Suggest a Clinical Provider

athenaClinicals

This page allows you to suggest a clinical provider to add to the athenahealth global database of clinical providers. On this page, you can also map the providers in your practice to their corresponding records in the global clinical provider database.

Step-by-step instructions

To suggest a clinical provider

Note: athenahealth strives to verify updates or additions to the clinical provider table within 2 business days.

Display the Suggest a Clinical Provider page: On the Main Menu, click Settings > Clinicals. In the left menu, under Practice Links — Order Configuration, click Suggest a Clinical Provider.

Search for the clinical provider you intend to suggest

In the fields at the top of the page, enter any information that you have to locate the clinical provider.
Click Find.
Possible matches appear listed in alphabetical order according to the Name column.
Tip: The Reset link clears all the search criteria from the fields.
Review the possible matches.
Tip: Check several places in the list, based on how the original display name was formatted. Some common examples include: LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME or FIRSTNAME LASTNAME or DR. FIRSTNAME LASTNAME.

Suggest an update to a matching clinical provider

If the clinical provider is listed, click suggest update next to the clinical provider that most closely resembles the one that you intended to suggest.
The Suggest Change to Clinical Provider fields appear.
In the fields provided, enter your suggested updates for this provider.
Review the list of clinical providers, and select any possible duplicates.
Click Submit.
athenahealth staff will verify the information and, once verified, update the global database of clinical providers.
If any duplicate clinical providers were verified, athenahealth staff will merge the duplicates into the updated clinical provider record. This merge process preserves the transaction history for the duplicate records, but ensures that only one active instance of that clinical provider is available for selection during order entry.

Suggest a new clinical provider

If the clinical provider you searched for does not appear in the search results, scroll to the bottom of the search results and click Suggest New Clinical Provider.
The Suggest New Clinical Provider fields appear.
Link to Provider in my practice — If this clinical provider is a provider in your practice, click the Yes option.
Link to Provider — Select the provider in your practice that is the same person as this clinical provider. (This field appears only if you selected the Yes option for the Link to Provider in my practice field.)
Entity Type — Select Person or Non-person entity.
Display Name — Enter the provider's full name as it should appear on patient statements and other correspondence. If this provider is a non-person entity (for example, a pharmacy, laboratory, other facility), enter the name of the entity.
Last Name — Enter the provider's last name. Leave this field blank for a non-person entity.
First Name– Enter the provider's first name. Leave this field blank for a non-person entity.
Middle Name — Enter the provider's middle name, if any. Leave this field blank for a non-person entity.
Address — Enter the first line of the provider's address.
Address (ctd) — Enter the second line of the provider's address, if any.
Zip — Enter the provider's ZIP code.
Note: You cannot enter a ZIP code for a location outside the U.S., with the exception of Puerto Rico.
City — Enter the provider's city.
State — Enter the two-letter abbreviation for the provider's state.
Add to Local Networks — To add the clinical provider to one of your local networks, select the network from the menu.
Provider Taxonomy — To include a taxonomy code for the suggested provider, click change.
In the Taxonomy Lookup window, locate the provider taxonomy in one of two ways:

In the field at the top of the window, enter the first few characters of the taxonomy code and then click Find.
Click the taxonomy code menu, select a type, and then click Find.

Locate the correct code in the list and click select. The lookup tool closes and the provider taxonomy information appears in the Provider Taxonomy field.

Additional Taxonomies — Click add to add more taxonomies for this provider (this field is optional, to align with what CMS allows).
Clinical Area of Interest — Enter any subspecialties for this provider that are not described by his/her taxonomy, if applicable. (This field appears only if you selected the Yes option for the Link to Provider in my practice field.)
NPI — Enter the NPI for the clinical provider, if known. If you are unsure of this value, please leave this field blank.
Phone — Enter the main contact phone number.
Fax — Enter the provider's fax number.
Direct Address — Enter the provider's Direct address, if known.
To search for or confirm the provider's Direct address, click Lookup. The Direct Address Search page opens.
Order Type Groups — Select one or more order type groups that this clinical provider can fulfill. Select only those order type groups that you send to this clinical provider, because this association causes the provider to appear in the list of Send To clinical providers that is available when you create an order of that type. For example, if the clinical provider is a pharmacy, you should select "PRESCRIPTION" as an order type group.
Reason for Suggestion — Enter the reason for submitting your suggestion.
Click Submit.
athenahealth staff will verify the information and, once verified, add the clinical provider to our global database of clinical providers.

To add a Direct address for an external clinical provider

If you know the Direct address of a clinical provider and that address is not shown on the Suggest a Clinical Provider page, you can add the address yourself.

Note: If you have five or more Direct addresses that you want added to athenaOne, submit a case to the CSC (see To add five or more Direct addresses for external clinical providers).

Display the Suggest a Clinical Provider page: On the Main Menu, click Settings > Clinicals. In the left menu, under Practice Links — Order Configuration, click Suggest a Clinical Provider.

Search for the clinical provider

In the fields at the top of the page, enter any information that you have to locate the clinical provider.
Click Find.
Possible matches appear listed in alphabetical order according to the Name column.
Tip: The Reset link clears all the search criteria from the fields.
Review the possible matches.
Tip: Check several places in the list, based on how the original display name was formatted. Some common examples include: LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME or FIRSTNAME LASTNAME or DR. FIRSTNAME LASTNAME.
If the clinical provider is listed, click suggest update next to the clinical provider.
The Suggest Change to Clinical Provider fields appear.
Note: If the clinical provider you searched for does not appear in the search results, you can enter the information about the clinical provider — including the Direct address — by clicking Suggest New Clinical Provider (see To suggest a clinical provider).

Enter the Direct address for the matching clinical provider

Direct Address — Enter the Direct address for the provider.
- If you are certain of the provider's Direct address, enter it in the Direct Address field.
- If you want to search for or confirm the provider's Direct address, click Lookup.
  The Direct Address Search page opens.

Use the Direct Address Search page to find a Direct address

On the Direct Address Search page, information about the provider that already exists on the Suggest a Clinical Provider page appears in the filter fields. The table below the filter fields displays information about this provider from the DirectTrust provider repository, including the Direct address.
1. Scroll the table to the right to display the Direct addresses.
2. To select an address from the table on the Direct Address Search page, click Select Direct Address in the Actions column.
  The Suggest a Clinical Provider page appears again with the selected address displayed in the Direct Address field.

If the Direct address for the clinical provider does not appear in the table on the Direct Address Search page, you can use the filter fields to refine your search.
1. To apply additional filters, click the Add filter option.
  The next filter field in the list appears. You can click the menu to select a different filter field.
2. After you select filter options and enter the provider information in the filter fields, click the Search button.
  Your search results appear.
3. Scroll the table to the right to display the Direct addresses.
4. To select an address from the table on the Direct Address Search page, click Select Direct Address in the Actions column.
  The Suggest a Clinical Provider page appears again with the selected address displayed in the Direct Address field.

Complete your updates on the Suggest a Clinical Provider page

Reason for Suggestion — Enter "Adding Direct address."
Click Submit.
athenahealth uploads Direct addresses to DirectTrust on a weekly basis. Your newly added Direct addresses will be available to other Health Information Service Providers (HISPs) after they download all Direct addresses from DirectTrust.

Features and workflows

The term "clinical provider" refers to entities that provide clinical services. This term includes providers in and outside your practice, regardless of whether they use athenaOne. Clinical providers can be physicians, nurses, therapists, medical technicians, medical groups, hospitals, labs, pharmacies, etc.

You can use the athenaClinicals encounter workflow to send prescription requests, orders, referrals, patient charts, letters, and forms to a clinical provider outside your practice, as long as the clinical provider is included in our global clinical provider database.

The list of clinical providers appears when a user clicks the Search link when placing an order from the Assessment / Plan encounter section.

To add or update an entry in the athenahealth global clinical provider database, you can use the Suggest a Clinical Provider page. If you have five or more additions and updates, you can also submit a support case with an attached spreadsheet (see Add/Correct a Clinical Provider's Information in athenaOne on the Success Community).

Note: For urgent corrections to existing clinical providers, please contact the CSC by selecting Support > Create Case or Call in the Main Menu.

Learn more about the global clinical provider database

athenahealth continually strives to maintain the high quality of our global clinical provider database. To help us in this effort, we invite you to use the Suggest a Clinical Provider page to:

Search the global clinical provider database for existing clinical providers
Suggest updates to existing clinical provider information
Map your practice providers to the global clinical provider database
Flag potential duplicate records for us to review and consolidate

You can click the Show clinical providers mapped to my practice link to review the list of clinical providers in our global database that have been linked to a provider in your practice. If any provider in your practice is not yet listed in our global clinical provider database, we invite you to suggest the provider and provide the latest information.

Before you can suggest a new clinical provider, you must perform a search to verify that the provider is not already listed in our global database of clinical providers.

If your search returns the clinical provider that you wanted to suggest, we invite you to click suggest update next to the clinical provider and suggest any updates to our current information. When you help us improve our global database in this way, you not only make it easier for your providers to locate the clinical provider, you also help providers in other athenaOne practices to do so as well.

Field Reference

Find Clinical Providers
Name	The entity name or the first and last name of the clinical provider. (Used to search for duplicates in our global database.)
Address	The main contact address for the clinical provider. (Used to search for duplicates in our global database.)
City	The main contact city for the clinical provider. (Used to search for duplicates in our global database.)
State	The main contact state for the clinical provider. (Used to search for duplicates in our global database.)
Phone Number	The main contact phone number for the clinical provider. (Used to search for duplicates in our global database.)
Fax Number	The main contact fax number for the clinical provider. (Used to search for duplicates in our global database.)
Direct Address	The Direct address for the clinical provider.
Matching Clinical Providers table columns
ID	Unique athenaOne ID for the clinical provider.
NPI	National Provider Identifier number for the clinical provider.
Name	Provider's name as it appears on patient statements and other correspondence.
Address	Provider's address.
City	Provider's city.
State	Two-letter abbreviation for the provider's state.
Zip	Provider's ZIP code.
Phone	Main contact phone number for the provider.
Fax	Provider's fax number.
Direct Address	Direct address of the provider.
Order Type Groups	Order type groups associated with the provider.
Merge Info	Information used to create the information for the clinical provider entry.
Suggest New Clinical Provider and Suggest Change to Clinical Provider
Link to Provider in my practice	If this provider is in your practice, click Yes.
Link to Provider	Select the provider in your practice that is the same person as this clinical provider. (This field appears only if you selected the Yes option for the Link to Provider in my practice field.)
Entity Type	Select Person or Non-person entity.
Display Name	Enter the provider's full name as it should appear on patient statements and other correspondence. If this provider is a non-person entity (e.g., a pharmacy, laboratory, other facility), enter the name of the entity. Note: If you are suggesting updates to a clinical provider, verify that the provider's name is the name that should appear on patient statements and other correspondence.
Last Name	Enter the provider's last name. If this provider is a non-person entity (e.g., a pharmacy, laboratory, or other facility), leave this field blank.
First Name	Enter the provider's first name. Leave this field blank for a non-person entity.
Middle Name	Enter the provider's middle name, if any. Leave this field blank for a non-person entity.
Address	Enter the first line of the provider's address.
Address (ctd)	Enter the second line of the provider's address (if any).
Zip	Enter the provider's ZIP code.
City	Enter the provider's city.
State	Enter the two-letter abbreviation for the provider's state.
Add to Local Networks	To add the clinical provider to one of your local networks, select the network from the menu. For more information about local networks, see Feature Guide — Local Networks.
Provider Taxonomy	To add or edit a taxonomy code for the provider, click change. In the Taxonomy Lookup window, locate the provider taxonomy in one of two ways: In the field at the top of the window, enter the first few characters of the taxonomy code and then click Find. Click the taxonomy code menu, select a type, and then click Find. Locate the correct code in the list and click select. The lookup tool closes and the provider taxonomy information appears in the Provider Taxonomy field.
Additional Taxonomies	Click add to add more taxonomies for this provider (this field is optional, to align with what CMS allows).
Clinical Area of Interest	Enter any subspecialties for this provider that are not described by his/her taxonomy, if applicable. (This field appears only if you selected the Yes option for the Link to Provider in my practice field.)
NPI	Enter the provider's National Provider Identifier number.
Phone	Enter the provider's main contact phone number.
Fax	Enter the provider's fax number.
Direct Address	Enter the Direct address for the clinical provider.
Order Type Groups	Select the order type groups for this clinical provider. Select only those order type groups that you send to this clinical provider, because this association causes the provider to appear in the list of Send To clinical providers that is available when you create an order of that type. For example, if the clinical provider is a pharmacy, you should select "PRESCRIPTION" as an order type group.
Reason for Suggestion	Enter your reason for submitting your suggestion. For example, you can state that the information is for a new provider, or you can say that you are submitting updated information about an existing clinical provider.