Athena Healthcare, Inc. Reviews 

Awful. They do not follow up on claims and put claims on hold. The worst thing is that they do not forward correspondence to you from CBE from Medicare trying to recover overcharges. As a result, I did not know what was going on and suddenly got hit with a $6,000 bill from the Treasury Department. This happened twice to me. The CBE people told me that it happens often with Athenahealth.
DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!! YOU WILL LOSE THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS !!!

Love athenahealth. It has been the best choice for my practice.

2 hour wait for a first appointment.....pre appointment paperwork and legalese out the yazoo...never saw ANYTHING LIKE IT..Poor scheduling, They will remind you 5 times to appear and then have you wait...they threaten charges...awful company..called the director-no response

I signed with @athenahealth in July 2024 after months of demos and referrals. We went live November 19th. Since then, my clinic has endured one of the most disruptive, financially damaging, and exhausting experiences of my career.

Claim Failures:

No claims sent for the first 6+ weeks due to providers not configured to sign notes.

Lab billing delayed more than 10 weeks; even now Athena forces a modifier that causes denials.

DME billing delayed 16+ weeks; workflow still broken.

Prior authorizations not stored — every claim must be corrected manually.

Chiropractic Medicare claims require manual entry of initial treatment date on every visit.

Even today, 5 payers’ claims still cannot be sent.

False Promises:

Sales claimed all lab integrations → only LabCorp, and delayed.

Claimed chiropractic macros → none exist.

Claimed care plan countdowns → don’t exist.

Claimed supplement/product sales with tax → only possible by billing fake insurance claims ($6–$7 fee each).

Patient Harm:

Patients charged random amounts due to faulty care plan setups.

Incorrect statements mailed, emailed, and texted.

Lost patients due to destroyed trust.

Others constantly complain about redundant reminders.

Operational & Financial Chaos:

Fee schedule uploaded 3 times, leaving erroneous codes.

Sales tax calculated by hand.

Nearly 100 support cases opened, with hours on calls and little resolution.

Timely filing denials piling up because Athena delays triggered deadlines before claims were even sent.

$15,000 paid for an AI workaround just to survive.

Athena now demands $1,000–$3,000/month for API access to my own data.

Recordings: Athena refuses to release sales/onboarding recordings they promised were kept “for quality purposes,” likely to avoid proof of misrepresentation.

👉 Bottom line: If you are a small or independent practice, do not sign with @athenahealth. The cost — financial, operational, and emotional — is catastrophic.

#Healthcare #MedicalPractice #IndependentPractice #EMR #Athenahealth #HealthIT #PracticeManagement #PatientCare

Horrible experience. They provided me a billing code that does not work and it was a nightmare.
I wasted so much time trying to see if the billing code would work. This is so inconsiderate.

Worst EMR and worst support you can ever get. Countless issues and their solution read this article and good luck

This patient portal is ABSOLUTELY the WORST I have used. I repeatedly have to reset my password. I found it hard to get the info I wanted, it was hidden under 2 headings. I can't use face id even though I gave permission and would prefer face id.
Becky

Zero stars. My provider canceled them and switched to another provider. Their response was to auto generate voicemails and emails to all my providers patients claiming their upcoming appointments had been canceled. They had not been. Although my provider had to field over 300 inbound phone calls. At best incompetence. At worst asleep at the wheel. Probably would have a better rating if their official focus was picking belly lint or toe jam.

Training Horrible, no customer service, billing nightmares, no transfer of data from other EMR after 1 year still, extremely expensive. We have to get rid of it, can’t afford this as an independent fam med office. Worst choice we ever made

I want to be honest with all potential clients. This review is not one star. It is zero. I changed from Curemd to Athena because they made claims that they could increase my income as a solo medical practitioner.

3 months after changing over to Athena, our income was slipping. By 4-5 months we were having trouble meeting payroll. Six months in it was clear we may be going out of business after 26 years.

I took no salary for 7 months, worked 24/7 and finally was given the advice that the only way to save the company was to go back on Curemd which we did.
Six months later we are back on our feet.

Over $600,000 in collections remains missing.
Athena barely worked claims. Their customer service barely speaks our language and is of no help. The "Customer Success" manager seemed to be hell bent in putting us out of business. When I finally got our case escalated to the VP of Sales, he only made it worse and was actually agressie toward us.

Curemd is honest, reliable, and goes to the wall with each and every claim. You can always reach someone who knows what they're doing.

Do not get involve with this company. They were sued for millions by a hospital for fraud. They were bought by Bain Capital 10 years ago and they probably gutted whatever value there was.

Been using Athena for years now (not by choice) and the silly upgrades they try to enforce are so complicated. They try to get cute but all they are doing is making more work for professions. An extra unneeded click here and there is so frustrating. So unnecessary!!

Athena health salesman made me listen to over 1hr of b.s. before giving me the price then when I said give me the price he said
‘“I don’t think this will be a good fit” Don’t buy this product there staff is terrible, specifically Jono

Athena health, fix your atrocious billing practices at Springfield Psychological in Philadelphia. You made huge errors last year, inputting the wrong insurance info for several patients into your system including mine. You then billed me thousands of dollars, and you have yet to resolve the issue. You also tried billing me for a provider I never met! Springfield was always in network with my insurance, but you billed me as though I was not. Make it right!

Horrible from start..no training or proper orientation. They throw thousands of hours of videos and you figure it out !!
please remember that they take 7% of what you make...If you are going to use them for 10 years and your revenue is 300000 per year, over 10 years you will pay them almost QUARTER MILLION DOLLARS..What kind of service would you expect from someone who is going to earn this amount of money from your skills and hard work? Well, expect Athena to deliver about 10% of what you expect..
horrible eligibility checking software...never gives accurate eligibility information..wrote of hundreds and hundreds of dollars of claims..impossible to reach anyone..read reviews above..all the issues mentioned in the other reviews, we had to face as well..horrible portal..DO NOT SIGN UP...LEAVING ATHENA ONCE YOU SIGN UP IS A NIGHTMARE
Run..dont walk away from this horrible company

Can't access site through portal. Sita keeps asking me to change passwords - within one week.

NOT user friendly and not competent!

Website is not mobile-friendly. There is no easy way to provide written feedback if you're not their client, i.e., a doctor's office. Any company that makes it impossible or challenging to provide feedback does not deserve to exist imo. One minor gripe: when creating a patient account, they require a response to their question about what mobile phone service you use but don't provide a "Google Fi" or "Other" category. I'm not sure why my mobile service is in even relevant, but if they're going to require an answer, they shouldn't make you lie.

Un-User friendly. Very frustrating to use— sometimes doesn’t work/can’t log in. Doesn’t tell you if you’ve entered the wrong information in credit card area—just have to keep guessing. Ugh.

I have canceled my Athena Part Medicare 'N' health insurance because they did not cover what they were supposed to. I canceled this insurance and got a new insurance to begin 1/1/2025.
When I canceled on line Athena only allowed me to cancel on the third day of every month. I discovered that they then took that as an authority to bill me for January 2025. I called to correct but the upshot was that I would probably be billed anyway. This is a scam to rip off seniors.

This EHR made me want to stop practicing medicine. They do not follow through with fixes. You have to submit a 'case' and will be lucky if someone ever gets back to you. If they do, it is electronically, and it usually auto defaults to 'your case has been resolved', even though no one ever addressed it. When there are internal electronic glitches they always blame it on you, stating that you are processing things incorrectly. It is impossible for users to figure out simple things. There is so much more that I would never be able to extrapolate on here. Please, please do not use this EHR.

I really feel that I need to share a review about Athenahealth. I tried to submit a review to Capterra and it was not accepted - from now on, I would be very cautious about accepting the legitimacy of any reviews on Capterra or those other software review websites.

I'm a business owner and opted to use Athenahealth's services based on attractiveness of the clinical platform and access to HIE within the EMR. I figured that we have a biller who does our billing and no EMR/PM system could mess that up.

Man, was I wrong. Athenahealth managed to be both absurdly incompetent and paternalistic toward our practice, setting up unnecessary and time-consuming requirements that only prevented us from billing and getting paid. Case in point: our biller resubmitted claims for a major payer SEVERAL times. We were nine months behind on getting actual $ from this payer. Athenahealth kept blocking the claims for pointless reasons. Finally, we broke our contract and submitted the claims through Office Ally. The claims were accepted on the first try. This is just one example of the miserable incompetence that defines Athenahealth.

We switched EMR/PM systems after about 11 months with Athenahealth, and of course it was a huge hassle for everyone including the providers, but it was worth it, and we're in better shape now. I hope this review can help someone avoid this type of experience.

I recommend avoiding this company at all costs, especially if you are a multistate practice. It is truly a billing nightmare. Their clinical platform is fairly nice, but not worth the rest of the insulting and incompetent treatment.