New York State Mental Health Provider Finds the Prescription for Success With Salesforce Health Cloud
AthenaPsych needed to meet surging demand for mental health services across New York State while lowering operating costs, and its existing EMR could not support that. We are building a custom platform as a Salesforce Health Cloud EMR replacement, with automated workflows, real-time clinical documentation, and information exchange across departments and organizations. In the first 6 months after Phase 1, 80% of patients were scheduled on the first call, 68% completed intake within 7 days of that call, CPT coding errors fell 69%, and clinical compliance errors fell 75%.
A Mental Health Provider Facing Demand It Could Not Meet
AthenaPsych delivers mental health services across New York State, in a healthcare ecosystem still working out how to balance telehealth with in-person care. Demand for those services has surged, and the constraint on meeting it is rarely clinical willingness. It is the operational capacity to schedule, intake, document, and bill without the process consuming the clinicians.
That makes the platform underneath a mental health practice a clinical issue rather than an administrative one. Every hour a clinician spends on documentation is an hour not spent with a patient, and every patient who calls and cannot be scheduled is care delayed. AthenaPsych wanted to scale access and recruit providers from all corners of the state, and both depend on Salesforce for healthcare style operations that make each provider more productive rather than simply adding more of them.
The Challenge: Scale Access Without Raising Cost or Lowering Quality
AthenaPsych came to us needing to do four things:
• Support scalability to meet the surging need for requests for services
• Scale aggressively and recruit providers from all corners of New York State
• Develop a hybrid care model that offers the right care to all patients when they need it
• Drive operational costs down and improve efficiency without sacrificing patient outcomes and satisfaction
The fourth requirement is what makes the other three hard. Scaling access is straightforward if cost is no object and quality can slip. Doing it while costs fall means the gain has to come from the process itself, which is why replacing the EMR was the right place to start rather than a side project.
Our Approach: A Custom Platform Built as a Salesforce Health Cloud EMR Replacement
We are building a custom Health Cloud platform to replace AthenaPsych’s existing EMR. Replacement rather than integration was the decision that shaped everything else. An EMR sitting alongside a CRM leaves the clinical record and the operational record in two places, and every efficiency gained in one is lost reconciling it with the other.
The platform aligns resources with individual preferences and needs. In mental health that matters more than in most specialties, because the fit between a patient and a provider affects whether care continues. Matching on preference and need at the point of scheduling is what turns a first call into an ongoing course of treatment.
We built automated workflows to create efficiencies and lower cost without sacrificing patient satisfaction. Automation in a clinical setting has to be judged on both counts, since a process that saves money by making patients wait has not saved anything. The workflows target the administrative steps around care rather than the care itself.
The platform generates real-time documentation to drive more effective clinical care. Documentation written as care happens is more accurate than documentation reconstructed later, and it is available to the next clinician who needs it. That is where the coding and compliance improvements come from.
We also improved internal processes and activated key metrics for performance, so AthenaPsych can see where its operation is working and where it is not. Scaling to a full state requires knowing which parts of the process bend under volume before they break.
The last piece is information exchange across departments and organizations to support productivity, with Experience Cloud among the products in the environment alongside Salesforce Scheduler and Salesforce Shield. Mental health care crosses organizational boundaries constantly, and a Salesforce Health Cloud EMR replacement is only worth doing if the record can travel with the patient.
Tools and Products Used
This platform is built on Health Cloud, with several Salesforce products and third-party integrations around it:
• Salesforce Health Cloud: the foundation of the custom platform replacing the existing EMR
• Salesforce Scheduler: supports the scheduling process behind first-call booking and intake
• Salesforce Shield: platform-level protection for the patient records held in the environment
• Salesforce Experience Cloud: part of the Salesforce environment for this project
• Change Healthcare: integrated as part of the wider platform environment
• Vonage: integrated for voice, video, and SMS communication
Health Cloud holds the record, Scheduler governs access to care, Shield protects what is stored, and the integrations connect AthenaPsych to the systems and channels outside its own walls.
The Results: 80% Scheduled on the First Call, and Errors Down Across the Board
In the first 6 months after Phase 1 implementation, 80% of patients were scheduled on the first call. For a mental health provider that number is the whole ballgame. A patient who has to call back is a patient who often does not, and first-call scheduling converts a moment of willingness into an appointment.
68% of patients completed intake within 7 days of their first call. Scheduling and intake are separate hurdles, and the second is where a practice loses people who have already said yes. Compressing that window into a week keeps patients moving toward care while the decision is still fresh.
CPT coding errors dropped 69% and clinical compliance errors dropped 75%. Both come from the real-time documentation work. Notes captured during care rather than reconstructed afterward produce cleaner coding, and cleaner coding means fewer denied claims and less rework, which is the cost reduction AthenaPsych asked for showing up in a specific place.
| Area | Outcome |
| Scheduling | 80% of patients scheduled on the first call |
| Intake | 68% patient intake within 7 days of first call |
| Coding accuracy | 69% reduction in CPT coding errors |
| Compliance | 75% reduction in clinical compliance errors |
| Timeframe | All figures measured in the first 6 months after Phase 1 implementation |
In the Client’s Words
I’m frankly mad I spent so many years on other EMRs. I didn’t know these processes could be so efficient and effective for me!
AthenaPsych Clinician
If your EMR is holding back the care your team can deliver, our team can help. Get in touch to talk through what a Salesforce Health Cloud EMR replacement would look like for your practice.
