How one FQHC transformed RCM with AI and reporting

Josh Boston is the Chief Operations Officer of Chesapeake Healthcare, a federally qualified health center organization in Maryland. Read on to learn how Chesapeake Healthcare is using athenahealth to improve workflows, strengthen reporting and revenue cycle visibility, and explore AI across the organization.

Q: What makes Chesapeake Healthcare unique, and what challenges are shaping your organization right now?

A: We’re on the forefront of thinking about technology and how it can best make our practice a lot better, using efficiencies and improving workflows.

Our unique challenges are really just keeping up with all the different changes in the healthcare industry. Currently, I think some of our biggest problems are around insurance, prior authorizations and denials. But then there are also some challenges with staffing and things like that to make sure that we can actually improve access to our healthcare services.

I think some of the challenges that we are facing over the next few years from a healthcare standpoint are around our practitioners. We’re seeing a lot less physicians become available, so a physician shortage. We were able to recruit pretty well with advanced nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants, but finding MDs that can actually carry on and oversee our organization is something that really kind of is a challenge for us.

Q: How has athenahealth helped you move the organization forward?

A: Being with athenahealth has been a great partnership. We’ve been able to continue to grow forward with all of our technology. They have many marketplace partners that we have used in the past or are currently using. But they’re also looking at new integrations themselves for some of those services.

We recently have gone and started using some of the AI tools that they have, including Ambient Notes, and so it’s really just a good partnership that we feel like we have with them.

Our growth goals are kind of limited to us at this point because as an FQHC, you have a target population. So really, I think right now is really looking at the growth internally and just making sure that we have all the tools and can continue to improve those workflows and operations and just continue to improve it.

I think our goals are aligned with athenahealth and the roadmaps that they have. This year we were actually able to bring on behavioral health. So, for the first time since 2011, when we joined athenaOne®, we actually have all of our departments using athenahealth, which is something that’s been a goal of mine since 2011. Looking at that over the next couple of years and seeing how much easier it is to manage with all things in one system, I think is going to be something that we’re really looking forward to seeing.

Q: What stands out most about athenahealth’s reporting and dashboard capabilities?

A: The reporting is my absolute favorite piece of athenaOne. It has been since we joined in 2011. I created a lot of the UDS reports that I had to run, prior to athenahealth developing those resources themselves. So, I always kind of love the reporting and I’ve been very familiar with the dashboards.

We’ve always been looking at the dashboards with our CSM, especially our claims management, the revenue cycle stuff. But from the Quality stuff, I’ve always had my finger on the pulse. I’ve done our UDS now for 20 plus years. So, knowing all the measures that we have to do for UDS, but also for all the Medicare and Medicaid stuff that we have to do as well.

We have several contracts for value-based contracting for the value-based measures. We have committed pretty substantial resources to a health outreach team, which I manage. So that team is looking at all the different measures for all these different insurance companies. So, it’s really a lot to manage. But we have a great team, and that team looks at the Medicare, Medicaid, and the commercial contracts and those value-based measures and just reach out to the patients to make sure that they’re getting in for the care that they need.

Q: How are you thinking about AI, and where do you see the biggest opportunity?

A: The utilization of Ambient [Notes] has been something that we’re kind of, again, on the forefront. We’re an alpha client for that. It’s one of those things that our providers have always used some sort of dictation services. But all those dictation services never really were fully integrated into athenaOne. So, that made things challenging for other providers because of that. With Ambient, now you have three different vendors that will support our providers. And I think we’ll constantly make upgrades to make sure that the dictation services work in ways that our providers need it most.

The AI tools that excite us the most at this point – we were actually on a call through athenaOne recently for RCM – and we’re looking forward to seeing what improvements AI can make through RCM to reduce errors, to get errors fixed before they go out and hopefully improve the revenue cycle return for us.

I think the concerns over AI, you have to educate yourself and look at what you’re trying to accomplish. Maybe every AI is not for every situation. But we have had success already, again, with the Ambient Notes. And again, looking at the RCM piece. So, I think you have to look at every aspect of the AI tool and to see if it really fits your organization.

Q: What opportunities are you most excited about next with athenahealth?

A: We just actually became the first adopter of the single sign-on. So, I think that technology is going to be a huge improvement for us. I think that’s the first of much larger integration in 2026. But I think once we get through that, I think it’s going to be a huge improvement for our staff and team.

The department that probably would see the most improvement with all the tools athenaOne has to offer is probably our behavioral health. We’re in the infancy stages of our implementation. And I think probably over the next year, kind of like we’ve seen with trending from our dental department, the behavioral health department is going to see a lot of different things that they’ve probably never even looked at before.

I think our revenue cycle management will be much, much improved. But being able to see a little bit more, report a little bit more on the patient outcomes, I think is going to be a great tool for our providers to see, as they trend, hopefully the patients are getting better. And being able to provide them that data, I think will be very vital.