athenahealth Announces EHR Platform Enhancements to Enable Immediate Administration of New COVID-19 Vaccines

Rollout includes communications, scheduling, workflow, documentation, and reporting capabilities, as athenahealth CEO Bob Segert celebrates “shining example of how technology enables access to care”

WATERTOWN, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–athenahealth, a leading provider of network-enabled software and services for medical groups and health systems nationwide, today announced that it has rolled out enhancements to its athenaOne electronic health record (EHR) to facilitate immediate administration of the COVID-19 vaccines as they become available to healthcare organizations across the country this month. In a historic first step in the fight against the global pandemic, athenahealth has partnered with Dell Medical School at the University of Texas- Austin, which has already successfully administered approximately 300 vaccinations per day since receiving the vaccine, to protect its frontline workers and community.

“We very much appreciate athenahealth’s ability to move swiftly to enable our employees to be some of the first U.S. frontline workers to receive the Pfizer vaccine. We are thrilled that they were able to operationalize so quickly in order to help us safeguard our staff, who are our top priority as they continue to be heroes helping to manage this pandemic,” said Aaron Miri, CIO of Dell Medical School and UT Health Austin. “This latest effort was in line with what we’ve seen from athenahealth throughout the pandemic in terms of agility across different COVID-19 technology rollouts and initiatives.”

With the FDA approving emergency use authorization for the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine – and additional emergency use authorizations (EUAs) imminent – athenahealth customers will be able to provide vaccines to staff and patients as soon as they receive them. athenahealth has updated its global compendia to enable practices to order the vaccine now and is planning workflow recommendations, updates and best practice guides to support administration of those vaccines. Unlike locally installed software, athenahealth is able to scale and deploy these updates automatically due to its modern, adaptable technology, enabling customers to have the latest capabilities without having to make burdensome upgrades.

In addition to Dell Medical, athenahealth is working jointly with customers who are already participating in early vaccine administration to be sure their needs are understood – and are supporting them as those needs evolve. While monitoring guidance and protocols from the federal government as well as state immunization registries, athenahealth continues to evaluate potential solutions to help with various aspects of administering the vaccine, including:

• Identifying patients and registering non-patients, such as healthcare workers serving their communities, who should be prioritized for vaccination;
• Managing the communication and scheduling of patients for two vaccine doses;
• Properly documenting vaccinations, according to state and federal guidelines; and
• Reporting to meet clinical measures, immunization registry, and billing needs.

“athenahealth’s partnership model and product architecture are uniquely positioned to support medical providers in the monumental task of managing patient populations through this unprecedented vaccination effort,” said Bob Segert, chairman and chief executive officer, athenahealth. “Our cloud-based, single-instance EHR platform enables us to push updates out as soon as they are ready. We are also closely monitoring the changing policies of hundreds of payers to ensure our customers are being reimbursed appropriately so that they can keep their focus on their patients.”

Since late January, athenahealth has made approximately 150 new product updates available to match pace with emerging needs stemming from the pandemic – from updated screening questions and order-sets, to high-risk patient and lab test dashboards, to a fully EHR-integrated telehealth solution.

About athenahealth, Inc.

athenahealth partners with medical organizations across the country to drive clinical and financial results. Our vision is to create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all, and we are pursuing this through our medical record, revenue cycle, patient engagement, and care coordination service offerings. Our expert teams build modern technology on an open, connected ecosystem, yielding insights that make a difference for our customers and their patients. For more information, please visit www.athenahealth.com.

Contacts

Jean Borgman

media@athenahealth.com
617-402-1031