DrChrono vs athenaOne

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Our analysts compared DrChrono vs athenaOne based on data from our 400+ point analysis of EHR Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Product Basics

DrChrono is a cloud-based EHR and medical billing solution that replaces the chaos of paper charts and separate systems with a single, easy-to-use platform for managing all aspects of a medical practice.

For doctors, this means:

  • Effortless Access to Patient Information: Imagine having a patient's medical history — allergies, medications, past visits — at your fingertips.
  • Simplified Appointments and Prescriptions: Schedule appointments and send prescriptions electronically in just a few clicks.

For patients, it means:

  • Taking Control of Their Health: Book appointments, communicate with their doctor and access their own records through the patient portal.
  • Staying on Track: Receive automated reminders for appointments and medication refills.

And for the practice as a whole, the system helps:

  • Get Paid Faster: Automate billing and insurance claims to reduce errors and speed up payments.
  • Improve Financial Health: Track outstanding payments and identify potential billing issues.
  • Negotiate Better Rates: Gain insights to negotiate more effectively with insurance companies.

We tested the system to see how it works in real-world scenarios. Here’s what we think: while mastering the billing module may require some effort and billing data import has limitations, the system’s intuitive interface and accessibility from any device make it a user-friendly option.

A free trial and flexible pricing plans allow you to explore its potential and determine the right fit for your practice.

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athenahealth is a cloud-based clinical and financial solution for healthcare practices and organizations. It combines software services to alleviate administrative burdens and improve clinical efficiencies. Streamlined physician workflows promote a focus on patient-centric care.

It incorporates engagement tools, such as telehealth services, patient portals and online scheduling to improve patient satisfaction.
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$250/Provider, Monthly
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$550/Provider, Monthly
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One Sky Family Medicine
Rocky Hill Pediatrics
Valley Medical Group

Product Assistance

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Product Insights

  • Avoid Claim Denials: In our analysis, the product excelled with a perfect score of 100 for claims management capabilities, outshining competitors like athenahealth (89). It helps you:
    • Fill out CMS-1500 forms.
    • Create and send many claims at once.
    • Look through past claims by date or type.
    • Check all the claim details — like patient info and procedure codes — before sending it to payers.
    • Match payments to bills.
  • Automate Billing, Insurance Checks and Patient Workflow Management: The product achieved a perfect score of 100 for these capabilities:
    • Capturing records of medical services and charges.
    • Keeping a detailed list of charges for exams, procedures and supplies.
    • Helping doctors create and update patient visit records.
    • Checking if a patient’s insurance is valid before their appointment.
    • Automatically checking what medical benefits a patient has, like maternity or cosmetic surgery coverage.
    • Letting patients access health info and advice through the patient portal.
    • Allowing specialists to see patients referred by other doctors and send reports back.
    • Helping doctors refer patients to other specialists.
  • Reduce Medical Coding Errors: In our analysis, the platform scored 98 for assigning the right billing codes like ICD, CPT, HCPCS, NDC and taxonomy codes.
  • Make Data-Driven Decisions: The product scored 88 for features that help you generate aging, billing transactions, revenue, write-off and adjustment reports. You can also access pre-built reports like payment trends and insurance analysis to save time creating them from scratch.
  • Access Data Remotely: The product scored 94 for mobile capabilities, more than its competitors like Oracle Ambulatory EHR (79) and athenahealth (71). It truly stands out for:
    • Tracking claims from submission to payment directly from a phone.
    • Sending messages easily to billers, patients and staff.
    • Offering seamless access to the system on iPhone and Android devices with native apps.
    • Delivering timely alerts for payment reminders, appointments and more through push notifications.
    • Adapting to any device with a responsive web portal for a smooth user experience.
    • Helping practitioners dictate medical notes directly into the app for easy note-taking.
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  • Adaptability: Cloud-based deployment allows real-time updates to keep physicians compliant with industry and regulatory changes. Provide remote care in an increasingly digital world using telehealth functionality. 
  • Mobile Accessibility: Access schedules, manage inboxes, send prescriptions and more from anywhere using an iOS mobile app. 
  • Increase Operational Efficiency: Access clinical information from multiple sources instantly, saving time and providing the most accurate treatment. 
  • RCM: Leverage RCM services to reduce time spent on administrative tasks, such as obtaining prior authorizations, rectifying claim errors and managing denials. 
  • Focus on Patients: Improve clinician and staff morale while freeing up more time for patient-centric care by automating busy-work tasks. 
  • Interoperability: Securely exchange medical information across healthcare organizations. Directly connect to labs, imaging centers, pharmacies, public health registries and more to locate patient records and incorporate them in workflows using CommonWell and Carequality integration. 
  • Patient Engagement: Communicate with patients at scale to deliver campaign information and notifications. Patients can exchange messages with physicians, view lab results, request prescription refills and more using mobile devices. Patients can receive automated reminders and notifications regarding appointments, billing and follow-up care. 
  • Online Scheduling: Allow patients to schedule appointments online. Configure functionality to meet practice needs, drive patient satisfaction and limit manual scheduling tasks for front desk staff. 
  • Healthcare Regulations: Automatically monitor changes to federal quality programs so business owners don’t have to. Stay one step ahead of changing healthcare regulations like MACRA and MIPS. 
  • Return on Investment: Increase health organizations’ revenue in the long run. Receive monetary government incentives simply by implementing solutions designed to demonstrate meaningful use for qualified facilities. 
  • Fewer No-Shows: Reduce no-shows and increase daily traffic by providing patients with tools to manage appointments and check in online prior to visits. 
  • Billing/Claims Management: Improves higher first-pass resolution rates by scrubbing insurance claims to detect errors prior to submission. 
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  • EHR: Provide better care with features like free draw for visual explanations, custom vitals tracking and access to immunization registries
    • Custom Templates: Tailor forms with specific fields, drop-down menus, checkboxes and even add your practice's logo. This ensures your documentation is consistent, efficient and specialized for your needs (e.g., cardiology forms with specific heart diagrams).
    • Electronic Prescriptions: Send prescriptions electronically to pharmacies directly from the patient chart. Access the drug's formulary tier, prior authorization requirements and alternative medications if the prescribed drug isn’t covered. Access patient PDMP data directly within the EHR to identify potential abuse, misuse or doctor shopping.
    • Free Draw: Upload images (x-rays, scans, photos) or use pre-loaded anatomical diagrams within the patient chart and draw directly on them.
    • Custom Vitals: Create vitals specific to your needs including things like blood glucose and oxygen saturation levels. Capture data in various formats: text, numbers or predefined options using dropdown lists. Access the flowsheet to visualize trends in custom vitals over time.
    • Prior Authorizations: Initiate the ePA request directly from the prescribing workflow. Automatically populate the prior authorization request form with relevant patient information (demographics, insurance details, medication prescribed) pulled from the patient's chart.
    • Lab Orders: Integrate with national, regional and specialty labs like Quest Diagnostics and Labcorp. Create predefined lab panels for common tests or specific conditions. For example, you could create a "lipid panel" or a "prenatal panel" with a single click. View lab results within the patient's chart, organized by date, test type and ordering provider.
    • Medical Speech-to-Text: Use voice to input clinical notes, patient histories and other information. See your spoken words appear as text in real time within the EHR to review and edit the transcription as you go.
    • Immunization Registries: Automatically send your patients' vaccination details to the state IIS, ensuring that records are up-to-date and complete. Retrieve immunization records from the IIS, even if your patient received vaccinations elsewhere to avoid unnecessary duplicate vaccinations and identify potential gaps in their immunization schedule.
  • Practice Management: Save time and reduce errors with appointment management tools, including appointment profiles, insurance eligibility checks, online scheduling and automated reminders.
    • Appointment Profiles: Instead of manually entering the same details (length, reason, etc.) for every appointment of the same type, you create a profile once and it auto-fills the details (duration, reason for visit, exam room and billing codes).
    • Eligibility Checks: Verify your patients’ insurance eligibility in real time — check what services are covered under the plan (e.g., office visits, labs, specialists) and any limitations or exclusions.
    • Online Scheduling: Set specific days and times when each provider is available for appointments. Offer different appointment types online (e.g., new patient, follow-up, consultation) with varying durations. Add buffer time between appointments to prevent scheduling conflicts and allow for patient check-in/check-out.
    • Patient Reminders: Send automated appointment reminders via email, text or SMS. Configure reminders to be sent at various intervals before the appointment like — a few days before, the day before or a few hours before.
  • Medical Billing: Improve your revenue cycle management with tools like billing profiles, medical coding and automated claims submission.
    • Billing Profiles: Combine frequently used CPT, HCPCS, custom codes and ICD-10 codes into a single profile. Attach common modifiers to the codes within the profile (e.g., modifier 25 for a significant, separately identifiable E/M service).
    • Medical Coding: Easily search and select the appropriate codes within the EHR using keywords, code numbers or descriptions. Perform basic code checking to identify potential errors such as invalid codes or missing modifiers.
    • Good Faith Estimates: Generate good faith estimates to help patients understand costs upfront and avoid surprise bills.
    • Claims Submission: Submit electronic claims to insurance companies within the system. Track claim statuses in real time. Scrub claims for errors like missing information or formatting mistakes before submitting them to payers to avoid denials and claim rejections.
    • Denial Resolution: Generate denial analysis reports to identify denial patterns. Edit and submit corrected claims directly within the system. If you disagree with a denial, generate appeal letters and track their statuses.
    • Patient Statements: Generate statements for individual patients or groups of patients based on various criteria (e.g., date range, insurance status, outstanding balance).
  • BI Tools: Get a visual summary of key metrics and performance indicators. Generate customizable reports to:
    • Track revenue, expenses and profitability
    • Analyze claim submission, acceptance, denial and reimbursement rates.
    • Track patient demographics, appointment history and billing information.
    • Analyze appointment scheduling and no-show rates.
  • Mobile Capabilities: Schedule appointments, send patient statements, bill insurance, document patient encounters, access lab results and more from iOS devices like iPad, iPhone and Mac.
  • Telehealth: Patients can join the telehealth visit from their computer, tablet or smartphone using the link provided in their email reminder. Providers can share their screens with patients to review medical records, lab results, X-rays or educational materials.
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  • Connected Health Network: Physicians can offer better care by leveraging data and insights from over 160,000 providers and 100 million patients. Lets users exchange information with over a quarter of a million points of care, such as specialists, urgent care facilities, labs, pharmacies and more. 
  • Patient Engagement: Optimize the number of patients seen each day with appointment scheduling. Limit the number of no-shows while improving patient satisfaction with automated reminders and online patient check-in. 
  • Patient Portal: Let patients view medical histories, sign documents, pay bills, manage appointments and more using mobile devices. Physicians can communicate with patients through messaging, notes or even video calls. 
  • Authorization Management: Outsource researching requirements and contacting payers for medical authorizations. View authorization statuses directly from in-app clinical workflows. 
  • Care Coordination: Access and share data, track orders, send results and more. Keep sensitive information secure and share data in real time. 
  • Reporting: Access detailed, real-time reports based on other clinics’ activity to help establish benchmarks, recognize patterns and issue more accurate treatment and diagnosis. 
  • Population Health: Physicians can stay connected to vital patient population data with population health tools. Utilize automated outreach services and network-based knowledge from in-house analysis experts. 
  • Interoperability: Connect to more than 26,000 health plans, 12,000 lab and imaging endpoints, 95% of US pharmacies and more than 1,200 external sites. Integrate with CommonWell and Carequality, to gain access to Epic and Cerner sites, along with numerous local, state and national Health Information Exchanges. 
  • Marketplace: Extend capabilities with access to apps in a dedicated marketplace with developer support. 
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Product Ranking

#11

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EHR Software

#71

among all
EHR Software

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Analyst Rating Summary

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94
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Clinical Charts
Notes and Templates
Platform Security and Compliance
Clinical Documentation
Medical Billing
Clinical Charts
Electronic Prescriptions
Clinical Documentation
Platform Security and Compliance
Integration and Extensibility

Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

DrChrono
athenaOne
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Clinical Charts Clinical Documentation Dashboards And Reporting Electronic Prescriptions Medical Billing Mobile Capabilities Notes And Templates Patient Engagement Platform Capabilities Platform Security And Compliance Telehealth 100 94 88 91 94 81 100 88 90 96 73 100 94 75 95 93 72 86 88 58 94 64 0 25 50 75 100
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Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

93%
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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 529 reviews
Good User Sentiment 953 reviews
80%
of users recommend this product

DrChrono has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 80% when considering 529 user reviews from 3 recognized software review sites.

76%
of users recommend this product

athenaOne has a 'good' User Satisfaction Rating of 76% when considering 953 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

1.5 (3)
n/a
4.2 (39)
3.6 (102)
n/a
3.8 (836)
4.0 (487)
n/a
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5.0 (1)
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3.6 (14)

Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated DrChrono and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Platform Capabilities.

Platform Capabilities Award

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated athenaOne and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Integration and Extensibility.

Integration and Extensibility Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Ease of Use: Navigate patient charts, create shortcuts and access billing info without a steep learning curve.
Customization: Tailor the system to your specific needs and preferences like customizing templates, workflows and reports.
Easy Medical Coding: Find and assign ICD, CPT and HCPCS codes to patients' bills to save time and reduce coding errors.
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Customer Support: Users who struggled with implementation received adequate support, and all users have access to effective support at all times, as noted by almost 90% of reviews.
Functionality: Athena provides medical practices with all of the functionality that they need, as noted by slightly more than 75% of reviews.
User Interface: The user interface is intuitive and easy to use, as noted by 75% of reviews.
System Downtime: Of the users who discussed the solution’s accessibility, 60% noted that they had not experienced any significant system downtime and felt that they were always able to access functionalities when they wanted to.
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Contractual Obligations: Canceling subscriptions can be challenging, potentially leading to early termination fees. Automatic renewals may also catch you off guard.
Subpar Customer Support: Long wait times, unhelpful responses and unresolved issues from customer representatives might disrupt your processes.
Occasional Glitches: System crashes, slow navigation and difficulties with scheduling and other functionalities can cause frustration.
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Claims: While the claims scrubbing feature was praised by users, nearly 70% of reviewers felt that this feature noted that the language used for claims is difficult to interpret, clearing claims can be challenging and users felt that they did not receive satisfactory support when they reached out for help in regards to this feature.
Cost: Though only mentioned by approximately 10% of reviewers, the high price of the system was a detriment of the platform, as reported by 80% of users who discuss price in their review.
Accuracy: Some reviewers noted that they had difficulty entering or searching for their data within the platform as well as found inconsistencies within their records, as reported by 60% of users who mentioned Athena’s accuracy.
Suggestions: Users can make suggestions about changes they’d like to see within the system on a community forum, however, nearly 70% of reviewers who mention this capability felt that the suggestions of larger companies were unfairly prioritized over the suggestions of everyone else.
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So, I got the chance to get a free trial access to DrChrono, and here are the key highlights: The platform stands out for its intuitive design, extensive features and customization capabilities. The software is accessible on any device with internet connectivity. Data import from other EHR systems is supported but with certain limitations. It offers four pricing plans and a free trial is available for potential users.It's a cloud-based system, which means you can access it from anywhere — your laptop, tablet, even your phone! And it covers everything from electronic health records and patient scheduling to billing and telehealth.One of the things that really impressed us was how customizable it was. You can create your own templates for notes, forms and even entire workflows. This means you can really tailor it to fit your specific needs and preferences, which can save a ton of time.And speaking of saving time, they've put a lot of thought into their billing features. They have tools to help you code things correctly, submit claims electronically and even track your payments. Anything that helps you get paid faster and with less hassle is a win, right?However, learning to navigate the billing and insurance modules could take time. It’s a bit confusing to understand how the billing workflow works and how to set one up. Also, you can’t import billing data from your old EHR system.If you're looking for a comprehensive, user-friendly system that can be customized to your practice, we'd definitely recommend taking a closer look.They offer four different pricing plans, so you can find one that fits your budget, and they have a free trial so you can test it out and see if it's a good fit for you. It's always good to try before you buy, right?We’ve discussed more about the features in the See It in Action section. Do check it out to know how the system works in different scenarios.

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Athena offers robust functionalities that streamline many daily tasks for care providers. Many users felt that the system offered all of the functionalities they were looking for and felt that the interface was easy to navigate and did not experience system downtime. Users also felt that customer support was able to address most of their concerns at a satisfactory level. However, some users felt that the claims functionality was unsatisfactory and recognized that the system couldn’t make their desired customizations. Users also noticed inaccuracies in their data, but many were unable to determine if this was a result of the system storing information incorrectly or the result of users experiencing difficulty navigating the platform. The high price of this system may be cost prohibitive as this system is best suited for smaller practices that won’t need to provide multiple care providers with access to the system.

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