A Complete Guide to athenahealth EMR Cost

Installing an EHR software for your practice is essential for establishing an integrated system of operations. However, unless you’ve researched each vendor thoroughly, it can cost you quite a large sum of money. Also, your provider of choice can also influence the cost significantly. In this article, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about athenahealth medical software, its benefits, and if it’ll be the best fit for your practices.

Here’s a quick overview of what you can expect in this article:

• Cost Structure of athenahealth
• Pros of AthenaHealth
• Signs Your Practice Needs athenahealth
• Is AthenaHealth Medical Software Right for Your Practice?

Without further ado, let’s begin.

Cost Structure of athenahealth

Usually, the total cost of an EHR software depends on how big and busy your practice is. It can get increasingly expensive to implement an EHR software with the added cost of data migration and training for your staff. However, athenahealth medical software help in simplifying your implementation with their years of experience. 

Here’s everything you need to know about athenahealth pricing:

• In terms of athenahealth EMR cost structure, here’s what you need to know:
• A detailed 30-minute demo is provided before the implementation process free of cost. This helps you understand what you’re buying before the actual purchase.
• athenahealth EMR’s base plan starts at $140 per month per provider. However, this price can go up as you add more services such as medical billing, practice management, care coordination, etc.
• For their medical billing service, athenahealth usually charges 4-7% of total collected revenue depending upon the complexity and quantity of operations.
• athenahealth’s order transmission services are $150 per month and an additional $0.45-$1 per order, based on your choice of package.
• With athenahealth, data migration is easier as compared to other platforms. The data migration cost usually falls with the $500-$10,000 range. If your practice has over a million patient records, migration costs could reach up to $25,000.
• You can also integrate multiple custom systems. However, it can cost you between $2,500-$25,000. 
• Depending on the number of sessions, training may cost $500-$5000.

One of the biggest advantages of athenahealth is that they don’t charge any hidden fees. So you won’t have to worry about the lowball of hidden charges with athenahealth. 

Also read: 9 Hidden Costs to Look Out for When Choosing an EMR Software.

Suppose your practice has four physicians. That means you’ll have to pay $560 per month ($140 x 4 =$560) and $6,720 annually, assuming you only opt for athenahealth EMR. Now comes the training and data migration costs. For up to 1,000 patient records and a couple of training sessions, the start-up cost could go up by an additional $1,000. Making the sum total $7,720 in your first year. 

Pros of AthenaHealth

Over the years, athenahealth has established its name in the industry as one of the top healthcare IT providers. Here are some of the benefits that athenahealth medical software brings to your practice.

• A minimum of 94% first claim acceptance rate (25% higher than the industry’s average)
• Close 74% of patient encounters on same-day
• More than 65% of Medicare annual industry visits
• Access to a network of 160,000+ physicians under a single platform

Signs Your Practice Needs athenahealth

Today, you’ll find it increasingly difficult for medical practices to operate without having an electronic health records system for their patients. A digital healthcare infrastructure is required to cooperate with other providers and insurers and improve patient care and make your practice eligible for significant financial perks.

athenahealth EHR software is consistently ranked at the top of the EHR list, one of the most popular EHR software on the market. It has helped to achieve exceptional results for various healthcare organizations, both large and small. 

In addition, you can read several case studies to gain insight into the effectiveness of athenahealth.

Is AthenaHealth Medical Software Right for Your Practice?

Choosing the right EMR/EHR vendor typically involves paying close attention to how well the software fits your practice’s workflow and how well it adheres with federal reimbursement guidelines and security requirements.

1. Practice Size

Designed for multi-physician practices, athenahealth’s framework is flexible and modular. Not only does athenahealth cater to the intricate needs of large practices, but it also caters to the complex requirements of small and medium practices. 

2. Hosting

athenahealth medical software are cloud-based solutions. This can save you up to $500-1000 dollars per year on private hosting servers, along with the cost of server maintenance.

3. Reports & Analytics

Many athenahealth users have commented on how valuable the software’s reporting capabilities are for their practices. With athenahealth, you can generate reports for financials, front-office workflows, medical billing, patient schedules, communication,  and more. If you’re looking for an EHR that supports robust data insights with on-demand reports, then athenahealth is a great choice.

4. MACRA Compliant

When treating Medicare and Medicaid patients, you are required to use an EHR software that meets MACRA requirements. The AthenaHealth system is designed to stay fully compliant with MACRA requirements, so it’s a great option for those in need of an affordable solution. 

5. Patient-Centric Culture

You can maximize patient communication and alert them to any changes in your health care with athenahealth EHR software. Some of the most noteworthy features of athenahealth that promote patient engagement are automated appointment reminders, lab result notifications, call-in support, and a patient portal.

6. Clinical Decision Support

Among athenahealth’s top services is Epocrates, a physician app that checks drug interactions and disease treatment guidelines using extensive data and AI. 

athenahealth – Simplify Your Practice

Today, integrating your practice’s operations with EHR software is essential. Unfortunately, unless you’ve carefully researched each vendor, you may end up spending a fair amount of money. 

In this article, we’ve talked about everything you need to know about athenahealth medical software pricing, its benefits, and whether it’ll be a good fit for your practice or not.