How to Request Prescription Refills Using Athenahealth?

Introduction

On the surface, requesting a prescription refill through Athenahealth looks straightforward. A patient submits a request, the provider reviews it, and the prescription gets sent to the pharmacy. Done.

But if you’ve ever worked the front desk at a healthcare practice, you know that’s not how it actually plays out.

Behind every refill request that comes in, there is a chain of small tasks that quickly add up, slowly consuming considerable time of the day, leading to repetition and burnout. Constant phone calls interrupt scheduling, staff jump between screens, patients call back to check status, and after hours, refill voicemails quietly pile up for the next morning.

Athenahealth handles the clinical part of prescription refills well. What it doesn’t address is the operational workload that it comes with. In this guide, we are going to show you how to manually request prescription refills using Athenahealth and a workaround to automate the entire process. 

Requesting Prescription Refills Using Athenahealth

Before we take a look at automating the online prescription refill process within Athenahealth

Here’s how the standard process of requesting prescription refills using Athenahealth looks like:

Step 1: Search for the Patient and Open the Chart

• Start by searching for the patient in Athenahealth.
• Once found, open the patient’s chart to begin the refill process. This ensures all refill actions are tied to the correct patient record.

Step 2: Create a New Order Group

• Inside the patient chart, click on “New Order Group.” This will initiate the prescription refill workflow within Athenahealth.

Step 3: Verify or Add the Patient’s Pharmacy

• Scroll to the Patient’s Pharmacies section and check whether the correct pharmacy is already listed.

If the pharmacy is missing:

• Add the pharmacy (for example, selecting the correct location)
• Click Save
• Athenahealth requires a pharmacy to be on file before a refill can be processed.

Step 4: Select the Medication to Be Refilled

• Navigate to the Medications section.
• Locate the online prescription that needs to be refilled (e.g., Metoprolol).
• Select the medication and click Save. This will link the refill request to the correct medication record.

Step 5: Go to the Assessment & Plan Section

• Scroll down to the Assessment & Plan area.
• Find the medication listed there. This is where the refill request is finalized and routed.

Step 6: Select the Ordering Provider

• Ensure the correct ordering provider is selected.
• This determines which provider will receive and review the refill request.
• This step is critical for proper routing.

Step 7: Add Internal Notes

In the Internal Notes section, document:

• Who requested the refill (patient or pharmacy)
• If patient-requested, include the patient’s phone number
• Any special instructions

If the patient wants the prescription sent to both a local pharmacy and a mail-order pharmacy:

• Select one pharmacy in the system (since Athenahealth allows only one)
• Note the additional pharmacy details in the internal notes

Step 8: Save and Submit the Refill Request

• Click Save to complete the process.
• The emergency prescription refill request is now routed to the provider and appears in their queue for review.

What Happens Next

Once submitted, the provider reviews the refill request. Then, the prescription is approved, modified, or denied based on clinical judgment, and the approved refills are sent to the selected pharmacy. 

Also learn: How Athenahealth handles patient billing

The Problem with Creating Manual Refill Requests Using AthenaHealth

When a refill request comes in, whether from a patient or a pharmacy, it typically lands on a staff member first. Although the steps are easy to perform, the volume can be overwhelming, making it feel repetitive and extremely time-consuming for your front desk staff.

Consider this: for the majority of healthcare professionals, 40% of calls are related to prescription refills. For each of these calls, your front desk staff end up spending 1-2 minutes just to ask and verify basic details, such as name, last visit, and dosage. And if this was not enough, there are at least 8 steps to perform just to create a refill request for each patient. You already know how much front-desk time all these steps are taking up on a daily basis. 

Thankfully, there is a very simple and effective solution to this. 

How Integrating Emitrr AI Simplifies Prescription Refills in Athenahealth

If you look closely at the manual Athena e-prescribing, the challenge is repetition. Staff follow the same steps again and again: collect patient details, verify information, confirm pharmacy preferences, add notes, and route the request. 

This is where integrating Emitrr AI fundamentally simplifies the workflow.

Step 1: The AI Agent Becomes the First Point of Contact

Instead of prescription refill calls going straight to the front desk, they’re handled by an AI agent trained specifically for refill requests.

Before going live, the practice can:

• Create its own AI agent
• Trains it to collect required refill information, such as:

• Patient name
• Date of birth
• Medication name
• Dosage and frequency
• Preferred pharmacy

Once live, the AI agent automatically answers refill calls, during business hours, after hours, and even during peak call times, without staff involvement.

Step 2: AI Collects and Verifies Refill Information

When a patient calls for a prescription refill, the AI agent follows the same logic a staff member would:

• Confirms the patient’s identity
• Collects medication and pharmacy details
• Verifies the information in real time against records in Athenahealth

This mirrors what front desk staff manually do today, but without switching screens, typing notes, or interrupting other work.

Step 3: A Case Is Automatically Created in Athenahealth

Once the required information is collected, the AI agent creates a case directly in your EHR

The case includes:

• A complete overview of the patient
• All medication refill-related details
• An AI-generated call summary
• The full call transcript
• A call recording (for reference, if needed)

Instead of staff entering details across multiple sections in Athenahealth, providers receive everything in one structured view.

Step 4: Smart Decisioning

This is where the workflow becomes significantly more efficient.

If the information collected by the AI matches existing records:

• The medication refill request can be sent directly to the pharmacy for processing
• No front desk review required

If the information does not match the records:

• A case is created for staff or provider review. The provider can then review the prescription refill request manually. Upon reviewing it, they can then decide to either approve it, deny it with a reason, or suggest the patient to schedule an appointment. 

Take a look at this video to learn more:

Why Automating Prescription Refills Makes a Real Difference

You can keep creating prescription refill requests in Athenahealth, the standard way, or you can choose to reduce 40% of front desk calls and staff burnout by simply adding Emitrr to Athenahealth. 

By integrating the two, you can get rid of

• Manual data collection during refill calls
• Repetitive navigation across patient charts
• Typing internal notes
• Sending prescription refill reminders, follow-ups, and more.

This can free up your front desk staff to perform higher-value tasks, reduce refill turnaround time for patients, while also maintaining accuracy and compliance inside Athenahealth. 

FAQs

Conclusion

Prescription refills aren’t going away. If anything, they increase as practices grow and manage more chronic care patients. The real question is how much staff time you want to spend managing the conversations around them.

By adding Emitrr AI to the Athena refill workflow, clinics can move from a staff-heavy process to a streamlined system where repetition can be smartly dealt with without risking compliance or errors.

Book a free demo with Emitrr to learn more.