athenahealth Review 2024: Pricing, Pros & Cons (2024)

The athenahealth athenaClinicals EHR helps decrease documentation time with its intuitive workflows that incorporate real-time data and insights smartly into the system. Features such as pre-encounter prep, Carequality and CommonWell make documentation efficient by preventing documentation complications during patient encounters and enabling seamless collaborations with other clinicians directly within the patient chart.

Care gaps can be minimized and value-based care can be improved with workflows that deliver actionable insights. Providers can practice remotely via the athenaOne app with fully integrated EHR. Providers can manage their inbox, view test results, sign orders, respond to patient cases and review appointments. They can also videoconference with four other caregivers or team members. The app is synced with athenaClinicals EHR by default and updates all data. Both app and desktop platforms offer hands-free documentation with its integrated dictation.

No matter the size of medical practice, athenahealth can set the organization up with the right technology and expertise to boost revenue cycle management productivity with its cloud-based and hosted products and services. Its gamification model for billing is designed to increase credit balance. The athenahealth Gamify tool also includes manager dashboards for practical insights and leaderboards to optimize team performances, submit feedback and celebrate achievements.

It also has several other features in its revenue cycle services such as claim denials resolution, registration verification and co-pay collection, patient refunds, charge entry and coding, zero pay and insurance credit resolution, authorization management and claim scrubbing.

There are various software tools for population health and organization management, patient engagement and telehealth engagement that are HIPAA compliant. With athenahealth Marketplace, users can curate relevant and personalized software experiences based on the team member’s and organization’s overall needs. This marketplace is home to over 300 partners that tackle healthcare practice’s challenges across 60-plus capabilities. To improve workflows, performance and ROI, athenahealth also provides advisory services.

The athenahealth team helps reduce healthcare costs by offering completely tailored pricing plans depending on various organizations and their needs. The athenahealth software doesn’t have any free trial or plan. It enables third-party software integrations with a fee. It does not have an Android app for smartphones but is fully accessible on iPads and the web.

The athenahealth customer support can be reached via email, chat, web support or phone 24/7. Its waiting time is less than two minutes for callers wanting to speak with a live support person as stated on the website, and it aims to solve 87% of the issues within a day.

Of all three, athenahealth is the most affordable, making it a great option for newly emerging medical practices with a budget. It provides in-person foundational training to simplify navigation from day one, unlimited one-to-one coaching sessions for both providers and administrators and also live training on an as-needed basis.

With athenaCommunicator for patient engagement, clinical organizations with less or busy front staff can minimize their workload by allowing patients to schedule appointments whenever it’s convenient. Messaging campaign services are also available to sustain patients and increase care efforts. The mobile and online patient payment tools streamline payments to make it easier for both the patient and consultant to send and receive fees.

As with eClinicalWorks and NextGen, athenahealth doesn’t have any free trial or free plan. It doesn’t include medical practice management software or medical billing tools in its starting price. But what makes it stand out is its pricing plan. It is fully personalized based on the healthcare organization’s unique goals and complexities, which makes it worth the cost. It primarily focuses on EHR, practice and revenue management cloud-based products, so organizations looking to enable clinical efficiency with workflows and maximize their financial outcomes with patient care efforts can opt for athenahealth.

With zero hidden fees, athenahealth serves organizations of all sizes with different requirements, goals and complexities. It guarantees desired results because it only gets paid when organizations do. Therefore, the cost is based on a percentage of collections. The interoperability tools allow healthcare providers to not just exchange clinical data, but also curate it to add seamlessly into workflows. The athenahealth backend support comes with experts and automation to lead administrative work efficiently.

The athenahealth platform is best for medical practices that want to optimize their performance.