Success Story: athenaOne EHR Support & Cures Act Education

How we provided EHR support, education and guidance, while also ensuring our client met sharing and interoperability requirements per the 21st Century Cures Act.

Our Challenge

Community Health Care Association of New York State (CHCANYS) initially engaged Pivot Point to provide athenaOne EHR platform support for six (6) Community Health Centers (CHCs) with a goal of advancing HCCN program goals, specifically enhancing the patient and provider experience, advancing interoperability, and using data to enhance value and optimize the EHR.

However, with the April 2021 implementation of the 21st Century Cures Act, CHCANYS additionally faced the challenge of providing education and support to their 70+ Community Health Centers, considering the Act’s data sharing and interoperability requirements.

Each CHC operated their own EHR platform with different versions and functionality across a variety ofvendors, including athena, Allscripts, eClinicalWorks, Epic, Centricity, Medent, Entergy, and NextGen.

Our Solution

Our consultants worked with each participating CHC through individual calls to address challenges and strategies related to the use of athenaOne for HCCN goals. These goals included developing and delivering training via user group calls and webinars, developing CHC specific reports PRAPARE and social risk factor data collection and providing ad hoc support.

Using client feedback, we built a program and playbook to support awareness and compliance with the Cures Act to advance HCCN goals. We began with a focused assessment of the Health Centers’ EHR build and workflows to identify optimization opportunities in compliance with Cures Act Information Blocking/ Sharing. We then developed training materials and tools to support each unique CHC in their work with the Cures Act. Additionally, the consultants used focused calls to confirm the awareness of and readiness for the Cures Act for HCCN goals, as well as providing ad hoc support for Cures Act awareness and compliance.

Our Impact

Individual CHC and organization-wide Cures Act training and support plan

Development of “how to” guides for quality measure documentation and reporting

Individual CHC and organization-wide Cures Act training and support plan

On the Success of the Project

"During a site visit with an HRSA consultant, leadership at one of our Centers shared how the PPC consultant was able to assist with providing a payer breakdown report required for their AHA grant application. They were impressed that she was able to turn it around within 30 minutes, set it up so that they could modify it and showed them how to work with it. It illustrated how valuable PPC’s services and consultants are to our Centers."

Jen Pincus

MPANYS-HCCN Project Director and Director, Data & Technology, COMMUNITY HEALTH CARE ASSOCIATION of New York State