Quick Reference — To add a new department
You can assign the new department to an existing chart group. The assignment must be done when the department is created: after a department is assigned to a chart group, the chart group assignment cannot be changed. If you need to create a new chart group, you must create the chart group before creating the department.
Before you add a new department, please ask yourself:
- Are you adding a new provider?
- Will any additional specialties be supported in the new department?
For example, will your organization be supporting OBGYN services or surgical services in the new department, but currently does not see OBGYN or surgery patients in other departments?
If the answer is yes to either of these questions, adding the department will affect your athenaOne fees. Therefore, you must contact your Customer Success Manager or Customer Advocate.
Note: If the new department is simply an additional location where your current providers will see patients, a CSC agent can assist you with adding the new department (this change is not fee-affecting).
- Display the Departments page: On the Main
Menu, click Settings
> Billing. In the left menu, under Practice Links — Departments, click Departments. - Cost center type — (For Hospitals only) Select the cost center type for this department.
(athenaOne for Hospitals & Health Systems only) - Name — Enter the name for the new department.
- Office Address
and related fields — Enter the complete address information for the department as it should appear on CMS-1500 Box 32.
Note: To comply with CMS requirements, the ZIP code field requires 9 digits. You can use the adjacent Check address link to obtain the Zip+4 ZIP code. - Latitude — Enter the latitude of your location.
Note: If a value is entered in the Name field in the Patient Communication section of this page and you enter a latitude, maps appear on the athenaCommunicator Patient Portal. - Longitude — Enter the longitude of your location.
Note: If a value is entered in the Name field in the Patient Communication section of this page and you enter a longitude, maps appear on the athenaCommunicator Patient Portal. - Phone — Enter the phone number of the department. This number appears on electronic prescription messages, paper requisitions for lab orders, and on the Office Locations page.
- Fax — Enter the fax number. If this department is a patient's primary
department, this number is used on outgoing referrals as the referred-from provider's fax number. If no fax number is specified, the outgoing referral uses
the medical group's fax number.
Note: For information about setting up your fax machines, see athenaFax numbers for new athenaClinicals departments. - Service department — Select Y or N. Service departments are sites where services are rendered. If a claim is generated for a site that is not a valid service department, the claim will be put into HOLD for review.
- Patient department — Select Y or N. Patient departments are valid departments for patient registration. Generally, there should be one patient department per front desk.
- Scheduling department — Select Y or N to indicate whether a department is a scheduling department. We mark all existing departments as scheduling departments. When you create a new department, the field defaults to Y; select N to indicate that the new department is not a scheduling department.
- Chart home — Select Y or N. If the "Chart Management" setting is on, chart homes are departments where medical records/patient charts are kept.
- Delivery site — Select Y or N. If your practice uses the athenaOne OB feature, delivery sites are the only departments that can be selected as the initial, final, or actual delivery site for an OB episode. If your practice does not have the athenaOne OB features turned on, you can ignore this setting.
- Rounding list department — Select Y or N. If this field is set to Y, the department is available for selection from the Department menu on the Admit Patient page. If this field is set to N, the department does not appear in the menu. Typically, hospital locations should be set to Yes and Office locations should be set to No.
- Place of service type — Select the place of service type. This item is printed in CMS-1500 Box 24B. Some insurances (for example, BCBS MA) require a translation to their proprietary place-of-service codes; these translations are handled automatically by athenaOne (using format claim rules).
- Allowed levels of care — (For Hospitals only) Select the levels of care provided by this department. (athenaOne for Hospitals & Health Systems only)
- Performs Point of Care testing — If you select this option, athenaOne automatically creates a clinical provider for point-of-care tests and ties it to the department. This field does not appear if the Clinical provider ID field appears. (These fields are mutually exclusive.)
When a user selects a point-of-care test, the order and result documents automatically include the department's name as the performing facility, as well as the department's address, phone number, and fax number. If the department information is changed, athenaOne also updates the information for this clinical provider record.
Note: By enabling this option, you ensure that all point-of-care tests include a valid, easily identifiable clinical provider and that you comply with CLIA standards for point-of-care testing. - Type of bill — This field appears only if your practice has UB-04 billing enabled. Select the type of facility and type of care provided
by the department.
Note: If you select rural health clinic (RHC), federally qualified health center (FQHC), or provider-based clinic (PBC) from the Type of bill menu, a message reminds you to contact athenahealth to add a new department to the Department Government Designations page. - Clinical provider ID — If this department belongs to a practice that is designated as a clinical provider in the athenahealth database of clinical providers, select the practice here.
Note: This field does not appear if the Performs Point of Care testing field appears. (These fields are mutually exclusive.) - Scheduling note — You can enter a note about scheduling in this field.
- Block in portal — Select Y to prevent this department from appearing on the Patient Portal.
- Facility type — (Not for Hospitals) Select the facility type. This information is sent on certain electronic formats to identify the type of facility that best describes the department. Unless one of the other values seems more apt, select Service Location.
- Ordering — Specify the order of this department in drop-down menus.
- Department group — Select the department group, if you use department groups.
- Provider group — Select the provider group if Provider-Group-Based Permissions are active; otherwise, leave this field blank.
- Chart group — Select the chart group. Only chart groups that would create acceptable configurations for the selected provider group appear in the menu.
- Billing name — Enter the billing name. When this department is the service department, this item appears on Line 1 of CMS-1500 Box 32 (Facility Name).
Note: If you enter a value in the Name field in the Patient Communication section of this page, that value overrides the Billing name value in patient statements and on the Patient Portal. - Supervising provider at Check-In? — Appears if the Supervising Provider at Check-In? feature is enabled for your practice. If set to Y, a Supervising menu appears on the Check-in page for all appointments in that department and defaults to the rendering provider, if the rendering provider is also the supervising provider.
- Specialty type — Select the specialty type to associate a specialty with the department. This specialty can be reported using the A/R Aging and Activity Report wizards so that you can do reporting roll-ups by specialty.
- On batch header, Highlight missing claim — Select Y or N. If this option is set to N, MISSING claims will not be highlighted on the batch header. This option is useful if the department of service does not enter its own claims. In general, this option should be used only when the practice is not responsible for billing the claims. Otherwise, set it to Y.
- Hold claims — Select Y or N. If this is option set to N, HOLD claims will not be highlighted on the batch header.
- You can edit the Patient Communications settings when you add a department, or you can edit these settings later. For more information, see To update Patient Communication settings on the Departments page.
- Click Save.
The new department appears in the list below.