionally corrected very quickly