athenaOne®: Serving community health centers and FQHCs

athenaOne for Community Health Centers — helping CHCs and FQHCs provide essential care to diverse populations

At the heart of every community health center and federally qualified health center (FQHC) is a mission to treat the whole person, focusing on their outcomes — not just a single symptom or diagnosis. These organizations deliver integrated, wraparound care that includes physical, behavioral, dental, and social health to underserved populations, often across a wide service area. From managing chronic conditions to addressing food insecurity or housing instability, CHCs are built to serve patients in the full context of their lives.

To fulfill this mission, CHCs and FQHCs need tools that support their comprehensive, community-centered care model. athenaOne for Community Health Centers brings together the technology needed to enable this care, offering integrated specialty workflows, plus group therapy support, value-based care (VBC) tracking, telehealth, and efficient compliance reporting. It also surfaces insights on chronic conditions and social determinants of health, empowering care teams to take action in real time.

Rooted in experience, athenahealth has supported CHCs and FQHCs for more than a decade. Our FQHC customers represent 20% of federally qualified health centers nationwide, and in 2024 alone, FQHCs using athenaOne served approximately 4.5 million patients,¹ demonstrating the scale and depth of our partnership. athenaOne for Community Health Centers is the next evolution of our ongoing commitment to support these anchors of equity in the healthcare ecosystem.

Below are six ways our solution helps community health centers and FQHCs strengthen financial performance, deepen care coordination, and better fulfill their mission.

1. A highly connected system with interoperability at its core

athenaOne for Community Health Centers embeds data sharing at the core of the platform, providing immediate access to one of the largest clinical networks in the country. With out-of-the-box connections to national data exchange frameworks including Carequality, CommonWell, and TEFCA networks, patient information flows effortlessly between care sites without additional configuration or manual processes. This superior interoperability makes delivering care more cohesive, coordinated, and connected across the community.

But receiving patient data is just as critical. With ChartSync, external clinical information is directly integrated into the patient chart in a structured, actionable format. Medications, problem lists, and other patient information from external care sites are intelligently matched against other incoming information and the existing patient record. Clinicians can reconcile new data with a single click or through automation, reducing the risk of incomplete or conflicting documentation while saving valuable time.

Organizations gain even greater interoperability control with athenaConnect™, created by provider request to enhance visibility into the data flowing across the network. Health centers can easily manage their external connections with labs, imaging centers, hospitals, and other clinics, monitor data exchange activity, and identify any issues that might disrupt the continuity of care. This level of transparency is especially important for FQHCs and CHCs, where care coordination often extends across multiple community providers and systems.

Together, these data exchange capabilities help FQHCs and CHCs deliver more informed and cohesive care. Interoperability is more than a technical feature — it’s a critical advantage that helps health centers close care gaps, ensure continuity, and fulfill their mission to diverse communities.

athenaOne for Community Health Centers is the next step in a partnership more than a decade in the making.

2. Value-based care expertise and support

VBC is an important way for community health centers to deliver effective, coordinated care to patients while maximizing revenue and minimizing financial risk. Tight margins and limited resources have made VBC programs, like those offered through the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), welcome streams of revenue. As other healthcare payers follow the lead of CMS and shift to more VBC programs that factor health outcomes into reimbursement rates, FQHCs must adopt and embrace this outcomes-based care model.

athenaOne for Community Health Centers provides comprehensive features to succeed in VBC programs. Core capabilities across our electronic health record and practice management tools, like Hierarchical Condition Category (HCC) reporting and Risk Adjustment Factor (RAF), support work with our patient risk dashboard and embedded gap report to deliver needed information quickly and efficiently. Users can also monitor specific quality measures and manage and submit MIPS reporting directly from the system. Revenue managers and administrators know how crucial this reporting is to VBC success — health organizations that accurately report HCCs and manage RAF scores effectively can improve both care outcomes and financial performance.

CHCs who want even more visibility into their data — useful for customized reporting and real-time insights into clinical, financial, and operational performance — can work with our advisory services team to enable Data View. This added layer of tailored reports is helping FQHCs like Mountain Laurel Medical Center achieve “significant improvements in financial performance and patient satisfaction” as well as greater success in their value-based contracts.

Connection to the athenahealth® network also provides access to ACOs that have experience helping FQHCs improve their performance in CMS programs such as ACO REACH² and the Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP),³ or to explore shared risk opportunities.

3. AI-powered tools to reduce manual work

Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing healthcare. Clinicians and practice managers are adopting useful applications of this technology to automate administrative tasks and alleviate provider burnout. For CHCs and FQHCs, these AI-powered solutions are even more critical given high demand and complex patient care needs that often lead to increased documentation requirements, strained resources, and higher rates of burnout.

Our ambient listening and clinical documentation tool, Ambient Notes, quickly creates detailed and summarized draft encounter notes based on the conversation the physician had with the patient. This AI-powered medical documentation tool not only saves time, it also improves patient experiences and care by enabling clinicians to be more present and more efficient with follow-up tasks. Ambient Notes uses natural language processing and generative AI to create comprehensive clinical documentation that meets requirements for MSSP and other quality programs, close care gaps, and ensure proper documentation for Prospective Payment Systems (PPS) billing and all claims.

Ambient Notes is just one way that athenaOne for Community Health Centers uses AI. Most of the artificial intelligence functionality works quietly in the background, leveraging machine learning and predictive analytics to surface insights, parse and verify scanned documents, and make information flow more efficiently. We continually work with clinicians to understand what new applications of AI are needed and build them into our development roadmap.

4. Patient engagement tools and support

Community health centers and FQHCs exist to address health disparities. Making healthcare accessible is key to their purpose. But with high-risk patients and growing care demands, providing consistent, proactive care can be a challenge. athenaOne’s patient engagement tools are designed to help your team manage these challenges and deliver care that truly connects.

Our tools help keep patients engaged, reduce no-shows, and foster a stronger relationship between patients and their care teams. By receiving automated appointment reminders, prescription refills, and check-in notifications via text and email, patients are more likely to follow through with appointments, stay on track with their care plans, and ultimately achieve better health outcomes. This is especially critical for FQHCs, where patients often have multiple chronic conditions and complex care needs that demand consistent attention.

It all starts with our patient portal, which enables patients to securely communicate with providers, access lab results, and find educational resources to manage their health. Giving patients the tools to manage their care empowers them to become active participants in their treatment, leading to better adherence and improved outcomes.

Tapestry 360 Health, a FQHC in Chicago, implemented a patient portal with these goals in mind. Thanks to a successful patient portal adoption campaign, 80% of the practice’s 28,000 patients are now active on the patient portal, transforming how the health center stays connected with its community.* See their results.

For patients with chronic conditions, mobility concerns, or a simple lack of transportation options, HIPAA-compliant athenaTelehealth extends care capabilities into their homes. With built-in integration for chronic care management and across the patient panel, telehealth becomes a connected part of the patient experience. Virtual visits provide more touchpoints for patients and help meet the growing demand for care, without compromising quality.

Through the convenient, highly rated athenaPatient® mobile app⁴, the patient portal is as close as the patient’s mobile device. From appointment management and virtual visits to real-time access to their health record, the app gives health centers using athenaOne for Community Health Centers an accessible way to keep patients engaged and connected.

5. Support for complex revenue cycle management

Medical billing is complex; it’s especially difficult for CHCs and FQHCs. On top of the typical revenue cycle challenges, there are special coding rules to incorporate, value-based programs to consider, and more.

To help, athenaOne for Community Health Centers is built with features FQHCs need to operate efficiently, including:

• Integrated sliding fee schedules
• Post-insurance discounts
• Automated good faith estimates, compliant with the No Surprises Act
• Prospective Payment Systems (PPS) billing
• Geographic- and state-specific Medicaid adjustments
• Alternate payment models such as pay-for-performance (P4P), bundled payments, shared savings, and capitated payments

Our proprietary billing rules engine also automates critical billing steps to accelerate reimbursement. The system quickly flags potential claim issues and uses state- and payer-specific logic to ensure proper formatting for payers, including Medicaid and Medicare, even when your service area crosses state lines.

Through risk assessment and UDS reporting capabilities, we help health centers manage risk, track performance, and leverage actionable data to support quality improvement. These capabilities support more accurate and efficient billing, even in the highly complex and regulated environment FQHCs operate in.

6. Multi-layer customer success model designed for CHCs and FQHCs

athenahealth’s longstanding commitment to CHCs and FQHCs is reflected in our Customer Success model, designed to meet the operational, financial, and regulatory needs of community-based care.

Each organization is paired with a dedicated Customer Success team whose members average nine years of experience supporting community health centers. In addition to responsive day-to-day support, customers receive unlimited personalized coaching sessions for clinical providers and administrative staff. Our specialists are present from day one, guiding the onboarding process and helping configure athenaOne for Community Health Centers using best practices informed by experienced community clinicians across our network. Those experts continue support after go-live to help tune workflows for optimized operational and clinical outcomes.

To further support long-term success, our multi-layered approach gives customers access to a robust library of resources, including online training sessions focused on CHC workflows, specialty-specific materials, and our collaborative Success Community. These tools are continually refined based on input and real-world data from more than 13,400 FQHC clinicians.⁵

Our continued partnership with community health centers

athenaOne for Community Health Centers is the next step in a partnership more than a decade in the making. Developed with and for CHCs and FQHCs, it reflects our deep commitment to these organizations and to the patients and communities they serve every day.

See how our all-in-one software and services solution for community health centers and FQHCs streamlines operations, reduces burnout, and helps you stay focused on your mission – delivering high-quality, accessible, whole-person care to those who need it most.