The athenahealth Virtual Assistant Guide: Setup, Worklists & Patient Cases

athenahealth (athenaOne) is one of the most widely used cloud EHRs in U.S. ambulatory practices, and it's also one of the most workflow-rich. Getting full value out of athena requires staff who know its quirks: claim worklists, patient case workflows, the documentation engine, and the patient portal. A trained athenahealth virtual assistant compounds that value over time.

Here's how to onboard, train, and deploy a virtual assistant inside athenaOne effectively.

Granting athenaOne access

In athenaOne, navigate to Settings > Users & Roles and create a new user with the appropriate role (Front Desk, Clinical Staff, Biller). Assign a department and enable MFA. Always scope access to the minimum required for the virtual assistant's job - never assign Practice Administrator unless required.

Athena's audit reports are accessible at any time from the Reporting menu, which makes monthly access reviews fast.

Worklists are how athena scales

athenaOne organizes work into queues - Patient Cases, Claim Worklists, Document Worklists. A trained athenahealth virtual assistant works through assigned queues throughout the day. The most common assignments: incoming Patient Cases for the front desk virtual assistant, denied or held claims for the billing virtual assistant, and inbound documents for the clinical virtual assistant.

Patient Cases for inbound communication

Patient Cases are athena's central inbound communication queue - portal messages, phone messages, prescription refill requests, referral inquiries. A virtual front desk assistant routes, responds to, or escalates each case according to your practice's protocols.

Practices that staff Patient Cases consistently see same-day case closure rates above 90%, which directly improves patient satisfaction scores in athena's CAHPS reporting.

Claim worklists and denial management

athena's Claim Worklists categorize claims by status (Hold, Drop, Manager Hold, Denied). A trained billing virtual assistant works through Hold and Manager Hold daily, files appeals on denials, and resubmits corrected claims - keeping days in AR as low as possible.

Document workflow

Inbound documents (lab results, faxes, referrals) hit the Clinical Inbox in athena. A trained virtual assistant routes documents to the appropriate provider, attaches them to the right encounter, and flags abnormal results for clinical review - keeping the inbox manageable and ensuring nothing falls through the cracks.

athenaOne quirks worth knowing

athena uses department-based scoping for almost every workflow. Always confirm a virtual assistant has access to the right departments. Patient search defaults to the active department only, which is the most common 'why can't I find this patient' question from new athena users.

Get those two configurations right at onboarding and most athena workflow questions disappear.