How one clinic learned what its EHR was really worth

The need for independent clinics and integrative care

Gwenn Rosenberg, ND, cares deeply about providing holistic healthcare. She runs a small family practice in Connecticut, New London Natural Health Center, that prides itself on its connection to the community.

“What makes us unique is that we wouldn’t have been unique 50 years ago,” Dr. Rosenberg shares. “There’s a real shortage of that continuity of primary care. Very few people have that anymore: a doctor that knows them, and especially a doctor who knows their parents and neighbors.”

But sustaining that model requires the right balance of patient time, financial viability, and operational efficiency. After leaving athenaOne® for another EHR, Dr. Rosenberg has returned with a clearer view of the value athenaOne really provides for her independent clinic: “athenaOne is the ticket to be able to provide that level of care.”

Never enough time: The challenge of running an independent clinic

Dr. Rosenberg says that she compares her patients to every other visit she’s had with them, as opposed to comparing them to a model of what they should look like given their demographics. This has allowed her to catch diagnoses like early-onset Parkinson’s or kidney infections from a conversation, by knowing her patients deeply.

That requires spending time with patients, and Dr. Rosenberg estimates that she spends 30 minutes to an hour with each patient that walks in her door.

“What happens though, if we want to be insurance-based, it gets really hard to maintain a clinic when you’re spending more time with patients,” she says.  

New London’s decision around which EHR would be the best fit for them, and their journey of leaving athenaOne and coming back, all revolved around looking for that balance of managing a financially viable clinic while carving out the time with patients necessary to deliver personal care.

The illusion of the sticker price

Dr. Rosenberg chose to transition from athenaOne to another EHR because she hoped she could save some money by moving to a different solution while still getting the more basic functionality she needed to run her business.

At first, she planned to move away from insurance to a sliding fee scale self-pay model.  “I had the impression that what athenaOne was doing for me was in RCM, so I was thinking that if I didn’t need to do insurance, then I didn’t need athenaOne,” she explains.

She quickly found that self-pay model to be even less accessible for patients, who are already paying for insurance and can’t add another healthcare line item to the monthly budget.

When she decided to continue working with insurance, she knew that leaving athenaOne meant a lot of billing work would land on her plate. However, she hoped to use the money she was saving on a “cheaper” solution to hire an in-house biller.

“I was thinking I could go somewhere else and save a lot of money on an EHR,” she says. “I didn’t stop and realize how much [athenaOne] was doing for me."

Instead, she found herself doing billing work late at night while paying nearly the same amount for a solution with “a tenth of the functionality of athenaOne.”

The importance of value over cost

Shortly after moving to a new solution, the limitations of the lower-cost option quickly became clear. Dr. Rosenberg learned that nickel-and-diming actually made the new solution comparable in price to athenaOne. “I had to pay extra for faxing, I had to pay extra for e-prescribing, extra for messaging patients, both for access to the functionality and per message,” Dr. Rosenberg says, rattling off a list of fees that drove that initial price up.

She also found herself doing after-hours billing work that athenaOne had previously handled for the practice, which made the full scope of the service clear. “I really developed an appreciation for what athenaOne does, I mean whoa,” she laughs, “that was a lot.”

Beyond the revenue cycle management work that happened behind the scenes, she also missed the dozens of clinical and patient engagement features in athenaOne that she’d taken for granted.

“It felt so clunky compared to athenaOne,” she says. She missed the everyday workflow benefits of normal results notifications and the guardrails of the Patient Portal. She also missed more foundational functionality, such as Enhanced Self Check-in, HIPAA-compliant staff messaging, and a mobile app for clinicians.

Just as important as the platform itself, Dr. Rosenberg also found herself missing athenahealth’s support system. “I really noticed when we would run into problems [with the new EHR], it was near impossible to get anyone to talk to about them,” she says. “So many times with athenahealth, I’ve gotten a problem resolved in 10 minutes.”

Between the added work for Dr. Rosenberg and her clinical team, and the added price for items that were previously baked in, she found herself paying a comparable price for a platform that doubled the volume of work on their plates.

Back and better than ever

It didn’t take long for Dr. Rosenberg to pick up the phone and call her athenahealth contacts. As she put it, “You know when you break up with someone and you’re like, I’m going to try dating other people, but you’re just missing that person?”

She did her research first, of course, and connected with half a dozen other EHR systems to learn what they could do for her. “I learned that nothing compares to athenaOne,” she says.

Now that New London is back up and running on athenaOne, Dr. Rosenberg also learned from her first experience. “Before, when I was using it, there was a lot I didn’t even touch,” she says. Connecting with her Customer Success Manager as well as taking advantage of free coaching and training services helped her understand the platform better and make better use of functionality available to her practice.

“[My CSM] helped me create a report so we can see which items have been downcoded, and it makes the appeal process super easy,” Dr. Rosenberg shares. Visibility into downcoded claims was her only pain point with athenaOne before leaving the platform, and she didn’t realize she could set up a custom report to help tackle those.

“Now, everything runs smoothly,” she says. “There are so many different processes that are so much faster for us than on our old EHR.”

Ask what your EHR does for you

When asked what advice she would have for other organizations who are considering leaving athenaOne, Dr. Rosenberg’s response was quick: “Don’t do it. Very simple advice.”

She elaborates, saying, “Ask your colleagues what their EHR does for them, and you’ll realize – just like I did – that there are a lot of things you take for granted. Because athenaOne does them so seamlessly, we can go through our days not noticing how great it is.”

She speaks to the most important consideration for her at the end of each day, which is the time she spends with patients: “The independent clinic is the humane way to practice medicine for all involved, including providers and staff. athenaOne and the service you provide allows that to be possible, to be physician-owned and a financially viable entity.”

If you’re an independent clinic struggling with the administrative burden of growing your business while practicing care the way you want, get in touch to learn more about what athenaOne can do for you.