Athenahealth Migrates All Providers to TEFCA, Expands No-Login Patient

With this development, Athenahealth becomes the first healthcare IT vendor to implement TEFCA at scale, enabling expanded interoperability across its provider network.

Athenahealth has completed the migration of all eligible providers on its athenaOne network to the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA), the company announced Tuesday.

With this development, Athenahealth becomes the first healthcare IT vendor to implement TEFCA at scale, enabling expanded interoperability across its provider network.

“This achievement marks a significant step toward a unified, nationwide network that enables seamless, secure, and automatic access to complete medical records – including clinical notes, scanned images, and unstructured content – in formats aligned with national standards of clinical information,” said Sam Lambson, vice president of data and ecosystem platform at athenahealth.

The migration aligns with Athenahealth’s ongoing collaboration with CommonWell Health Alliance, a long-standing health information exchange partner. CommonWell was among the first HIEs approved as a Qualified Health Information Network under TEFCA.

“Our partnership with athenahealth is critical to advancing interoperability efforts across the industry, as they prioritize collaboration over competition,” said Paul Wilder, executive director, CommonWell Health Alliance.

Athenahealth also announced that patients now have digital identity-based access to their clinical records without the need to log in, through its support of Individual Access Services (IAS).

The company said the migration enables providers to access more comprehensive patient data via ChartSync, which integrates TEFCA and other HIE data into the point-of-care workflow.

Physician workload and timely data access were key drivers behind the update.

“A better-curated flow of information improves providers' interoperability experiences,” said Jessica Sweeney-Platt, vice president of research and editorial strategy at athenahealth.

Athenahealth also highlighted its ambient note solution, which uses AI to draft patient dialogue summaries and inserts them directly into clinical charts.

“The tool really transforms their experience, removes hours of documentation, makes it simpler, makes it a more accurate note, and improves the overall coding and billing side,” said Chad Dodd, vice president of product management at athenahealth.

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