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DrChrono vs athenaCollector

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

Overview Pricing Benefits & Features Analyst Ratings Comparison Charts User Ratings Analyst Summary Screenshots
DrChrono Software Tool
SelectHub Award Winner
athenaCollector Software Tool
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Product Basics

Analyst Rating

88 Detailed Analysis

User Sentiment

Great User Sentiment (529 Reviews)

Analyst Rating

we're gathering data
Detailed Analysis

User Sentiment

we're gathering data
( Reviews)

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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athenaCollector, developed by athenahealth, Inc., is a comprehensive software solution designed for medical practice management. It is particularly well-suited for healthcare providers seeking to streamline their billing processes, enhance revenue cycle management, and improve overall practice efficiency. One of the key benefits of athenaCollector is its ability to reduce administrative burdens, allowing medical professionals to focus more on patient care rather than paperwork. The software is known for its robust features, including claim processing, appointment scheduling, and reporting analytics, which collectively contribute to its popularity among users. When compared to similar products in the market, athenaCollector stands out for its user-friendly interface and the high level of customer support provided by athenahealth. Pricing for athenaCollector typically varies based on the size of the practice and the specific services required, with payment options designed to accommodate different budgetary needs. This flexibility in pricing, coupled with its comprehensive suite of features, makes athenaCollector a competitive choice for medical practice management.

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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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  • Get Paid More, Faster: AthenaCollector helps your organization get paid more quickly by scrubbing claims of any errors before submission. Denied claims can be resubmitted automatically to save time and prevent missing out on reimbursements. 
  • Improve Collections With Less Work: AthenaCollector helps to ensure the full amount of money owed is paid in a timely manner, boasting a 95% first-pass acceptance rate for insurance claims. By automating the billing and payment processes, staff members are required to do less work overall. 
  • Optimize Staff Performance: With more time available to your physicians through the automation of tasks, your healthcare professionals can get back to focusing on what’s most important — the patient. Analytics help provide insights and recognize patterns, making accurate diagnosis and treatment more likely. 
  • Compare Your Performance With Your Peers: By connecting with other AthenaHealth providers, you can compare the performance of your facility with others using the network. This can help lead to greater treatment results. Data analytics are made transparent and much easier to understand by displaying information in graphs, charts and more. 
  • Speed Up Patient Visits: Rather than having to check a patient’s insurance eligibility before each appointment, updates can be made online by the patient themselves. Additionally, a patient can walk out of the building once their appointment is finished with their payment taken out automatically. This gets rid of the time spent settling up once an appointment is finished. Athena’s advanced scheduling tool also helps to keep patient wait times down. 
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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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  • Performance Reporting: AthenaCollector allows your health professionals to view detailed, real-time reports with the click of a button. Benchmarks are established based on comparisons with other AthenaHealth customers to help drive better results. 
  • Revenue Cycle Dashboard: Physicians can easily access revenue cycle tasks as well as patient information from a singular, centralized dashboard. The intuitive dashboard lets users quickly bounce around from one task to another without getting lost. 
  • Appointment Scheduling: This allows your organization to optimize the number of appointments, increasing daily traffic. The online scheduling tool helps to eliminate double-scheduling or scheduling conflicts while connecting your physicians with patients. Automatic reminders are also sent out to help prevent no-shows. 
  • Claims Management: AthenaCollector is able to automatically verify a patient’s insurance eligibility prior to their appointment. Its automatically updated rules engine helps catch errors within claims before submitting them, leading to fewer denials and higher first-time acceptance rates. 
  • Patient Check-In: Patients are able to check themselves in online before showing up for their appointments. Any necessary information can be updated prior to the time of an appointment, saving themselves the time spent filling out charts, providing insurance and more. 
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Product Ranking

#8

among all
Medical Billing Software

#18

among all
Medical Billing Software

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Analyst Rating Summary

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Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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Claims Management Compliance And Security Dashboards And Reports Insurance Payments Management Medical Coding Mobile Capabilities Patient Payments Management Platform Capabilities Point Of Care Pre-appointment Management 100 100 88 100 98 94 81 100 100 100 0 25 50 75 100
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User Sentiment Summary

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

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1.5 (3)
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4.2 (39)
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4.0 (487)
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Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated DrChrono and concluded it deserves the award for the Best Overall Medical Billing Software available today and earns best-in-class honors for Compliance and Security, Mobile Capabilities and Platform Capabilities.

Analysts' Pick Award
Compliance and Security Award
Mobile Capabilities Award
Platform Capabilities Award

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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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Streamlined Claim Scrubbing: Users appreciate the ability to submit cleaner claims, reducing denials and rework, which in turn improves revenue cycle efficiency.
Integrated Patient Engagement Tools: Features like appointment reminders and patient portals enhance patient communication and satisfaction, leading to better patient retention and loyalty.
Comprehensive Reporting: Robust reporting capabilities provide insights into practice performance, allowing for data-driven decision-making and practice optimization.
Cloud-Based Accessibility: The cloud-based nature of athenaCollector enables access from anywhere with an internet connection, offering flexibility and convenience for healthcare providers.
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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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Customer Support: Users have reported challenges in reaching customer support promptly and receiving timely resolutions to their inquiries.
Software Issues: Some users have encountered technical problems and glitches within the software, leading to disruptions in workflow and potential data inaccuracies.
System Updates: The frequency of system updates has been a concern for some users, as they can sometimes lead to temporary disruptions or require additional training to adapt to new features or changes in functionality.
Cost: The pricing structure and associated costs of athenaCollector have been mentioned as a drawback by some users, particularly for smaller practices or those with budget constraints.
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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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Stepping into the bustling world of medical practice management software, athenaCollector emerges as a prominent contender, but how does it truly fare in the eyes of its users? Let's delve into the experiences shared by those who have navigated the intricacies of this platform. athenaCollector garners praise for its comprehensive suite of features, encompassing electronic health records (EHRs), patient scheduling, billing, and insurance claims processing. Users appreciate the platform's ability to streamline administrative tasks, allowing healthcare providers to dedicate more time to patient care. The user-friendly interface and customization options further contribute to its appeal. However, a recurring concern among users is the cost associated with athenaCollector. Some find the pricing structure to be relatively high compared to alternative solutions. Additionally, while the platform offers customer support, there have been instances where users have expressed dissatisfaction with the responsiveness or effectiveness of the assistance provided. When compared to competitors like SimplePractice, Waystar, and Kareo, athenaCollector distinguishes itself through its robust feature set and integration capabilities. Its ability to handle complex billing processes and manage large volumes of patient data makes it particularly well-suited for larger medical practices or those with specialized needs. Smaller practices or solo practitioners may find more cost-effective options with comparable features among the alternatives available. Ultimately, the suitability of athenaCollector hinges on the specific requirements and priorities of each medical practice. For those seeking a comprehensive and integrated solution with a wide range of features, athenaCollector proves to be a valuable asset, despite its higher price point. However, smaller practices or those with budget constraints may find better value in alternative platforms that offer a more streamlined and affordable approach.

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Screenshots

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Head-to-Head Comparison

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