athenaOne Spring 2025 Release
It’s that time of year—temperatures are starting to rise, flowers are in bloom, and the bees, as well as athenahealth, are buzzing! athena's product team has been busy with new features set to launch March 19–21, 2025. No matter your role at your practice, this release is sure to impress.
Clinical:
The clinical features planned for the Spring 2025 release focus on efficiency, decluttering, and improving data reliability. Here are a few of the Clinical features that Ignite is most excited to see roll out.
athenaOne Mobile Ambient Notes:
The long-awaited step toward AI that will revolutionize clinical documentation is finally here! This technology employs ambient listening and generative AI to capture and transcribe patient-provider conversations, generating structured clinical notes in real time. This eliminates the need for manual notetaking, allowing clinicians to dedicate their full attention to patient care.
Before you can use this functionality, you must purchase the Ambient Notes feature and sign an additional add-on contract with athenahealth. Contact your CSM or Account Executive to learn more about contract options, pricing, and purchasing the Ambient Notes feature. It's also important to note that the current version of Ambient Notes works only with iPhone 6S and above, iPad Air 2 and above, and iPad Pro 3rd Gen and above.
Expanding Quick Actions in Clinical Inbox with Close & Delete:
We are excited to see continued expansion of athena’s focus on putting more actions at providers’ fingertips directly in the clinical inbox. The ability to close and delete documents from the clinical inbox —without having to navigate to the document view or patient chart chart—will reduce clicks and empower clinicians to work through their clinical inbox backlog more efficiently.
Document Specimen Collection For Multiple Lab Orders At Once:
This is a long-awaited request of many practices. The ability to document specimen collection details for multiple lab orders at once will drastically streamline lab draw documentation and reduce errors in capturing draw details. This feature is available both from an order entry and document view perspective.
Disable Notifications for Unread Lab/Imaging Results:
athena is now putting the controls in the hands of practices to decide whether or not they are notified when patients fail to view lab and imaging results. By default, when a provider publishes a lab or imaging result to the Patient Portal and the patient does not retrieve the result, a predefined alarm triggers and places the result in FOLLOWUP status in the Clinical Inbox. At that point, the result document returns to the provider or staff bucket in the Clinical Inbox.
Many practices were not acting on these follow-up notifications, which placed an additional administrative burden on practice users. You can create a case with the CSC to have this feature enabled at a practice level. Enabling it at the practice level will automatically set this as a user preference at the provider level.
Enhanced Diagnosis:
This feature enables searching for diagnoses using familiar medical terminology rather than SNOMED terminology. This shift will be seen and felt in multiple areas of the chart, including the Orders and Results section in Intake, the Assessment & Plan, Diagnoses & Orders Cart, and Encounter Summaries. ICD-10 codes will be automatically added, eliminating the need for manual entry.
Additionally, the Surgical History section of the chart has been renamed to Surgical & Procedure History. All procedures must be added to the Surgical & Procedure History section rather than the Problems section, as was previously the case for some entries. This will be a major workflow change for providers and clinical staff. Ignite highly encourages practices to set expectations with providers, as their first few exams may take extra time while they adjust to the new navigation and functionality.
Billing & Administrative:
athena has some major improvements in the Spring Release that give organizations much more control over Revenue Cycle, Practice Management and Patient Engagement. They are enhancing many existing features to allow practices to send and view data in ways that align with their unique needs.
Manage Training Assignments in the Success Community:
Ignite is extremely excited to see this feature roll out. Practices will finally have the ability to customize their users' training experience so that it is directly applicable to each position's responsibilities. athena has more to add in their own Blog Post.
Patient Banner Updates:
Enhancements to the Patient Banner were first introduced in the Fall Release, and many more customizations are planned for this spring. Practices will now be able to build banner cards and apply them to user groups and/or specific users, allowing each team member to see only the information relevant to their role —rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
New Transaction History Page:
Practices will now be able to see how payments are posted across all charges without having to dig into EOB details. The details by procedure code and timeline view provide enhanced visibility into athena’s posting logic.
Employer Portal:
If your organization uses athena's Corporate Billing workflows to invoice employers or other third-party organizations, the Employer Portal will be a welcomed addition to your payment workflows. With this feature, employers will now have access to a central hub where they can view corporate invoices and pay multiple invoices at once using a credit card.
Nonpatient Payment Activity Page Enhancements:
The Nonpatient Payment Activity page is getting a facelift. If your organization receives many Credit Card Plus payments, ensure your team is prepared for this more modern look and efficient workflow, which includes a progress indicator to track where you are in the payment collection workflow.
Patient Forms & Screeners On Demand:
athena is releasing two extensions to existing digital forms features that will enhance how patients receive and complete documents. The Forms & Screeners On Demand provides a much more efficient approach to obtaining consent forms and retaining them in the patient chart. With this feature, providers and clinical staff can send a digital form to a patient at the point of care. The patient receives a text message with a secure link to access and complete the form. However, this on-demand functionality is not yet available for check-in.
Looking for more tips on how to prepare your organization for athena releases? Check out Ignite’s athenaOne Readiness Blog.
