In a sneak peek at athenahealth's plans for the HIMSS23 Conference and Exhibition this April, CEO Bob Segert said that a key highlight will be the company's focus on improving the patient experience – including a showcase of new features.

"A lot of times folks are focused on the physician experience, the back office experience of the practice that you're supporting, and that is critical," Segert told Healthcare IT News.

"But also very critical to this equation is the patient," he said. "And how does the patient experience the practices that run on athena?" 

New self check-in capabilities will help eliminate the lengthy forms patients often encounter when they walk into a doctor's office.

"We're working on technology and software that allows you to do that all digitally and then have that saved. And then all you have to do is update it when you go back in," Segert said.

Video at this anchor exhibit will feature customers – from a single doctor with an independent practice to large hospitals – using athena's functionality to improve patient care and outcomes. 

Some of athenahealth's stories focus on provider interoperability experiences.

"We're going to make sure that we're showcasing real world customer stories featuring some of the large organizations we're working with to actually help the free flow and exchange of information that allows practices to be able to work much more seamlessly across care settings," he said, noting the Intuitive Interoperability and Improved Patient Outcomes panel athena is hosting will take a deeper dive on the topic. 

While the SaaS-based healthcare technology provider can make updates that are live in under 75 minutes, Segert said, new features are rolled out to customers to experiment with before they are fully released.

"There's a ton of [new] things just across the entire platform from our rev cycle solutions to our interoperability and platform solutions through patient engagement, folks are going to see," he said. 

The new athenahealth patient-facing mobile app is another major highlight, Segert said.

To help patients seamlessly manage their health and wellness as active partners, the new app – already in beta and alpha with some providers – is scheduled to launch to athena's entire customer base next week.

"Think about that as opposed to a portal … it's very, very easy," he said.

The exhibit will also shine a light on athenahealth's marketplace partners, which number upwards of 400. 

"By having a marketplace that can extend your R&D and your capabilities to address those unique instances that some customers have, but not all. If you can leverage partners to fill out your capabilities, then your network is really, really powerful," Segert said.

One example is the July 2022 rollout of an integration with Fullscript, a wellness company with a supplement-dispensing platform patient-adherence tool, which allows athenaOne users to write and share supplement dosing treatment plans that automatically syncs with patient health records.

Overall, "one of the key things for us is ensuring that we're expanding care access and convenience," he added.

Segert, who has been driving innovation-based momentum at athenahealth since 2019, was recently interviewed by The Boston Globe about athenahealth's position, and he said the company is viable to go public a second time, should it choose to. 

athenahealth will be in Booth 2031 at HIMSS23 in Chicago.