eClinicalWorks to athenahealth Migration Guide
A complete step-by-step guide for migrating your EMR system from eClinicalWorks to athenahealth. Includes data migration checklist, timeline estimates, cost projections, common challenges, and expert tips.
How do I migrate from eClinicalWorks to athenahealth?
Migrating from eClinicalWorks to athenahealth is a medium-difficulty process that typically takes 3-6 months and costs $10,000-$75,000 depending on practice size. Key steps include: review ecw contract and plan timeline, sign with athenahealth and begin onboarding, extract data from eclinicalworks, and more. The migration involves transferring 10 categories of clinical and administrative data.
Timeline
Estimated Cost
Migration Process
Difficulty Level
Estimated Cost
Includes licensing, data migration, implementation services, training, and contingency. Actual costs vary based on organization size, data complexity, and customization requirements.
Data Migration Checklist
The following data categories can be migrated from eClinicalWorks to athenahealth:
Step-by-Step Migration Process
Review eCW Contract and Plan Timeline
Check your eClinicalWorks contract for termination clauses, data retention obligations, and early exit fees. Coordinate migration timeline with contract end date to minimize overlap costs.
Sign with athenahealth and Begin Onboarding
Engage athenahealth sales and sign the services agreement. athenahealth assigns an implementation team who will guide the migration process. Their onboarding typically takes 10-14 weeks.
Extract Data from eClinicalWorks
Request CCDA exports and flat-file data dumps from eCW. Work with eCW support to obtain complete patient records including clinical notes, medications, lab results, and billing data. Supplement with manual chart review for critical patients.
Configure athenaOne for Your Practice
Set up practice-specific configurations in athenaOne including scheduling templates, clinical workflows, provider preferences, billing rules, and insurance payer enrollment. athenahealth provides guided configuration tools.
Load and Validate Migrated Data
Work with athenahealth data migration team to load patient demographics, clinical summaries, and active medication lists. Validate a sample of 50-100 patient charts for accuracy and completeness.
Train Staff on athenaOne
Complete role-based training using athenahealth University resources. Most practices need 8-16 hours per user. Focus on billing workflow changes since athena uses a percentage-of-collections model that changes revenue cycle operations.
Go Live and Transition
Switch to athenaOne on the planned go-live date. Maintain eCW in read-only mode for 60-90 days to access historical records not yet migrated. Monitor billing performance closely in the first month.
Common Challenges
eCW uses a proprietary database structure that requires specialized extraction tools
Clinical note formatting from eCW does not always translate cleanly into athena structured notes
eCW custom templates and clinical content must be rebuilt in athenaClinicals
Billing rules and fee schedules need reconfiguration in athenaCollector
healow (eCW patient portal) data has limited migration path to athenaCommunicator
Historical lab interfaces must be re-established with athenahealth
eCW contract termination may involve early exit fees -- review your agreement
Expert Migration Tips
Athenahealth network-based billing rules will auto-populate for most payers -- leverage this to reduce manual configuration
Export all eCW custom templates and clinical content as PDFs before migration -- they serve as blueprints for athena setup
The percentage-of-collections pricing model eliminates upfront software costs but requires careful revenue cycle monitoring
Request athenahealth references from practices that specifically migrated from eCW -- they can share lessons learned
Plan for a revenue cycle dip in month 1 as new billing workflows stabilize -- have 60-90 days of operating reserves
Frequently Asked Questions
Why switch from eClinicalWorks to athenahealth?
Common reasons include frustration with eCW customer support, desire for cloud-native architecture, preference for athena managed billing services, better patient engagement tools, or concerns about eCW regulatory history (2017 DOJ settlement).
How does billing change when moving from eCW to athena?
athenahealth uses a percentage-of-collections model (typically 4-8%) instead of eCW per-provider subscription fees. This means no upfront costs but ongoing fees tied to revenue. For most practices, net cost is comparable.
How long does an eCW to athena migration take?
Most practices complete the migration in 3-6 months. athenahealth implementation typically takes 10-14 weeks, with data migration running in parallel during the final 4-6 weeks.
Will we lose clinical history in the migration?
Active patient demographics, medication lists, allergies, and problem lists are typically migrated in full. Historical clinical notes are imported as document attachments. Detailed encounter-level data from eCW may require manual review for complex patients.
Migration Summary
- From
- eClinicalWorks
- Difficulty
- Medium
- Timeline
- 3-6 months
- Est. Cost
- $10,000-$75,000 depending on practice size
- Steps
- 7 steps
- Data Types
- 10 categories
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