Why athenaOne® is a top choice for small medical practices

Looking for doctor’s office software? Explore the all-in-one advantages of athenaOne.

For small, independent medical practices, especially those juggling the complexities of delivering primary care, the right practice management and EHR software can be a boon to your efficiency and performance. But identifying the best tools from a slate of contenders can feel like a daunting task. You want something powerful yet easy to use, scalable yet affordable, and most importantly, something that doesn’t require stitching together a dozen separate tools just to function day to day.

That’s exactly where athenaOne excels.

athenaOne has proven to be an ideal all-in-one solution for thousands of small practices nationwide that want to focus on delivering patient care, not on cobbling multiple Healthcare IT solutions into something that sort of works. Whether you’re an established solo practitioner or small team or you’re starting a new practice of your own, your medical office deserves the benefits of enterprise-grade infrastructure without enterprise-sized costs — and that’s what athenaOne delivers.

One system that does it all, without all the bolt-ons

How did you pick the doctor’s office software your small practice uses today? Like many small medical practices, you probably started with simple EHR and practice management software, and then tacked on other services as the need arose: patient engagement, telehealth, scheduling, analytics. Patchwork solutions can work for a while — until they don’t. A siloed or unreliable EHR can slow your clinicians down and end up costing more time and money in the long run. Consider also the fatigue of learning multiple systems that may or may not communicate well with one another, as well as the burden of keeping track of assorted vendors, software updates, and compatibility issues.

athenaOne consolidates all the clinical, operational, financial, and patient engagement services you need into a single comprehensive platform that’s deeply integrated across workflows, end to end, and connected with a vast network of external care sites. That means:

• No separate medical billing and practice management vendor
• No third-party patient portal
• No bolt-on telehealth apps
• No need for costly, custom-built data bridges to support interoperability

When you use athenaOne, everything just works. That’s true both on day one and years into the future as we evolve our solutions as healthcare changes. Plus, you never have to worry about managing software updates on athenaOne. Having a cloud-based solution instead of a locally installed one enables us to push updates directly to you. We release three major updates per year and make continual small improvements year-round, including many features suggested directly by our customers. In fact, 38% of the enhancements we made to our products in 2024 came from customer feedback¹ — adding up to more than 360 customer ideas implemented that year.²

By eliminating the technical debt and management overhead of maintaining multiple software tools and vendors, athenaOne frees your entire team to focus on patient care.

An efficient EHR designed to help clinicians do their best work

It’s difficult to focus on the patient in front of you when you’re switching among different doctor’s office software vendors, documenting the encounter in one window and prescribing medications in another. With athenaOne, our thoughtfully designed EHR software for small practices works the way clinicians think, minimizes administrative burden, and lets you give your patient your full attention. What you’ll experience:

• Intuitive workflow that reduces clicks and helps close care gaps
• AI capabilities such as Ambient Notes that speed clinical documentation time
• Native interoperability that surfaces relevant external patient data at the point of care
• Robust tools and guidance to manage value-based care risk and reporting
• Top-rated mobile app that lets clinicians practice when and where they want, across care settings or on the go

Through optimized clinical workflows enabled by multiple layers of artificial intelligence, time-saving automation, and a focus on enabling high-quality care delivery, athenaOne is taking steps to reduce clinician burnout. And that’s good for providers, patients, and staff.

Integrated revenue cycle management: a game-changer for small medical practices

Why shouldn’t small practices use a bare-bones medical billing and practice management solution? Because your small practice deserves a robust revenue cycle management partner that focuses on driving financial performance. Unlike many lightweight EHRs that stop at charge capture, athenaOne includes a complete, high-performance RCM solution. It’s consistently ranked among the best practice management and EHR software solutions in the industry, and for good reason:

• Real-time eligibility checks and claims scrubbing to help you submit clean claims the first time – with an industry-leading clean claim submission rate: 98.4% of our claims are accepted on first submission³
• A network-wide billing rules engine that proactively identifies and corrects claim errors, reducing your time to collect
• Denial management services and automated resubmissions to take work off your plate
• Dedicated billing experts and back-office support to improve efficiency

According to one independent analysis, practices switching to athenaOne often see a 2–6% increase in collections and a similar decrease in overhead costs.⁴

Built-in patient engagement tools for convenience and connection

From appointment reminders and mobile check-in to your own fully branded patient portal and the athenaPatient® app, athenaOne equips your practice with the digital patient engagement tools today’s consumer-minded patients expect, without requiring you to use third-party apps or manual workarounds. Our all-in-one solution offers:

• On-demand online access for patients to view and manage health information, appointments, test and lab results, payments, messages, and more
• Automated wellness campaigns to help close care gaps and keep schedules full
• Electronic self check-in to save time and effort for patients and staff
• Native telehealth functionality that gives patients more flexible access to care
• Secure patient messaging to help patients contact their care team
• Online payments and notifications to boost patient pay collection

athenaOne’s built-in patient engagement tools keep patients connected with your practice and their health. The results: time saved at the front desk, fewer no-shows, and a better overall experience for your patients — without extra logins, contracts, or third-party integration costs.

Interoperability without the IT hassle

To access the most complete possible picture of your patient’s health and deliver excellent care, you need effective data exchange with external care sites. With athenaOne, you don’t have to be an interoperability expert yourself. athenaOne makes more than 277,000 clinical integrations⁵ available to our customers from day one, including direct connections to hospitals, labs, imaging centers, pharmacies, and health information exchanges. We build and maintain these integrations for you, so you and your clinicians and staff can exchange data with ease:

• Import external records into the electronic health record via the latest data exchange standards and protocols, like TEFCA
• Send and receive referrals to specialists and other care facilities
• Access medication histories from other clinicians
• Share clinical summaries with other providers

These powerful and valuable connections come built into athenaOne. You don’t have to buy an integration platform or pay an IT professional to set up and manage HL7 interfaces for you. Just log in and they’re ready to go.

Personalized, hands-on onboarding for busy medical practices

Yes, implementing athenaOne can take longer than plug-and-play EHR and billing systems. But that time is well spent, and well supported. Unlike many EHRs that drop you into virtual training modules and self-guided wikis, athenahealth provides personalized, guided onboarding with a dedicated team of experts. You’ll get:

• A tailored implementation plan built around your workflows
• Guided setup and training
• A dedicated Onboarding Success Manager and support team
• Coordinated data migration from your legacy system into athenaOne
• Minimal burden on your clinicians to configure the system themselves

We go to these lengths to ensure that athenaOne is set up correctly the first time and optimized for your unique small practice. Our support doesn’t end with onboarding, by the way. Once you're live on athenaOne, your dedicated Customer Success Manager is here to do all they can to support your practice’s success, from sharing your metrics and optimizing workflows to helping your staff develop expertise in athenaOne. And you can always access 24/7 live customer support via chat, email, phone, or web, whenever you have a question. We’re here to help.

The ROI: Simplicity, scalability, and peace of mind

A simple EHR that uses a monthly subscription model may look inexpensive on the surface. But keep in mind that their baseline fee doesn’t include the full suite of EHR features most practices need to deliver care. Add to that the cost of additional software for billing, practice management, and patient engagement, plus add-ons for integrations, plus extra support to manage prior authorizations and denied claims, and your total cost of ownership could end up being a lot more than your small practice bargained for.

Instead, consider bypassing the hassle and choosing the all-in-one, comprehensive Healthcare IT platform that lets you focus on patient care, not vendor contracts. When you factor in all the benefits and advantages of athenaOne, including:

• Higher collections due to optimized RCM
• Less staff time spent on manual tasks or software troubleshooting
• Fewer missed revenue opportunities caused by denied claims or incomplete documentation
• Greater clinician and staff satisfaction with a solution that saves time and work
• A strong relationship with a single robust partner instead of multiple vendors 

… your return on investment becomes clear. athenaOne doesn’t just reduce software sprawl. It also reduces operational stress.

Is athenaOne right for your practice?

Are you a small, independent medical practice that’s making do with an assortment of individual practice management and EHR software solutions? Or perhaps you’re opening your own private practice and want to choose the right doctor’s office software from the start. It may be time to choose a single, robust Healthcare IT partner that’s invested in your success. If you’d like to:

• Improve revenue collection without hiring more billing staff
• Offer patients a digital experience that matches what they get at larger systems
• Make the most of innovative AI-powered tools to drive greater efficiency
• Spend a lot less time managing data integrations and software vendors
• Future-proof your practice and scale efficiently without having to switch platforms down the road

 … athenaOne can be one of the smartest investments you can make for clinician, staff, and patient satisfaction.

It’s so much more than an EHR. athenaOne is a strategic foundation for exceptional patient care, operational efficiency, and long-term growth. It’s no wonder we received the 2025 Best in KLAS award for Overall Independent Physician Practice Suite⁶ — our second year in a row to be recognized in this way by healthcare providers.

Get to know the athenaOne advantage for your small practice

Learn more about athenaOne on our solutions page. Ready to talk with an athenaOne expert? Request a demo here. We'll reach out to set up a call.