Athenahealth’s AI Approach for Physician Practices

Athenahealth is introducing a new wave of AI-native features for its athenaOne platform, part of a broader strategy to transform the user experience for ambulatory providers. The upgrades target key areas such as interoperability, patient engagement, clinical documentation, and revenue cycle management.

The company, which provides EHR, revenue cycle, and patient engagement solutions for small and independent practices, is building a suite of AI capabilities designed to reduce administrative work and improve clinical efficiency. These include AI-driven document services, intelligent clinical summaries, enhanced interoperability tools, and planned features for workflows, billing, and patient engagement. Athenahealth’s cloud-native, open platform allows it to deploy updates instantly across more than 160,000 providers.

To advance innovation, Athenahealth is piloting a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, enabling communication between AI models and athenaOne and allowing partners to build custom AI agents that draw from diverse data sources. The company has also been expanding its interoperability footprint, becoming the first to implement TEFCA at scale with more than 100,000 providers connected.

AI is already helping automate faxes, classify documents, and extract structured data for use in quality programs. Additional initiatives include AI-based ChartSync for reconciling external data, a generative AI assistant that can search clinical records and generate summaries, and partnerships with ambient documentation vendors such as Abridge, Suki AI, and iScribe AI. Athenahealth is positioning these tools within a larger “intelligence layer” that integrates automation, analytics, decision support, and ambient solutions.

CEO Bob Segert described the shift as a “golden age of innovation,” stressing the importance of using AI to support independent practices facing staffing shortages, reimbursement challenges, and rising patient demand. The company is also expanding its footprint with specialty EHR solutions, including upcoming offerings for ambulatory surgery centers.