Learning from a community of peers with User Groups

Angelina Colon is the manager of applications and training of Midwest Orthopaedics at RUSH, an orthopedic organization in Illinois. Read on to learn how athenahealth helps reduce administrative burden, how user groups give customers a voice in product development, and how AI is helping teams focus more on patients and less on documentation.

Q: What has made athenahealth a strong fit for your organization over time?

A: We are the number one orthopedic group in Illinois. We take a lot of pride in that. We’re also in the top 10 in the U.S.* We take care of patients of all ages. We do pediatric orthopedics up until [seniors]— we had a 102-year-old person in the office the other day, and that was great.

Last week, I celebrated my sixth anniversary. Been using athenaOne® the whole time. And I also used athenaOne at a practice prior to this. So, it’s been a great experience.

One of the things that can be hard with other EHRs is that you are constantly fearing the upgrade. How is it going to affect our templates? How is it going to affect the way that we document? And with athenaOne, because we’re involved in so many alphas and betas, it doesn’t feel as overwhelming when we have those releases.

That’s great for staff on a daily basis. They’re already stressed enough dealing with taking care of patients, making sure our physicians are happy. So, to add software updates on top of that, it can be challenging. With athenaOne, it’s not as challenging. It’s also a very intuitive system. So, training employees, whether they’re new or transitioning in their roles, it just makes the overall experience more pleasant.

Q: Can you talk more about how athenahealth helps make training and day-to-day work easier for staff and providers?

A: We actually just had a new physician join us at the end of August. And he was incredibly happy with what we were showing him. He had come from other EHRs that maybe felt a little bit more clunky, a little bit more busy.

So, training new providers, whether it be a physician, a physical therapist, it’s pretty smooth. It makes sense what you’re going to do next, where you’re going to click next. You don’t have to open multiple windows to get to things. With the more admin side being in the same space as the clinical side, it just makes things easier for people to understand.

On the administrative side, we have roles where they kind of have to be experts in everything. And that can be hard. Don’t get me wrong. But with the little pop-ups that you guys have now, what’s new, using the Success Community, using O-help, it makes people feel more confident, like they can get to the answers that they need to get to.

Q: Where have you seen athenahealth reduce administrative burden most meaningfully?

A: Fax processing. It seems like such a small thing to anybody that hasn’t been on the administrative side, but it can be a lot. And so being able to create rules to move things to where they need to go without someone having to manually do that, that is huge.

I think that the Clinical Inbox — you guys have made so many strides to make that a better workspace for people. The ability to filter more, organize things how it makes sense to their brain, because not everybody processes things the same, and they have different priorities. So, the fact that you’ve made so many great changes in the Clinical Inbox I think has lessened staff burden quite a bit.

Q: What value have you found in athenahealth’s User Groups and customer community?

A: I joined the Training User Group just to find people to talk through different challenges with. And it was great not just to have people help me, but for me to be able to help others. I love that shared experience.

[At] our monthly meetings, it’s never silence. It is always people engaged, asking questions, giving ideas. So, it’s just great to meet with your peers on a regular basis.

I know that there’s a space where I can go to and present a problem. And no one’s going to be like, what? You don’t know how to do that? We all understand that we have different challenges. And it’s great to be able to not only communicate within the Success Community, but other people — we’ve exchanged email addresses, we’ve sent each other different documents that we use that we hope they can tailor to them. So yeah, it’s just a sense of community.

I don’t feel alone. I don’t feel like I have to overcome these things by myself. I have to be innovative and be able to solve problems. I know that I have others that I can go to that are in the same or similar roles. So that is very nice. It’s great.

Q: Have User Groups helped you influence product development and feel heard by athenahealth?

A: Definitely. So recently, they have what’s called the training assignment tool. And that is something that we’ve been asking for since I’ve been on athenaOne. And two years ago, at my first Thrive, I participated in [a conversation around] how can we do this? How can we tailor this for people to be able to create their own training assignment?

And it was nice that athenahealth obviously heard us and they were working on it. And that’s something that’s very unique about athenahealth. I think that when we come with problems, or things that would just make our lives easier, you make it happen, as much as you can. So having that training assignment tool and watching it evolve has been great.

Any feedback we give, I can tell that people are listening, and they’re writing it down, or they’re typing it into their notes. So, it makes me feel like it’s just not going out into a void.

I feel like it’s something special. I think just because the way that the program is set up, with it being cloud-based and with little tweaks being able to make, if something isn’t working right, I know that they can put a patch in and it’s going to be fixed. That is something very unique.

The Success Community, with submitting ideas and people voting on, at athenahealth you can see what people’s pain points are and where they need the most help. So, I think that that’s very unique. It’s a great thing.

Q: What would you tell other customers about getting more value from athenahealth by joining User Groups?

A: Do it. Even if you sit there and you don’t talk to anybody, you don’t connect with anybody, just hearing other people talk through things can be helpful. Not everyone feels comfortable maybe speaking up and asking a question, but there’s always within that group someone that’s willing to give out their email address, someone that’s willing to say, hey, if anybody wants to talk through this, or wants me to share this document, just let me know.

I would say that athenahealth is the best EHR that I’ve ever used. And I’ve used quite a few of them. I think that the community that athenahealth has built, people should dive into it. Don’t be scared. Yes, it might take a half hour, an hour out of your day, once a month, which can sometimes feel very impactful. But taking that time to be part of a user group within athenahealth probably is going to save you time down the line.