athenaIDX vs. eClinicalWorks

Athena is a well-suited electronic medical record system for those professionals that work in a medical center, hospital, clinic, and/or outpatient clinic that need to provide frequent and accurate documentation for insurance providers and all other members of the care team. It might be less appropriate for a small agency.

Incentivized

If you love clicking around in a pretty EMR all day long then this is the EMR for you. [However, I believe] if you are looking for efficiency and support, you should look elsewhere. [I feel] this is an EMR clearly designed by the tech world without much attention or care for those who use it and if you look at the reviews carefully you see that most of the people who love it are in IT.

• 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.

Incentivized

• Access to patient's records - obvious lack of file and charts; transportable ; multi user synchronous access
• Produces clinical note as end product that is organized and "readable" as opposed to the gibberish output of many EMR's that look like a poorly formatted FORTRAN printouts

• 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
• Ability to create custom reports

Incentivized

• Meaningful Use Reports should be capturing data in real time and generated fairly quickly instead of the MAQ dashboard extraction process.
• Their support teams are not very helpful at certain topics such as the definition/logic of Meaningful Use calculations. These are generally difficult to determine but several cases in regards to Meaningful Use take several days before it gets addressed.
• Training videos would be helpful on their support website.

Incentivized

If we had an option to easily switch to another EMR product we would. However, an EMR keeps you invested solidly in it - once you've started you're then going to be stuck with it. The investment into the data in the system are such that you have no real option to back out of what you are in and move into something else. Again, if we could, we would immediately move to another EMR. The ability to use it and be supported by the vendor has decreased nearly to the point of inability to use.

Incentivized

[In my opinion] the features allowed by the system are not designed for providers. [I think] the systems are inefficient, and new features tend to be "bolt on" features either as products purchased and added from other providers or simply a module created and strapped onto the software. There doesn't seem to be much idea around making things easier for the provider, though they like to state that provider burnout is something they are working on.

Incentivized

I often cannot assign a proper diagnosis under the assessment section; and as mentioned, sometimes (about once a month) the dictation just freezes because "the request has timed out" (even restarting the iPhone/ laptop does not help).

You put in support cases through a support portal. [I believe] for no apparent reason, the company decided that their support cannot have access to actual patient records and as a result, it's required that they have to connect remotely to a computer system in our network, and log in as one of our users to do anything. This also entails that they are completely incapable of diagnosing problems and require significant amounts of user input and time to try and begin any sort of work on the problems. [In my opinion] this takes away from patient care and other concerns. Also, while you can put in as detailed a ticket as you want, when you are called, you have to go over the ticket again, as they don't seem to read or care what you put in, as it's more important to them to go over everything in painful detail. Often times you must explain to the tech how the process works. In the past month, we were upgraded overnight with zero warning, which caused issues the following day as we had to update every single computer in our network (over 300) and it requires administrative privileges so couldn't be done by a user. This also doesn't update any information in the programs list, so there's no way to tell whether the update happened or not.

Incentivized

Paid for training, did not help. They trained prior to go-live, but it was so long ahead that users weren't able to function well when it actually happened, they seemed unable to provide adequate support. [In my experience] further support is typically very boilerplate, and is thus not useful, and has additional cost.

Incentivized

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.

It's very important to limit your schedule during the weeks after go live but it is equally important to have a resource that is the lead at the practice that ensures that milestones are met leading up to the go-live date. Someone must be the point person at the practice otherwise milestones will be missed and the implementation will run into problems.

Incentivized

Athena IDX is more expensive, has less features, is less modern, interfaces with our modern systems poorly and has actively created more manual work across the company. Each of the systems above are better in every conceivable way compared to this program.

eClinicalWorks is above average for primary care outpatient services. It is not my favorite but it is not the worst either. ECW was selected by the group prior to my arrival so I cannot speak to why it was selected. I had an easy time adopting it but I have an extensive history of working with EMRs as a CMIO. As a company, they are constantly work to improve their product

Incentivized

• 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.

• I will just share one area that our organization saw the ROI in a very short time period. That is the elimination of a dictation service for most of our specialty group doctors when we introducec Dragon Medical. This functionality brought a tangible benefit and a significant ROI in a short time period.

Incentivized