athenaClinicalsSM Reaches 100 Provider, 100,000 Document Milestones
athenaClinicals, athenahealth’s clinical cycle management service, hit two major milestones last month.
“We’ve been implementing athenaClinicals for the past 18 months,” said Kevin Tolin Scheper, athenahealth’s director of clinical implementation services. “And last month, we implemented provider number 100.”
The adoption rate of athenaClinicals has been exponential. In the first 12 months athenaClinicals welcomed 30 providers. In the past 6 months, we’ve added 70 more. We expect to add another 100 before the end of the year.
“This is definitely a time for reflection,” continued Tolin Scheper. “We are the only ones in the industry offering solutions to the real challenges that practices face: overwhelming paperwork, complicated processes for sorting information, and the workflow and staff time required to handle clinical and billing tasks.”
athenahealth is also rapidly growing the Virtual Back Office on behalf of athenaClinicals clients. Last month, athenahealth staff turned 116,000 documents – including mail and faxes – into electronic data.
“We intercept all paper including faxes coming to the practice and turn it into electronic information,” said JoRel Martirosov, product manager at athenahealth. “We sort it into a ‘clinical inbox’ so practices can quickly see lab results, patient referrals, and all other kinds of information that used to be organized by hand at the practice.”
Type of documents processed on behalf of athenaClinicals clients
| Lab/Imaging results | 68% |
|---|---|
| Clinical (related to patient care) | 14% |
| Misc (administrative, billing, spam) | 12% |
| Prescriptions (renewals, clarifications, requests) | 4% |
| Care authorizations | 2% |
| Phone messages | <1% |
Because of our strict protocols for sorting data, we are more consistent than individual medical practices can be at getting the right information to the right people. That means practice staff don’t have to spend time filing and sorting information coming to the practice (or looking for information that was mishandled). “When staff need information on a patient’s medical or billing history, it’s all in athenaNet,” said Martirosov.
Positive feedback from athenaClinicals clients has been significant. One physician told us she has been waiting for this kind of life-changing solution ever since she started practicing medicine.
“The whole team is energized by such reinforcing feedback,” said Tolin Scheper. “Comments like these remind us that we are changing the business of health care for the better.”
Tolin Scheper concludes, “We’re confident we’ve secured the foundation of athenaClinicals. Now, we can rapidly add new clients and specialties. Next on the list are orthopedics and cardiology specialties – and many more to come after those.”