How a one-provider practice thrives with athenahealth™

Dr. Kathleen Wilson, DNP, loves taking care of her patients. If she can help someone suffer less or achieve greater health by offering a more personalized primary care solution, that’s why she feels she’s here.

Dr. Wilson owns a practice where she operates as the manager, provider, and staff. She values the ownership this gives her over patient relationships: for example, she can ensure appointment times are long enough to address complex medical conditions, and any time a patient talks to someone at her practice, it will be her. However, that degree of responsibility comes with a world of patient care, engagement, and revenue cycle management activities that also fall on Dr. Wilson’s shoulders.

That’s why, when she was reviewing companies to support her new practice, everything “failed in comparison” to athenahealth’s athenaOne solution. According to Dr. Wilson, “efficiency when you’re on your own is super important, and athenahealth is always there.”

Why athenahealth

Among a bevy of features and workflows that support Dr. Wilson’s one-woman practice, there are a few standout benefits of athenaOne that she feels keeps her practice running smoothly:

Support

To Dr. Wilson, athenaOne is already an intuitive program and that drew her to our software, but for those processes are necessarily complex, she takes comfort in knowing she’s never alone. Between Dr. Wilson’s dedicated Customer Success Manager focused on optimizing performance, self-serve training resources, a support center for workflow questions, access to peer and advisory groups of athenaOne practices, and self-serve resources available to her, Dr. Wilson feels like she always has what she needs to figure things out.

Flexibility

With athenaOne’s cloud-based software, Dr. Wilson appreciates that she can stay flexible, receive clinical and revenue cycle information electronically, and send her prescriptions with ease. In fact, when we had the opportunity to sit down for a conversation with her in 2024 at athenahealth’s annual conference, Thrive, she mentioned that she used her mobile app to send prescriptions earlier in the day while attending a session.

Patient digital engagement

The number one challenge Dr. Wilson faces is managing a high volume of patients as the sole provider and practice owner. With athenaOne’s suite of patient digital engagement features – such as the Patient Portal, athenaPatient® app, and Enhanced Self Check-in workflows – she and her patients can get administrative work done quickly outside of the visit and optimize the time she has in front of her patients.

Dr. Wilson has been working with her patients to develop a muscle around checking themselves in, paying through the portal, uploading documents, and sending messages via the portal. She also holds herself accountable to try and send anything they need from the visit while they’re still in front of her. This allows patients to leave the visit and immediately go out into their community to pick up a prescription or follow up on a referral, providing a seamless end-to-end experience, and saving Dr. Wilson time.

Enhanced Revenue Cycle Services

After Dr. Wilson hit the ground running with athenaOne and found success, she decided to optimize her partnership, take more work off her plate, and centralize more of her practice’s administrative workflows with dedicated athenahealth teams. These add-on services leave the practice of medicine and providing patient care to Dr. Wilson, while billing, coding, or prior authorization specialists handle the repetitive business-related tasks on her behalf.

• athenaOne® Medical Coding
  
  Dr. Wilson initially outsourced her medical coding services out to a third-party business, but it didn’t work well for her practice. Once she felt confident with athenahealth’s broader partnership, she decided to transition over to athenaOne Medical Coding. Of the difference between the prior service and athenaOne Medical Coding, she said, “[athenaOne] Medical Coding is a real blessing because if you don’t do it correctly, your claim will get rejected, and your revenue will go down, and you’ll be spending a whole lot more time doing all that than taking care of patients.” Now, with athenaOne handling her coding, she can dedicate the time she previously spent working claim processes focused on her patients.
  
  The simplicity of the service, and the coordination with athenahealth’s team, takes “a big load off [her] mind” and allows her to focus more on clinical work.
   

• athenaOne® Authorization Management
   

  Before she had athenaOne Authorization Management, Dr. Wilson handled prior authorizations manually. She explained this process was time-consuming and difficult, sharing, "It takes a while to even know where to send it, nevermind compiling the report to explain your medical decision making as to why that test or referral is needed.”
  
  Now, with athenaOne Authorization Management, Dr. Wilson can often get prior authorization obtained before the patient has even left the room during an appointment. What was once a time-intensive, laborious process, squeezed in-between all of her other duties and taking away from time spent directly with patients, is now off her plate, giving her more time to spend focused on patient care.

Growing together

Recently, Dr. Wilson met with a coaching expert through athenahealth’s free, personalized Clinical Coaching offering. She recognized that athenaOne offers  a world of functionality she might not be using or fully understanding, and that valuable benefits can be unlocked by tapping into more of its features.

Between coaching, enhanced services to support her revenue cycle management, attending athenahealth’s annual customer conference, Thrive, and staying in the loop of innovation, Dr. Wilson is invested in growing her practice with athenahealth.

The reason why is simple: “I don’t think that I would be as successful as I am in taking care of so many patients now, if I didn’t have athena.” She says the proof is in the success she’s seen in growing her practice, and “the fact that my practice continues to grow is a testimony that I’m doing the right thing myself and also working with the right group, and that’s athena.”

Dr. Wilson has seen firsthand the power of athenaOne, and she intends to continue building that partnership for the rest of her career.

“I’ve been doing this with athena in my own practice for seven years, and I decided I’m going to keep doing this with athena in my own practice until I retire.”

See for yourself how athenaOne can give you more time with patients and less time on your computer. Set up a call today.