Scaled connectivity through Platform Services

Navigating connectivity and data access challenges without replacing your EHR

Most large health systems face a structural paradox. Enterprise EHR platforms — especially those designed for acute care — tend to be powerful, comprehensive, and deeply embedded. But they are also optimized for hospital workflows, not for ambulatory or specialty practices operating with high patient volume, frequent transitions, and different documentation patterns.

This mismatch often becomes a source of friction. To improve visibility and data access, some health systems require their affiliate practices to migrate onto the enterprise EHR. While this approach does create a unified data environment within the health system, it can also introduce new burdens for the practices themselves. Many ambulatory groups find themselves frustrated both with the enterprise EHR and with the mandate that forced the change, especially as the EHR's customizability diminishes due to pre-configuring by the health system on behalf of their practices.

Meanwhile, the alternative — supporting affiliates across dozens of disparate and legacy EHRs — is equally challenging. The average U.S. health system maintains connectivity with 18 different EMR vendors¹, each with different data models, upgrade schedules, and integration quirks. Even with dedicated interface teams, full integration can be difficult to resource, slow to advance, and hard to maintain. And as healthcare executives consistently point out, these integrations rarely deliver the complete clinical picture needed for value-based care, network alignment, or seamless patient management.

athenahealth Platform Services for Health Systems offers a different approach. Instead of requiring consolidation — or demanding rigid adherence to a single technology stack — it gives health systems a way to deepen connectivity and visibility across their affiliate ecosystem, regardless of whether they aim to consolidate EHRs over time or maintain a multi-EHR environment. In this model, health systems can improve interoperability and care coordination without forcing affiliates onto the hospital’s EHR and without undertaking a rip-and-replace of the enterprise system. Those who do wish to standardize affiliates on athenaOne® still have that option, but it becomes a strategic choice rather than a prerequisite for integration.

A single point of connection to a national network

One of the core advantages of athenahealth’s platform is its single-instance architecture. Every athenaOne practice is on the same version, which allows health systems to connect once to any affiliate using athenaOne and instantly gain connectivity to all athenaOne practices in their network. Instead of standing up, maintaining, and troubleshooting interfaces across numerous systems and countless versions, CIOs can link into an environment where consistency and version control are handled upstream.

This architecture supports a network of more than 170,000 clinicians² across more than 9,800 practices.³ For health systems, this means the partner down the street, the specialty practice across town, or the high-volume primary care group a state away can all share data through a single, predictable connection point. It becomes possible to scale collaboration across a diverse affiliate ecosystem without dictating which EHR practices must use and without layering new enterprise-level systems onto the IT portfolio.

A single connection to the athenaOne network can simplify affiliate integration, strengthen care coordination, and drive operational efficiency without changing the enterprise EHR.

Improved transitions of care and clinician experience

Streamlined connectivity is most visible in the day-to-day clinical workflows. When affiliates use athenaOne — or when the health system connects directly to the athenaOne network — critical patient information can move more effectively between acute and ambulatory settings, no matter which EHR they use.

For instance, discharge summaries and hospital encounters can flow directly into the ambulatory workflow, giving clinicians timely insight into what happened during an ED or inpatient stay and enabling more effective follow-up. Orders and results can be exchanged digitally rather than via fax or phone calls, which reduces noise and shortens the time it takes for clinicians to act. Referrals can be tracked from start to finish, closing loops that are often left open in fragmented systems. And because the data is curated and inserted into native workflows, clinicians spend less time searching for the relevant details and more time focusing on patient care.

Health systems using athenahealth Platform Services have seen measurable reductions in manual work, including hundreds of hours reclaimed each month through automated H&P transmissions.⁴ Connected ambulatory practices act on the vast majority (93.4%) of discharge alerts,⁵ creating a clearer bridge between inpatient and outpatient care. The operational benefits often translate into better clinical coordination and less frustration on both sides of the network.

A more complete longitudinal patient record

Connectivity with affiliates is only one part of the picture. athenahealth also integrates with payers, HIEs, vaccine registries, health information networks, e-prescribing networks, and other EHRs through TEFCA. TEFCA provides the foundation for national data exchange, but athenahealth goes a step further by filtering, organizing, and surfacing the most relevant data within the point-of-care workflow.

ChartSync provides clinicians with a consolidated view of external information, reducing the cognitive load associated with sifting through redundant or irrelevant records, and eliminating the need to navigate to separate windows, tabs, or applications to access those records. When patients receive care outside the health system — whether at an urgent care, a primary care or community health clinic, or a specialty practice — providers still see the essential information they need to guide clinical decisions. This helps strengthen value-based care initiatives, improves care continuity, and supports more complete documentation.

Flexibility for every affiliate strategy

Because every health system approaches its affiliate ecosystem differently, Platform Services is designed to adapt to varying strategies. Systems that simply want to enhance interoperability can connect to the athenaOne network without purchasing the athenaOne EHR seeking improved revenue cycle management can take advantage of athenahealth’s athenaIDX And systems pursuing a more streamlined ambulatory tech stack can scale across their affiliates through dedicated support channels.

Any of these approaches can improve data consistency, enhance referral visibility, and create a more predictable flow of clinical information, while existing alongside the current enterprise EHR.

A path to scalable collaboration with Platform Services

Health systems can take a phased approach with athenahealth. The process typically starts with assessing which affiliates are already on athenaOne. From there, a single connection can be established to the athenahealth network, enabling meaningful data exchange with minimal friction. Over time, systems can scale their use of Platform Services as more affiliates join, supported by athenahealth teams focused on onboarding and ongoing success.

Partnering with Platform Services for health systems creates a more connected, coordinated, and clinically aligned network without disrupting the health system’s overarching enterprise EHR strategy. If you’re exploring what a single connection to athenaOne could unlock for your affiliate strategy, take a look at our platform services or call 800-981-5084.