Introduction
Regardless of the specialty or type of medical practice you run, it’s likely that you will be looking for an EHR system to help your clinic run smoothly. There are many different options out there and many factors to consider when choosing the right EHR for your clinic. To assist you, to figure out what is best for your needs, we’ll focus on two popular options: Athenahealth and ChARM Health.
Electronic Health Record is the system used by healthcare providers to keep track of all patient information. It’s similar to a spreadsheet with columns and rows where you can enter data like medical history, allergies, and medications. The benefit of an EHR is that it allows your doctors and staff to easily share information with other team members when they need it most.
But what if there were more than one way to skin a cat? There are multiple types of EHRs on the market today—each with its pros and cons—and everyone has their favorite choice! This article will help you choose between two standard options: Charm vs. Athena.
What is ChARM Health?
ChARM Health is a cloud-based system that offers zero upfront costs. The vendor provides Electronic Health Records, Practice Management, and Medical Billing solutions.
A range of pricing tiers and add-ons allow users to tailor it for individual needs. Functionalities such as medical billing and RCM let health care professionals spend less time manually handling financial aspects of the practice and more time engaging with patients.
What is Athenahealth EHR?
Athena is an electronic medical record (EMR) software that offers a suite of on-premise and cloud-based solutions to help physicians manage their practices. The system combines software services to alleviate administrative burdens and improve clinical efficiencies, providing customizable functionality to meet all the requirements of your clinic or practice.
Medical practice management tools include visibility into daily responsibilities, custom benchmarking, proactive trends analysis, and more. Streamlined physician workflows promote a focus on patient-centric care by helping your team stay organized through real-time alerts and notifications about appointments and other tasks that need attention quickly.
Athenahealth Features
- EHR
- e-Prescribing
- Patient Portal
- Compliance Tracking
- Practice Management Software
- Patient Demographics
- Lab Integration
- Employer Management
Deployment
- Cloud
- Saas
- Web based
Support
- Windows
- Android
- iOS
- iPad
ChARM Health Features
- EMR/EHR
- e-Prescribing
- Patient Portal
- Compliance Tracking
- Practice Management Software
- Patient Demographics
- Lab Integration
- Employee Management
- Appointment SchedulingAppointmentRemindersReporting and AnalyticsMedical Billing service in a friendly tone
DEPLOYMENT
- Cloud, SaaS, Web-Based
- Mobile – Android
- Also, Mobile – iPhone
- Mobile – iPad
SUPPORT
- Email/Help Desk
- Phone Support
- 24/7 (Live Rep)
- Chat
Athenahealth limitations
You will find that Athena’s EHR is not without its limitations. There are a number of bugs in their software, which can cause messages to be sent to the wrong patients and make it difficult for you to send messages from your inbox.
Additionally, if you do not keep your inbox unread notifications cleared out, you may be unable to access the messaging portion of the site.
In addition, other issues that arise when communicating with your patients: are auto-generated message notifications without new messages, in-house claims management required on top of services offered, and indirect and evasive support responses.
ChARM Health limitations
ChARM Health is a solution that has been around for a while and is still used by many physicians. While it has several excellent features, it also has some downsides compared to Athena:
- Downloading notes can be cumbersome. If you want to download your notes, you’ll need to use their API call or manually enter each note in the software.
- Unable to add DX codes on superbills with pre-populated fields such as “Reason For Visit” or “Chief Complaint.” This means that whenever someone comes into my practice with a chief complaint like sinusitis or bronchitis (or any other condition).
This limitation makes Charm Health not very useful because every patient’s visit should reflect exactly what they came here seeking help before anything else!
Athenahealth Costing
Athenahealth emr offers a range of pricing plans to suit your practice’s needs. Their pricing is typically based on cost per physician per month, billed annually, and you can additionally have administrative accounts.
ChARM Health Costing
Vendors do not provide ChARM Health costing. For a price quote, visit their website or contact their sales team.
Athenahealth Reviews
PROS:
- This software is perfect for emergency services. They’re good at resolving issues.
- Even if you don’t have access to raw data—which is likely—you can still use the information from your patients in raw form to measure the performance of your practice.
CONS:
- Using this system for quite a while, and I can’t say anything negative about it.
- The only thing that’s ever happened to me while using [product name] is that I got very good at it.
ChARM Health Reviews
PROS:
- The best training sessions you’ve ever seen, and the only thing better than that is the fact that they’re free.
- Quick and easy to manage data, and gets the job done efficiently and quickly.
CONS:
- The bad news is: that it’s not real-time.
- The trade-off for the low pricing of this software is that some design issues involving billing and downloading ERAs are a little more complicated than usual.
TAKEAWAY
The best way to decide if your clinic would benefit from using Charm or Athena is to consider your practice’s needs, concerns, and goals. If you prefer a simple interface that keeps things organized and doesn’t overwhelm you, then you should look closely at Charm.
On the other hand, if you want an EHR with more features and functions for getting work done on the go with mobile Integration, Athena may be the better option.
Once you know what matters most to your clinic’s ongoing success, it will be much easier to decide which EHR is best for your unique situation.
