Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Athenahealth EMR

I am not sure how unique my situation is. I am part of a university medical school that has a semiprivate clinical practice. Within that clinical practice we are all mostly independent except for central services (malpractice, billing, payroll, etc.). Several years ago, I decided I was tired of paper and I went to AC as my EMR of choice and haven't looked back. I am the only practitioner in our group of about 40 docs using an EMR. Now the central office (run by our board) has decided to go to an EMR with the apparent choice of Athenahealth (they do our billing and scheduling). I am mostly pleased with AC (the update though has some issues as far as I am concerned). Do any of you have any experience with Athena? I would appreciate any input you might have. Not sure if my office will be forced to change or not. Thanks, Dave Stroh

Sounds like what Brian went through with NextGen. I haven't even looked at it.

You might look at this: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/717818?src=top10&uac=149199BX
It is the latest results from the AAFP poll on EMR's
AC came out on top for satisfaction. I don't Think Athena is on the list because it is too big? Or didn't make the cut?

A product website with a cheerleading video by the company CEO, but no software demo unless you "register" with your contact information, raises suspicions that this EMR is yet another bloated, expensive turkey.

Read this article for more detailed information about Athenahealth.

Some details:
-Software is delivered over the internet.
-The company gets a cut of its customers' revenue, based in part on how much the firm collects from health insurance companies, rather than making most of its money from software sales and licensing fees.
-Athena typically charges its customers between 4 and 8 percent of their billing revenue, depending on the number of services a customer is getting from the company.
-As of March 31 had fewer than 2,000 physicians using the EMR.
-Jonathan Bush, the company president, is President George W. Bush's first cousin. Todd Park, Athenahealth co-founder, was appointed chief technology officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by President Obama (so I guess their piece of the HITECH pie is secure).
-Athena's stock price dropped more than 18 percent after it disclosed on April 29 that its first-quarter profits slid 80 percent.

So, your patient's data is in the hands of a company with some shaky financials, a minuscule user base, that controls your billing and deducts its cut before you get any money.

Sounds risky to me.

Hi Guys, and thanks for the comments. AthenaClinicals is the name of the program. They charge 2.42% of collections for their service. It is web-based. The article from Motley Fool says that there currently are only 2000 subscriptions sold as of March. (How many AC users are there?) There is a start up fee of $1960 per provider. Will keep you posted with results. Dave

I just can't imagine someone foolish enough to sign up for use of an EMR for a % of their gross revenue. In some respects I can see it for billing (kinda sorta), but for EMR? Now, maybe they are saying that it includes their billing service, but I suspect not. Seems like a Supermassive Black Hole for Money. Probably located at the center of the Treasury Dept.

Agree with Wayne.

Medical software is a competitive business -- Athena may have a few more bad quarters, and decide to up its cut, say to 10%? So you decide to change EMR and billing software; what happens to your patient data, not to mention your billing information, all of which exists only on their servers? I looked in vain for info on the Athena website that guarantees you can convert to another system.

I'm not hearing if you have any choice in the matter? If so, then why change? At best it will be painful, at worst a nightmare.

When the State of Alaska formed a group to recommend programs for small practices in state and got a price break, Athena came no where near the short list.

I doubt that the State of Alaska would have even considered Athenahealth EMR as it requires a persistent fast internet connection which might not be available in many rural alaska practices.

I have been using Athenahealth's billing and scheduling program for 8 years and have been very satisfied. Never used their clinical EMR program and don't plan to (as I am happy with Amazing Charts.)
...Ken

Not sure what the options are for me personally. I don't want to change...don't see much of a need but I do belong to this larger group for better or worse. I did an email this am to my other group members posting some general pros and cons to EMR's and listed the charges for AC so they could see what another EMR costs. Also sent them the ratings from FP Management. We'll see what happens. Again, does anyone know how many active users of AC there are? How large of a group can it handle. There are about 25 of us including NP's. Thanks for your comments. Gives me fodder to feed the fire!! Dave