Right Fit Wins: Choosing AI in the athenahealth Marketplace

There has never been more AI available to a medical practice, and that abundance is its own problem.

A specialty group on athenahealth today can browse more than 600 partners in the athenahealth Marketplace, including more than 100 AI-focused solutions. Patient engagement, clinical documentation, coding, billing and prior authorization each have a dozen products promising to fix them. The result is noise.

On EP 02 of Truly Integrated, Regina Haynes, Director of Partnership Growth and Strategic Operations at athenahealth, joined iScribe CEO Pat Williams to talk about what it takes to govern a marketplace at that scale, and why she believes connection moves practices forward more than hype does.

Prefer to listen? Hear Regina’s full conversation with Pat Williams on Truly Integrated, EP 02: episode page · Apple Podcasts · Spotify

Key Takeaways

• The athenahealth Marketplace has grown to 600+ partners, including 100+ AI solutions spanning patient engagement, clinical workflows, and billing.
• The pace of AI adoption over the past 6 to 18 months surprised even the people building the marketplace.
• A large marketplace only creates value when a practice can quickly find solutions built for its specialty and its specific problems.
• Differentiation now comes down to proven ROI, ease of integration, and the quality of customer support.
• The right partnership lets a practice adopt new technology without disrupting care delivery.

AI Adoption Is Moving Faster Than Anyone Predicted

Regina has spent more than eight years at athenahealth, advancing through partnership and marketplace leadership roles. Even with that vantage point, the recent surge caught her off guard.

“So, from patient engagement all the way through to billing, taking that work away from our practices, and the speed at which AI has been able to solve some of those really critical problems for our customers, I think, has been incredible,” she said. “I don’t think any of us really expected what has happened over the past, you know, 6 to 18 months, regarding this space.”

That speed is good news for practices drowning in administrative work. It also means the burden of evaluation has shifted onto the practice. When 100+ AI options exist inside a single EHR ecosystem, the useful question is which AI was built for you.

Why a Bigger Marketplace Demands Better Matching

A marketplace promises that everything in it works with your EHR. Integration is only the first test, though. Regina was direct that a large catalog only creates value when customers can easily find solutions tailored to their specialty and needs.

That matters most for specialists. A high-volume orthopedic or urology practice has nothing in common with a family medicine clinic when it comes to documentation. The exam is different. The procedures are different. The coding risk is different. A general-purpose AI that works fine for a 15-minute wellness visit can fall apart in a sports medicine clinic seeing 60 patients a day.

According to Regina, athenahealth is investing in personalized and authenticated marketplace experiences that surface the most relevant partners faster, along with clearer communication about ROI, differentiation, and integration value. For practices, that signals a marketplace moving away from “browse everything” and toward “here’s what fits.”

athenahealth already applies that thinking inside the chart. Its Ambient Notes offering supports multiple AI-powered ambient models at the same time, so clinicians can select the model best suited to their documentation style and specialty. iScribe’s model is one of those options, available to all athenahealth customers through Ambient Notes. In our view, that is what right fit looks like in practice: choice inside the workflow, not another tool outside it.

Questions That Separate the Right Fit From the Hype

Regina’s view is that differentiation matters more than ever, specifically around ROI, ease of integration, and customer support. Those three criteria map directly to what makes or breaks an AI rollout inside a specialty practice.

1. Can the partner prove ROI in your specialty?

Generic time-savings claims are everywhere. Ask for numbers from practices that look like yours. iScribe was founded inside orthopedic practices in 2015 and today supports 4,000+ providers across 55+ specialties and sub-specialties, with providers saving roughly two to four hours per day and seeing 10+ more patients each week.

2. How deep does the integration go?

“Integrated” can mean anything from a data export to a fully embedded workflow. iScribe is an athenahealth Preferred Partner supporting 230 athenahealth practices, with its deepest EHR integration built on athena. Notes and coding recommendations land directly in the chart where providers already work.

Physicians treat integration as a condition for adoption, too. In the American Medical Association’s 2024 survey of physician sentiment on AI, the top attributes physicians said were required to advance their adoption of AI tools were a designated feedback channel (88%), data privacy assurances (87%), and EHR integration (84%).

3. What happens when something goes wrong?

This is the question most practices forget to ask, and the one that decides long-term adoption. With iScribe, a provider who needs support always reaches a person, never a chatbot. Onboarding is white-glove, and the complimentary 14-day trial is built so providers are fully set up before go-live, with zero schedule reduction.

Adoption Is the Metric That Counts

A purchase is not adoption, and healthcare AI is full of examples. Plenty of practices have paid for software that providers abandoned within a quarter. It didn’t fit their specialty, it added clicks, or nobody answered the phone when it broke.

In our view, the clearest signal of right fit is what happens after the trial. iScribe converts 92% of trials into customers, because providers set it up once and adopt it immediately. Strong partnerships, as Regina put it, let practices adopt innovation confidently without disrupting care delivery.

Bring the Providers Who Will Use It Into the Decision

Regina’s point about matching solutions to specific practice needs raises a practical question: who defines those needs? It is easy for an AI tool to be chosen by whoever sat through the demo, then handed to providers after the contract is signed.

In our view, the providers who will use a tool every day should help pick it. They know which visits run long, which notes need the most edits, and where the coding risk sits in their specialty. Bring at least one of them into the trial, along with the person who manages billing, and agree up front on how they will report problems. That gives the practice what physicians asked for in the AMA survey: a clear channel for feedback.

How to Use the athenahealth Marketplace Strategically

For athenahealth practices evaluating AI solutions for healthcare, a few practical moves make the marketplace work for you.

• Start with your most expensive problem. For many specialty groups, that’s documentation-related denials and the hours lost to after-clinic charting.
• Filter by specialty proof. Ask every partner for references in your specialty, at your volume.
• Look for Preferred Partner status. It signals a deeper, validated integration with athenahealth.
• Test with a real trial, on real patients. A sandbox demo tells you nothing about how a surgeon will feel at 4:30 p.m. on a 50-patient day.
• Judge the support, not the slide deck. Call support during the trial. See who answers.

Demo vs. Real Trial: Testing an athenahealth Marketplace Solution

A demo shows what a product can do. A trial shows whether your providers will keep using it. Here is what each one can tell a practice about fit.

• Patients → Sales Demo: Scripted or sample encounters → Real-Patient Trial: Your actual patients and visit types.
• Specialty Fit → Sales Demo: General vocabulary and workflows → Real-Patient Trial: Your exams, procedures, and coding.
• Volume → Sales Demo: One encounter at a time → Real-Patient Trial: Full clinic days at your normal pace.
• Support → Sales Demo: A sales team on the call → Real-Patient Trial: The support line you will rely on.
• What You Learn → Sales Demo: What the product can do → Real-Patient Trial: Whether providers adopt it.

Wherever possible, run the trial on a normal schedule rather than a cleared one, so you see the tool under the conditions your providers face every day.

Right Fit Wins

The flood of AI solutions in healthcare is not slowing down. The practices that win will adopt the right technology, built for their specialty, embedded in their EHR, and backed by people who pick up the phone.

That’s the standard we hold ourselves to at iScribe. If your experience in the marketplace has been different, we’d like to hear about it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the athenahealth Marketplace?

The athenahealth Marketplace is athenahealth’s ecosystem of integrated partner solutions. It includes 600+ partners, with more than 100 AI-focused solutions across patient engagement, clinical workflows, and billing.

What does athenahealth Preferred Partner status mean?

Preferred Partner status signals a deeper, validated relationship and integration with athenahealth. iScribe is an athenahealth Preferred Partner and supports 230 athenahealth practices.

How should a specialty practice choose an AI solution in the marketplace?

Prioritize specialty-specific ROI, depth of EHR integration, and the quality of human customer support, then validate all three with a real-world trial before committing.

How can athenahealth practices access iScribe?

athenahealth customers can access iScribe through both athenahealth’s Ambient Notes offering and the athenahealth Marketplace. iScribe currently supports more than 230 athenahealth practices across 30+ medical specialties.

Why do practices abandon AI tools they’ve already paid for?

In our experience, it comes down to how the tool was chosen. When it is picked for its feature list instead of its fit with the specialty, the workflow, and the support providers need, usage fades.

Who should be involved in choosing an AI tool for a practice?

The providers who will use it every day, plus whoever manages billing and the EHR. Agree before the trial on how they will report problems and what results would count as success.

How long should a practice test an AI tool before committing?

Long enough to see it on real patients across several full clinic days, at the practice’s normal pace. iScribe’s trial runs 14 days.

About Regina Haynes

Regina Haynes is Director of Partnership Growth and Strategic Operations at athenahealth, where she works in the company’s Partnerships organization. She is based in Greater Boston and is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Hear the Full Conversation

Listen to Regina Haynes on Truly Integrated, EP 02, “Right Fit Wins: Matching Practices to the AI They’ll Actually Adopt.”

On athenahealth? See why iScribe is a Preferred Partner. Start a complimentary 14-day trial of iScribe AI, fully set up before go-live, with zero schedule reduction.