athenaIDX vs. Intergy EHR

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

It worked quite well in the dermatology/plastic surgery clinic. In fact, until I moved into the administrative/finance department of this neurosurgery clinic, I had no complaints whatsoever about Intergy. The process for end users is very intuitive and free-flowing. On the management side of things, however, it's difficult to track or prove audit trails.

Incentivized

• 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

• Health Reminders- for different patient needs or preventive care/screenings. For example patients who have a diagnosis of Diabetes- their health reminders will show if they need an A1c, foot exam, eye exam, etc. and when it was last performed
• Orders Tracking- This helps nursing staff make notes on referrals or orders and they are able to look at the order tracking section for all patients and filter it by provider, order type, status, etc. to know what needs to be followed up on or what has been completed and so forth...
• Tasks- This is a nice feature that has many different options for use. It can be used internally to send a quick message to another user, a phone message, billing message, and any task gives you the option to make it "patient related" if necessary. It can be used by the providers when they make an order they can then send it to the nurse to complete. Lots of different ways for Tasks to be used

• 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

• Missing cloud-based services for data storage.
• It is Windows based. It needs to be updated to offer an Apple and iPad function with speech to text and Apple Pencil type functions.
• Updates for meds and pharmacies should be made monthly not quarterly.

Incentivized

Very user friendly and efficient

Incentivized

Usually they are very helpful. I would prefer they do some of the actual changes I am requesting instead of having me do the work. I feel that they could walk you through it, instead of letting you figure out the desired results on your own.

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.

Track all hours and don't sign off on anything if you are not 100% happy.

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.

I am not the office manager so I cannot tell why she chose to use Intergy EHR. I personally like Intergy EHR because it allows me to use it with Intergy EMR and track patients very fast and it saves the office a lot of time. If something goes wrong, someone can just call customer service and they are glad to help.

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.

• Intergy has had a positive ROI. The financial tracking and tools have been easy to use and helped recover additional monies for practices.
• Claim Tracker allows practices to have a real time view of all unpaid claims.
• The E&M calculator helps providers choose the appropriate code for billing compliance.