athenahealth for Hospitals
Insights into the Early-Adopter Experience

1. athenahealth Vision Resonates with Hospital Executives

Executives at small hospitals are largely positive about their experience thus far with athenahealth. They love the prospect of having an integrated clinical/RCM solution for their hospital and clinics without a large up-front capital outlay. Most feel athenahealth’s innovative cost structure and web-based solution can help community hospitals stay financially viable and decrease IT and security resources in coming years. Additionally, they feel athenahealth’s cloud-based model will allow them to more quickly develop the solution to meet future healthcare needs. Executives say expectations are properly set for implementations and that partnering and development are strong. While they acknowledge gaps in the inpatient offering, most feel athenahealth has the majority of pieces needed today. Since the start of interviews for this report (April 2017), athenahealth reported to KLAS that they have released two major updates; KLAS has yet to validate the impact of these releases.

2. Pharmacy, Charge Capture, Nursing the Biggest Challenges for End Users

Departmental end users don’t share the same vision as executives and feel the athenahealth solution is less ready and doesn’t have all needed and expected functionality, especially compared to their previous EMR. Seven of the eight live customers identify pharmacy and medications as significant challenges requiring manual processes for barcoding, charge capture, medication reconciliation, and start/stop time documentation, all of which have become table stakes for EMR vendors today. Charge capture for IVs and supplies is also manual, though most customers have workarounds. In total, 13 of the 28 contracted customers delayed or canceled their implementation over not-yet-available functionality, like charge capture and surgery (currently in beta). Also, the nursing workflow and documentation are clunkier than nurses would like, lacking contextual information for encounter notes or predefined options that speed up charting. Still, customers are optimistic for the future, and even end users say athenahealth is making the progress they expect.

3. Improved Usability Reported as Biggest Success

The majority of customers surveyed (outside of pharmacy) say the athenahealth solution’s overall ease of use has been a win, especially for physicians. Though there is much room for improvement and documentation can be enhanced, customers note that overall the workflow is better than what they had before with paper or a previous EMR and that this translates into better physician adoption and efficiency. Executives also feel athenahealth’s enthusiasm has been a big success, resulting in healthy collaboration and a sense of partnership.

Writer
Jonathan Christensen

Designer
Jess Wallace-Simpson

Project Manager
Robert Ellis