Athena's New Webhooks Could Cut Your API Costs by 75%

Last week, athenahealth quietly released something that should have every business that connects to athena’s APIs paying attention: webhooks are finally GA.

Why This Is a Big Deal

If you're still polling athena's APIs every few minutes asking "did anything change?" you're burning through API calls unnecessarily.

A typical health tech company polling a practice for patient check-ins makes ~23,000 API calls per month just to catch maybe 2,800 actual events. Scale that to 10 practices and you're at 230,000 polling calls for 28,000 events monthly. With webhooks? You get 28,000 notifications, and even if you retrieve data for every single one, that's 56,000 total API calls, a 75% reduction. For many marketplace vendors that will be thousands of dollars saved monthly that goes straight to your bottom line.

But here's what really matters: this changes which products are even viable on athena.

Products that were previously impossible due to lag or cost are now completely feasible. Real-time clinical alerts for critical lab values? Now viable. Workflows that kick off when a patient starts check-in or an encounter is closed? Work in real time. That lag between when a claim updates and when your app shows it? Gone.

Your users expect real-time updates. Now you can actually deliver them.

What You Can Actually Build Now

Athena Webhooks: Now Generally Available

Real-time events organized by workflow

📋 Clinical Workflows

LabResult

• Result routing

• Critical value alerts

ImagingResult

• Radiology workflow automation

Order

• Order tracking

• In-office completion

Prescription

• Refill automation

• Adherence tracking

Encounter

• Visit documentation tracking

ClinicalEncounterDiagnosis

• Diagnosis tracking

• Care gap identification

👥 Patient Data & History

Patient

• Registration updates

• Demographic changes

PatientProblem

• Problem list monitoring

• Chronic disease management

HistoricalMedication

• Med reconciliation

• Drug interactions

HistoricalVaccine

• Immunization tracking

• Population health

PatientCase

• Case workflows

• Portal messages

🗓️ Scheduling & Operations

Appointment

• Real-time scheduling updates

• Check-in workflows

• Wait list management

Provider

• Directory updates

• Scheduling availability

ReferringProvider

• Referral management

• Loop closure

💰 Revenue Cycle

Claim

• Instant RCM updates

• Denial alerts

• Payment notifications

Coming Soon Alpha

AdminDocument • ClinicalDocument • Letter • MedicalRecord • PatientInfoOrder

If you’ve read this far and you’re thinking, “but he hasn’t talked about CDS hooks!” don’t worry, I’ll talk about those in a future post.

Next Steps

If you're building on athena:

1. Check which webhooks align with your use cases

2. Consider what real-time features you couldn't build before

3. Plan your migration from polling to push

4. Calculate your potential API cost savings

I help innovative companies leverage athenahealth's platform to build better healthcare solutions. If you're looking to take advantage of these new capabilities, or just need someone to translate athena, let's talk.

Max Alsgaard-Miller