How NATX Turns Patient Referrals Into Booked Care in Under an Hour

Challenge

Referrals arrived through fax, phone, patient portals, and provider handoffs, leaving staff to manually enter patient information, verify insurance, and repeatedly contact patients. The process could take days, allowing high-intent referrals to go cold while putting additional pressure on referral coordinators and front desk teams.

For a specialty practice, every referral that goes cold is a patient who was ready for care and a referring office that may not send the next one.

Implementation: Built Inside athenahealth, Not Beside It

Steer did not ask NATX to change how it works. The onboarding team started inside the practice's existing athenahealth workflow, mapping how referrals actually arrive across fax, phone, portals, and provider handoffs, then configured FastTrackCare to read and route each one without pulling coordinators into a separate system. Provider-and-location matching was tuned to NATX's specialties and schedule, eligibility checks were wired to the practice's payer mix, and the write-back was set up so booked appointments, documents, and referral status land back in athena automatically. The team stayed close with Felicia and the referral coordinators through launch, watching the first live referrals move end to end and adjusting outreach timing as real patient responses came in.

“The Steer team set this up around athena instead of on top of it. My coordinators did not have to learn a whole new tool, the referrals just started handling themselves," said Felicia.”

Solution

NATX implemented FastTrackCare referral automation directly within its athenahealth workflow.

Steer captures and reads incoming referrals, verifies eligibility, matches patients to the right provider and location, and reaches out with appointment options. Once booked, appointment details, documents, and referral status are automatically written back to athenahealth, so the referral loop closes without manual entry.

Why It Matters

For specialty practices, every referral represents a patient ready for care. With FastTrackCare, NATX can:

• Verify eligibility before booking
• Book referrals in under an hour
• Reduce manual referral work
• Keep high-intent patients engaged
• Maintain closed-loop referral visibility

The impact shows up in time reclaimed and referrals converted. NATX now saves 2,729 staff hours every month, moves referrals from received to booked in under an hour instead of days, and verifies insurance eligibility automatically 99% of the time. Coordinators who once chased referrals across four channels got their afternoons back, and referring offices notice the difference in how fast their patients are seen.