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Electronic health record companies continue to roll out artificial intelligence tools and capabilities, with new features designed to expand patient access, reduce friction in claims processing, address staffing challenges and more. Here's a quick look at what Epic, athenahealth and WellSky have been up to this month.
Louisiana launches fully unified Epic patient portal
Patients in Louisiana – 2.5 million – can now sign up for MyChart Central, which consolidates access to all their provider organizations in the state using Epic for their electronic health records into a single patient portal account.
With a single Epic ID, they can access all their health data in MyChart. The new integration also supports passkeys and face and fingerprint biometrics for secure sign-in without a password, the company said in its announcement on Thursday.
Syncing all organizations on Epic where they receive care in the state also means patients can make profile updates, such as a new address or phone number changes, just once to update all of their providers using the EHR.
Having a single Epic ID also streamlines secure medical information sharing with consumer health apps, the company added.
"Too often, the burden is placed on the patient, and I’m thankful that many of our health systems teamed up, worked together and made an aspect of healthcare easier on our patients," Bruce Greenstein, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health, said in a statement.
Baton Rouge General, Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System, Lake Charles Memorial Health System, LCMC Health, North Oaks Health System, Ochsner Health, St. Tammany Parish Hospital, Terrebonne General Health System, Woman’s Hospital and others collaborated on the integration, Epic said.
"Louisiana is leading the way and helping to shape how MyChart Central helps people everywhere," Trevor Berceau, director of R&D at Epic, said in the statement, which noted a previous citywide rollout across providers using Epic in Madison, Wisconsin.
New patient portal features continue to be added as part of the company's broader effort to enhance patient and developer collaboration, Epic said.
For example, real-time "blue dot wayfinding" to help patients navigate to providers is expected to be released in November, said Seth Hain, senior vice president of research and development at Epic, during his keynote last month at the Open@Epic interoperability conference.
Athenahealth adds RCM AI, tests waitlist auto-scheduling
New AI embedded in revenue cycle management tools automates and improves the speed and quality of prior authorizations and claims processing, athenahealth said in an announcement on Thursday.
Included with network subscriptions, the model continuously learns by analyzing claims, payer policies (by searching payer websites for changes) and denials, according to athenahealth.
While the new AI-powered RCM tools in athenaOne are designed to help healthcare practices get paid faster and with less effort, reducing insurance-related denials and claim holds and increasing financial transparency could also boost patient experience, the company said.
Embedded AI can estimate a patient's financial responsibility based on payer contracts and likely services, so there are fewer "surprise downstream denials," less billing confusion and post-service disputes, and, potentially, timelier patient payments.
"Our AI-native, cloud-based co-sourcing model will yield revenue cycle results that were unimaginable only a year ago – clean claim rates at nearly 99%, time to bill in low single-digit days, and assurance that our practices receive every dollar that they should," said Paul Brient, chief product and operations officer for athenahealth, in the statement.
By providing the tools without an additional charge, the EHR vendor maximizes the revenue it shares with customers.
"Today's market is flooded with many AI solutions we could have picked from," Chris Voigt, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Privia, told Healthcare IT News by email. "However, we have enjoyed the capability that Athena has to empower AI with every scrap of our data embedded in the workflows we use every day. We are already seeing advancements in our clinical encounters and back-office functions."
The company also announced an effort to increase access to care and reduce wait times for appointments. A new AI-powered waitlist scheduling tool designed to automatically identify and fill open appointment slots due to cancellations by texting patients on a practice waitlist will soon be tested by select users, athenahealth said.
New AI scribe for WellSky home health EHR
To address home health clinician administrative burdens that often lead to after-hours documentation, especially after an initial patient visit, WellSky has introduced an AI-powered ambient listening and transcription feature for its Home Health EHR platform.
The tool captures provider-patient conversations during home health visits and enters information within existing workflows.
Clinicians review auto-populated data to verify accuracy before submitting the documentation. The company said in its announcement on Thursday that the scribe delivers a dramatic drop in the time home health caregivers spend on their case load documentation.
When they activate the AI scribe during a patient visit, they can also focus entirely on the patient and assess without typing and looking at a screen, the company noted.
Easing documentation burden could also help solve the home healthcare industry staffing crisis, according to Wes Little, WellSky's executive vice president.
"WellSky Scribe is a great example of how we are responsibly introducing AI solutions that help solve real problems and create immediate value for our clients," Little said.
Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.
