New capabilities provide patients with 24/7 access to front office AI agents to improve patient engagement, simplify scheduling, and ease administrative burden for practices

athenahealth today announced the next generation of its AI-native patient engagement suite within athenaOne ®, designed to simplify how patients and practices communicate. The expanded suite includes new text and voice capabilities that let patients connect with a virtual assistant at their doctor's office to ask basic questions or schedule appointments—embedded directly in existing athenaOne workflows. These features make it simpler and faster for patients to manage their care while lowering staff workload and improving productivity for practices.

“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,” said Paul Brient, chief product and operations officer at athenahealth. “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 next generation of AI-native athenaOne patient engagement features include:

Patient Conversations, set to deliver both text and voice functionality to give patients a faster, more convenient way to connect with their doctor’s office. The texting feature, currently in alpha and available more broadly during the first half of this year, combines real-time two-way texting and secure web chat to answer common patient questions. When needed, the patient can be handed off directly to staff for additional follow-up, without losing context. The voice feature, available in the second half of this year, is a virtual front desk assistant that delivers multilingual support for inbound calls, handling the same routine requests without wait times. Following the initial text and voice functionality, advanced capabilities such as real-time language translation and intelligent task automation will let staff prioritize the interactions that matter most.

“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,” said Lesley Terry, practice manager at Red River Family Practice in Austin, Texas. “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.”

Waitlist Scheduling, available in the first half of this year, uses AI to automatically identify open time slots due to cancellations and sends patients text messages to fill them, improving access to care and patient satisfaction while optimizing clinician schedules.

Intelligent Patient Assistant, available in the second half of this year in athenahealth’s patient portal and athenaPatient mobile app, provides a conversational agent to help patients reschedule appointments or respond to questions about their payment balance. The goal of the assistant is to help patients better understand their medical records while reducing routine staff inquiries.

Enhanced Patient Self-Scheduling, available in the second half of this year, allows patients to easily schedule appointments in athenahealth’s patient portal or athenaPatient mobile app by describing their needs in plain language and having the system match them to the best appointment type, provider, and time slot based on availability. The feature simplifies scheduling workflows and improves efficiency while giving patients more control over managing their care.

Today’s announcements are part of athenahealth’s continued investment in the development and deployment of AI-native capabilities across its entire suite of clinical, patient engagement, and practice and revenue cycle management solutions within AI-native athenaOne.

About athenahealth
Since 1997, athenahealth has been curing complexity for ambulatory healthcare practices and the patients they serve, empowering them to deliver the best possible care and business outcomes through innovative clinical, financial, and patient engagement solutions. athenahealth connects practices, health systems, payers, partners and patients to create a thriving ecosystem that delivers accessible, high-quality, and sustainable healthcare for all. Learn more at www.athenahealth.com.

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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