Ambulatory PM Performance
Best PM Vendors For Providers' Coming Needs

1. HIGH PERFORMANCE OF ATHENAHEALTH ACROSS ALL SIZES

athenahealth customers of all sizes appreciate their vendor’s investment in their success; athenahealth has bucked the general trend involving decreased vendor performance in larger practices. Their cloud technology scales well to meet the demands of both large and small practices who use them for their revenue cycle management services. Of the five vendors spanning all sizes, eClinicalWorks and Greenway Prime Suite are least likely to meet large clients’ needs. Larger eClinicalWorks customers report slow support, poor training, and language barriers, whereas larger Greenway Prime Suite customers have dealt with deteriorating support and code quality since the Vitera merger.

2. MULTIPLE STRONG OPTIONS FOR SMALL PRACTICES

Most PM vendors meet small practices’ needs, and PCC, athenahealth, Kareo, and Henry Schein deliver the highest-quality experience. PCC delivers a highly tailored product and phenomenal support for pediatric practices. Smaller providers like athenahealth’s all-inclusive billing model that magnifies strong partnerships. Kareo and Henry Schein customers enjoy responsive and knowledgeable support resources. Allscripts, e-MDs, and GE Centricity Practice Solution are the underperforming exceptions for small practices. Allscripts’ customers point to slow development and poor offshore support, whereas e-MDs’ note a dramatic drop in performance tied to an increasingly unresponsive support staff since the recent acquisition. GE customers note issues with support such as poor responsiveness and poorly trained resources.

3. EPIC LEADS LARGE-PRACTICE VENDORS WITH STRONGEST CUSTOMER LOYALTY

Epic is a proven entity for very large practices, and they have the strongest loyalty from these customers of any vendor in this report. Providers love the proactive support, strong functionality and reporting, and tight integration with their enterprise Epic suite. Allscripts, athenahealth, and Cerner also garner strong loyalty among large clients (greater than 76 physicians). Larger Greenway Prime Suite and GE Centricity Business clients are on the opposite end of the spectrum and are weighing their options. Greenway customers report deteriorating product QA and support, and GE’s report a lack of ongoing product development.

4. PCC SETS STANDARD FOR QUALITY SUPPORT

PCC is customer-success focused, standing head and shoulders above all other vendors in this report for support. PCC customers praise their vendor’s partnership, highlighting a “family-like atmosphere” and consistent, courteous, knowledgeable, and extremely responsive staff members. Across all vendors, support is the best indicator of providers’ overall satisfaction with their PM experience.

CERNER PM: GAPS FOR LARGE CUSTOMERS; MEETS SMALLER PRACTICES' NEEDS

This report is the first time KLAS has interviewed enough customers using Cerner’s integrated PM solution for it to be included in a report. The respondents range from small to very large and report highly variable satisfaction. Large customers report major functionality gaps requiring workarounds, though smaller customers tend to say the product’s functionality meets most needs. In a couple of cases, customers have left Cerner Practice Management, opting to not wait for needed improvements that Cerner is working on. Thus far, the integrated ambulatory environment has been a positive, and few have mentioned complaints around A/R days. Despite rocky initial implementations, subsequent rollouts within organizations have been smoother as Cerner has gained expertise and developed the product.

Project Manager
Robert Ellis