User Guide — Document Processing with External Interfaces
Using electronic interfaces with athenaOne can significantly decrease fax volume, shorten the amount of time that it takes to get lab results to your practice, and provide you with the structured data that can be used by tools in athenaOne (such as flowsheets).
As your co-sourcing partner, athenahealth is responsible for processing all documents received from external providers (pharmacies, labs, hospitals, etc.), all documents transferred between departments in the same organization, and all documents sent via athenaFax to other practices that also use athenaClinicals. Inbound documents processed by athenahealth appear in the documents section of the associated Patient Chart and in your Clinical Inbox for review. Lab and imaging results are matched to their associated orders. Your practice is responsible for processing all documents sent from your practice to athenahealth (including documents received via mail/courier, documents brought in by the patient, as well as any documents generated within the practice as part of or ancillary to the patient encounter).
To request an interface, please contact the CSC by selecting Support > Create Case or Call in the Main Menu.
Using electronic interfaces with athenaOne can significantly decrease fax volume, shorten the amount of time that it takes to get lab results to your practice, and provide you with the structured data that can be used by tools in athenaOne (such as flowsheets).
What can I expect when I transition from paper to interface?
Over the course of each interface implementation, athenahealth spends a significant amount of time working with the lab/facility to meet its testing requirements. Therefore, your electronic results should reflect what you would have typically received via fax. On the first day that your interface is live, you may continue to receive faxed results. You should follow up with your lab to make sure that they have turned off your faxed results, to reduce duplicate results being received.
Unlike the faxed copies of lab results, athenaOne creates a separate document for each test performed and completes the analytes for lab results.
How is an interface result routed?
When athenaOne receives an interface result, it routes the result to your practice based on default/task assignment override rules. Most labs provide athenaOne with a unique identifier in the message to help us route results to the correct department. If the facility is unable to provide us with a department identifier, athenaOne routes your results based on the providers listed in the message.
If athenaOne receives results for your practice for unlisted providers, we map the result documents to the STAFF row in your Clinical inbox. If you have providers who work out of multiple departments, you must let athenahealth know which department that provider uses as a primary location. If you believe that one of these mappings is incorrect, please contact the CSC by selecting Support > Create Case or Call in the Main Menu.
Note: athenaOne can route a result for an account number or provider to only one department.
How does an interface result tie to an order?
When athenaOne receives results via your interface, it attempts to automatically map them to an order that you placed in athenaClinicals. If athenaOne can find a matching order for the correct patient in your practice, it ties the results to that order. If the result returned by the performing facility does not match the original order, athenaOne cannot automatically tie results to the order.
For example, if a provider ordered a URINALYSIS COMPLETE but received results for a URINE CULTURE, those results would not be tied to the order. You can still manually tie the results to the order if you believe the lab performed the correct test.
Note: If you are concerned that a result order type that you received for a particular order is incorrect, please check that you ordered the right test. If you ordered a bolded test and you still believe that the test results are different than what you ordered, please contact the CSC by selecting Support > Create Case or Call in the Main Menu.
How long does it take to receive a result?
Interface results are generated in real time and appear in the patient's chart as soon as the lab sends them. You no longer need to wait for the lab to fax your lab results or for athenahealth to process and route those faxes.
What happens if the interface is down?
If an order is created and submitted to an interface that is currently down, the order will then drop to paper. The order will no longer be submitted by interface, and therefore, the results will not be received via interface. When notified of an interface being down, the order would need to be re-created if desired submission is by interface.