How athenaOne® cures complexity for small practices

Creating better patient and provider experiences with intuitive technology and effective services

In the overlapping worlds of healthcare and technology, people frequently talk about “experience.” What kind of experience does my patient have when they walk through our door? Does navigating this software provide a good experience? What kind of experience have you had with [software vendor A]?

We talk about experience because we know that services and tools cannot be separated from the experience of receiving or using them.

This is true for healthcare practices across the spectrum of sizes and specialties. It is especially impactful for the many small, independent medical practices working to deliver specialized, patient-centric care while keeping the administrative side of the practice running smoothly and efficiently.

Across the athenaOne® network, healthcare practices like yours are finding out how their use of athenaOne can enhance the experience of patients and providers, while also contributing to practice efficiency and financial performance in the process.

With more than 160,000 providers on the athenaOne network¹, representing specialties of all kinds, athenaOne is a comprehensive solution helping small independent practices thrive. Practices that use athenaOne have access to more than 165,000 clinical integrations, including direct connections to labs, imaging centers, pharmacies, and more.² These are just a few of the reasons athenaOne received the 2024 Best in KLAS award for Overall Physician Practice Vendor for Independent Practices.

Here are a few snapshots of athenaOne users and their patients who are achieving impressive things with their use of the all-in-one platform.

Instinctive Wellness: 96% patient portal adoption supports efficient operations and cost savings

Practice specialty: Family medicine specializing in Functional Medical services combined with Reiki Energy Therapy.

Location: Chestertown, MD

Number of providers: 1

Years using athenaOne: 6 years

Top challenges prior to athenaOne:

• Support staff spent 90% of their time assisting 10% of patients who were struggling with paperwork and scheduling.
• As an employer, the owner/provider spent too much time on administrative tasks (payroll, employment taxes, etc.) which took time away from seeing patients.

Snapshot—a better experience with athenaOne:

Deb Reid, owner and sole provider at Instinctive Wellness, primarily works with patients who require more time and attention than most. To stay focused on patient care, Reid now runs the practice without support staff by encouraging patients to embrace the self-service patient portal offered through athenaOne.

“I think my portal adoption rate is around 96%. That's because I have essentially set it up so that, if you want to see me, you have to use the portal. When patients can fill out more of that information through self check-in, it means our visits are shorter and their cost is cheaper. Now, I'm not constantly overwhelmed by paperwork that needs to be done.”

- Deb Reid, Board Certified Nurse Practitioner and owner, Instinctive Wellness

The Woman’s Place: more “useful” data through improved interoperability and quality tracking

Practice specialty: Obstetrics and gynecology (obgyn) practice specializing in providing medical care to women throughout their lives.

Location: Hutchinson, KS

Number of providers: 2

Time on athenaOne: 6 years

Top challenges prior to athenaOne:

• Previous system was expensive and built on an on-premise (rather than cloud-based) infrastructure.
• Poor interoperability caused extra work and didn’t assist in tracking and managing quality metrics.

Snapshot—a better experience with athenaOne:

With help from athenaOne, The Woman’s Place now has an efficient and user-friendly healthcare IT platform. athenaOne’s robust interoperability keeps the practice connected to its patients' other care and services providers. The team can now track specific quality measurements, leading to year-over-year improvements.

"athenahealth supports and facilitates connections between small practices so we aren't all reinventing the wheel. The system takes a variety of information and brings it all together, feeds it back to us in a way that's useful, and helps us manage data like quality requirements and government regulations. And now we meet those requirements every year, kind of without trying."

- Dr. Ann Hentzen Page, MD, part-owner, The Woman’s Place

Skyhar MD, Inc: “super-efficient” operations for a high-volume sports medicine practice

Practice specialty: surgery specializing in evaluating and treating shoulder and knee problems, along with other sports-related injuries.

Location: Encinitas, CA

Number of providers: 1 

Time on athenaOne: 10 years

Top challenges prior to athenaOne:

• Previously dealt with operational inefficiencies and frustration while working for a large medical group.
• As sole provider with just one employee, Dr. Skyhar needed an efficient way to run his high-volume practice.

Snapshot—a better experience with athenaOne:

Dr. Skyhar knew he wanted a different experience for himself, and his patients, when he left a medical group to start his own independent practice. He decided to collaborate with three other providers to share office space and reduce costs. He, along with the other providers he collaborates with, use athenaOne for electronic health records, revenue cycle management, and patient engagement. One reason Dr. Skyhar loves athenaOne is that it is configurable to his needs, not just as an orthopedist, but as a small, independent practice.

"Early on in my partnership with athena, I set up macros and features that were customized to my practice. Now it’s set up and just needs to be tweaked over time. At this point I’m pretty much on autopilot. I’m super busy, super-efficient, and I have super low overhead. It’s beautiful.”

- Dr. Michael Skyhar, MD, Skyhar MD, Inc

Across the athenaOne network, healthcare practices like yours are finding out how their use of athenaOne can enhance the experience of patients and providers, while also contributing to practice efficiency and financial performance in the process.

athenaOne: simplifying the practice of care

athenaOne is an all-in-one cloud-based practice & revenue cycle management, electronic health record, and patient engagement solution. One of the key benefits of athenaOne, to both you and your patients, is the excellent experience the platform can provide when it’s embraced and used effectively. Especially for smaller medical practices.

For you, that means a platform that is built to solve the most pervasive challenges in US healthcare, and customizable to suit the needs of a variety of specialties, all with unique ways of operating. It means intuitive technology that makes patient encounters more effective and efficient and delivers the right information at the right time to help you deliver the best care possible to your patients.

For your patients, athenaOne enables an experience that gives people more access and agency in their own healthcare planning, and more convenience in their interactions with you overall.

If you’d like to learn more about how a healthcare IT platform like athenaOne is revolutionizing the practice of care, read the articles below.