Why a successful neurology practice switched to athenaOne®

The team at Raleigh Neurology understands that the technology they use to store patient information and run both the clinical and administrative parts of the business affects both clinicians’ quality of life, and the quality of care those clinicians are able to deliver to patients. That’s why, when it came time for a change from an on-premise system to a more modern and interconnected platform, they looked no further than the vendor they already had a trusted partnership with: athenahealth.

The practice already utilized healthcare IT (HIT) from athenahealth: a legacy product that predated the integrated, cloud-based athenaOne® platform. Taking what they’d already learned through their relationship with athenahealth, Raleigh Neurology—with Amy Roberts, Director of Health Information Systems and Director of Information Technology leading the effort—compiled a list of must-haves for their new technology and began working with the team at athenahealth to plan for and execute the implementation of their new HIT.

Serving patients and providing quality care with advanced technology

The Raleigh Neurology team’s wish list included better interoperability with hospitals, labs, and other facilities that served their patients, a level of connectivity their on-premise platform couldn’t achieve. The team wanted better mobility for both clinicians and patients, so users could access the system on the go and patients could leverage a user-friendly portal to engage with the care team and access health information.

The list also included better visibility and insights into clinical data to help improve care and free up clinicians’ time.

And—crucially—they needed to be confident in the support team behind them. Previous experiences with technology implementations taught them that early success was crucial, so servicing and support were top-of-mind.

Choosing athenaOne: an integrated platform for EHR, practice and revenue cycle management, and patient engagement

The team at Raleigh Neurology already had a productive working relationship with athenahealth and had been using a legacy version of its software for years. They decided to evaluate athenaOne, an all-in-one platform for electronic health records (EHR), practice and revenue cycle management, and patient engagement (including an integrated patient portal). It was a promising fit.

“athenaOne seemed to tick a lot of boxes for our providers. It allowed them to treat the patient where they were. It allowed them to log in from wherever they wanted. We have some using the mobile app, we have some using different tablets, different laptops, things like that. Being able to really fully utilize their time the best way possible,” said Roberts.

This time savings and increased flexibility can have a significant impact for a high-volume clinic like Raleigh Neurology, which sees between 500 and 600 patients per day.

The connected platform also makes clinicians’ time with patients more productive by surfacing actionable clinical information and insights within encounter workflows, helping clinicians close care gaps and treat patients based on their full medical histories. And, with athenaOne’s patient portal, patients can access their information even after they leave their appointment.

The data that fuels athenaOne has great benefits to the practice, even beyond clinical encounters. In fact, the team is still discovering the value of having robust analytics at their fingertips.

“I am a bit of a data nerd. I really enjoy understanding the data and then making business decisions based on that data," said Roberts. "For example, we now have the ability to see the amount of time that a doctor is spending during the day versus how much time are they spending in the evening and using that to hopefully address or prevent burnout. We're also able to make more operational decisions about whether this service line is working. There's just lots of useful data within athenaOne."

Partnering with athenaOne, from implementation onward

Even after Roberts and the clinicians at Raleigh Neurology decided they liked what athenaOne has to offer, they were nervous about embarking on a disruptive platform implementation project. And, they needed to know they’d be supported even after they were up and running on the platform.

Thankfully, athenahealth experts were with them every step of the way.

“When we signed with athenaOne, we had an implementation person who joined early on to evaluate our needs. And then, over the next several months, we had different athenahealth reps join in the conversations,” said Roberts. “They were with us from start to finish and even after go-live, helping support us through that humongous change.”

From a successful implementation onward, it’s truly been a productive partnership.