Athenahealth expands AI-driven patient engagement capabilities

Athenahealth announced a new set of capabilities within athenaOne, an integrated, cloud-based health IT suite that combines EHR, billing, practice management and patient engagement tools. The four new features, all of which will be available by the end of the year, utilize an AI agent that can facilitate patient conversations, schedule appointments and manage waitlists.  

The company had previously launched AI-powered capabilities in other areas of athenaOne, including revenue cycle management and practice management. The capabilities announced today are specifically focused on expanding its patient engagement suite via new text and voice tools. 

"Patient–provider communication still operates much like it did decades ago, and that model can't scale in today's environment as practices get busier," Paul Brient, chief product and operations officer at athenahealth, said in a press release.  

"Our AI assistants can handle these routine interactions reliably, reducing unnecessary work and making the system more dependable for both patients and care teams."   

The following tools will be available in 2026:  

Waitlist Scheduling 

Waitlist Scheduling uses AI to quickly identify open time slots in a clinician's schedule due to cancellations and sends patients text messages to fill those slots. The goal is to improve patient satisfaction and access to care while optimizing efficiency for clinicians. This capability will be available in the first half of 2026. 

Patient Conversations

Currently in alpha testing, the texting component of Patient Conversations aims to give patients a way to interact with their doctor's office via secure web chat and two-way texting. The system can answer questions about office hours, insurance and other administrative inquiries, and patients can be redirected to staff for follow-up. The texting feature will be available more broadly during the first half of the year, athenahealth said. 

The voice capabilities, available in the second half of the year, serve as a virtual front desk assistant. This assistant will provide multilingual support for inbound calls and juggle routine requests to avoid lengthy wait times.  

Once the text and voice functionalities are ironed out, athenahealth will add capabilities such as intelligent task automation and real-time language translation. 

"These new text and voice conversation capabilities will transform how we connect with patients by providing instant responses that speed issue resolution and save valuable time. For quick exchanges, texting makes communication significantly more efficient and greatly improves the patient experience," Lesley Terry, practice manager at Red River Family Practice in Austin, Texas, who has been beta-testing these new capabilities, said in the press release.  

"For our practice, these tools will reduce phone call volume and backlog by allowing us to handle conversations promptly without putting patients on hold. Overall, this is transformative for both patient convenience and practice workflow." 

Intelligent Patient Assistant 

The Intelligent Patient Assistant helps patients reschedule appointments and responds to questions about payment balances. The assistant's goal is to help patients understand their medical records while reducing routine questions that can overburden staff. The capability will be available in the second half of 2026 in athenahealth's patient portal and athenaPatient mobile app. 

Enhanced Patient Self-Scheduling 

Also available in the second half of the year is a capability that allows patients to schedule appointments in their patient portal or athenaPatient mobile app by describing their needs in plain language. The system will take that information and match the patient to the best-fitting appointment type, provider and time slot. 

These new features are all part of athenahealth's ongoing commitment to deploy AI-native capabilities across its entire athenaOne suite, the press release highlighted. 

Jill Hughes has covered healthcare cybersecurity and privacy news since 2021.