Shawna Joseph is the chief executive officer of Advantage Orthopedic & Sports Medicine Clinic, a private orthopedic organization in Oregon. We talked with her about how athenaOne® helps support private practice success in their financial and operational performance, and brings a practical, patient-centered approach to AI.
Q: What matters most to your practice, and what kind of pressure are you managing every day?
A: I feel like we always have pressure in private practice to do it better than the next guy. That’s pretty much all you can do is (provide) better service. At Advantage Orthopedic, we’re very much about partnering with our patients in their care and trying to provide the best service that we can, giving them a reason to come back and bring their family when they need us.
We are a very progressive private practice. Pretty much one of the only orthopedic groups you can go to in our community. I think that we have unbelievably talented staff, talented doctors who are very passionate about their craft.
Q: Why has athenaOne been such a clear choice for you over the years?
A: I won’t run a practice that’s not on athenaOne. They’re either going to already be on athenaOne, or they’re going to agree to move to athenaOne after I get there.
In private practice specifically, you have no corporate backing on money. The money needs to be coming in on a consistent roll. And the reporting process allows me to really deep dive at the touch of a button, basically without having to create the wheel, and am able to present the physicians with benchmarking, numbers, and graphs. That allows me to provide all of that reporting to them.
Mostly, it financially allows us to stay in private practice. When I first got there, the system that they were using before (had accounts receivables that averaged) about 60 days outstanding. And within the first 15 months, we were down to 20 days. So that’s huge.
Q: How does athenaOne help keep your business running efficiently?
A: I feel that you have a lot of support. The billing has support as far as making sure the claims are going out clean, making sure that there’s no reason for the payer to hold them or send them back. So if the claim goes out clean, then it comes in pretty quickly.
I feel that the wealth of information, the support, the library of knowledge that you get when you sign up for athenaOne is so helpful in onboarding new providers and especially staff, that we can hit the ground running. And it doesn’t set us back when we have new people come in.
For my specific role in the clinic, the reporting is amazing. But there is also the ease in being able to close out a month. It used to take me three days, usually, to just reconcile and close out everything. And now I think (it takes) maybe 20 minutes. So it’s really, really good. That’s huge. And that time is very, very valuable.
athenaOne allows me to have the time to have an open-door policy at all times. I love having a relationship with the staff. I like them to be able to come to me with whatever they need, and I don’t ever feel panicked or like I need to cut them off because I have so many other things to do.
Q: As a specialty practice, how well does athenaOne fit orthopedic workflows?
A: They help us the most with measurements and making sure that (we're monitoring) Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and things like that. I don’t ever have to worry about it since I’ve been on athenaOne. They always have my back.
I have not felt, whether it was neurology or orthopedic surgery, that we weren’t supported in any way or that there was a detriment in any way.
I can definitely remember several of the biggest things that I feel like in other systems, reporting systems really dragging down. And documentation for the physicians, which creates burnout. That’s something that I’m always worried about and want to watch.
The ease of scheduling, again, when we have new people come in, is so much easier than some of the other systems. It’s like the perfect electronic chart. It’s just so well labeled, and everything’s so organized.
Q: What has athenaOne meant for private practice more broadly?
A: If you are lucky enough to be in private practice — and we want to save private practice — it’s a little bit of a dying breed, unfortunately. But athenaOne is the backbone of what keeps private practice going and thriving, allowing you to stay in that business model that does allow you to make change immediately if something’s wrong.
When we make changes, if somebody has a better way to do something or streamline something, I feel like we make it immediately. Different (issues) required athenahealth to work with us on changes that we needed to make to streamline. They were right there with us. So it really allows our business to keep going.
We have the support all the way around. In the past, with other systems, you didn’t have a CSM (customer success manager), so there wasn’t really anybody to call, or you had to call an 800 number, and we were kind of waiting. So it is nice to know that they’re an email away if you need them.
Q: How does athenaOne support interoperability and the patient experience?
A: We have our own in-house X-ray, and our IT people have worked seamlessly with athenaOne when we have been trying to pull images from other locations, like the university hospital or other offices, and they have allowed us to be able to do that, which has worked really well.
They also really integrate well with the labs when we have to get lab results off for surgery patients. Everything has just been very seamless in working with outside sources.
When we do orders — physical therapy orders or MRI orders or lab orders or anything like that — all of the communication is just seamless to all of the locations. We’ve never had a problem.
The whole point is when you are very streamlined and you’re supported like athenaOne does for us on all aspects, whether it be our front desk, whether it be our medical assistants or our physicians and our providers, it allows them to give that one-on-one partnership with the patient, which is so important because we’re an orthopedic surgery clinic. So people come to us, and they’re hurt, and they’re nervous.
When we can spend a little bit more time with them, because we can, because we are using athenaOne, it allows them to get educated. And when you’re able to educate them on what’s going on, the anxiousness goes down. And then they’re more present in the moment to hear what you have to say. I think that athenaOne allows us to do that.
Q: What stands out to you about athenahealth’s approach to innovation and AI?
A: I think that we have to continue to grow, especially in private practice. We have to continue to grow and meet the demands of what’s required. I feel like health care in general is changing drastically, and we have to be better than the next guy.
athenahealth is consistently raising the bar and pushing the envelope for technology. I feel strongly that, where other companies are really looking into AI and things like that, I really love the healthy relationship that athenahealth presents when it comes to AI because it is ambient — it is a partnership.
You don’t want to lose that personal touch when you’re dealing with people, but why wouldn’t you use AI? Because it does help you, and it is a great source.
I feel like athenahealth is always aware of what’s needed. I hardly even have a chance to put in a question of, 'Hey, do you think this might be happening?' and it looks like it’s already in the works and it’s getting ready to release. Or there’s a beta for it. So I’m always impressed with athenahealth’s knowledge and ability to stay with what’s happening in the future of medicine.
Q: What would you say to another orthopedic practice considering athenaOne?
A: Do it. You won’t regret it. I say it all the time. Definitely. It’ll be the best decision you ever made.
athenaOne has all of the support and the capabilities that you need in every aspect — from high-level providers to staff to anybody coming into the clinic is immediately supported and part of the team.
These results reflect the experience of one particular practice and are not necessarily what every athenahealth client should expect.
Advantage Orthopedics participates in athenahealth’s Client Advocacy Program. To learn more about the program, please visit athenahealth.com/client-advocate-hub. Advantage Orthopedics was not compensated for participating in this content.
