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What Prep pulls from athena, when it refreshes, and how to refresh it

3-min read · Where the brief's data comes from, why something in athena might not show yet, the nightly and check-in refreshes, and how to regenerate.

Written by Bryce Blackwell

Prep reads the patient's athena chart and writes a brief before the visit. Knowing when it reads, and what it reads, explains most "it's in athena but not in Matic" questions.

When Prep runs

  • Nightly, around 2 am for every appointment on tomorrow's schedule. The Prep header shows Next prep 2am and, once done, Ready · time · before your visit.

  • At Done with Check-in. When your MA clicks Done with Check-in in athena, Matic does a full refresh of documents from the past 7 days and regenerates the brief if anything changed. The patient becomes Ready for Staff.

  • At Done with Intake. When your MA clicks Done with Intake, Matic does a final check of active medications, vitals and questionnaire screeners. The patient becomes Ready for Provider. This is the last time the chart is read for the visit.

  • Same-day bookings are picked up when the schedule syncs (about every two minutes) and prepped shortly after; they may show Problem list pending for a few minutes.

Important: Nothing entered in athena after Done with Intake is read for that visit. Say it out loud during the visit or type it into the note. If Prep is still updating when you walk in, give it a minute; it is picking up that last read.

What it reads

Problem list, medications, allergies, vitals, labs and results, screenings and vaccines, recent visit notes, and scanned documents in the chart (discharge summaries, imaging and procedure reports). Each fact in the brief links to the document and page it came from, so you can check the source in one click.

Patient questionnaires (intake forms and screeners such as PHQ, falls and cognition) are read at Done with Intake, but Matic doesn't yet have a screen that shows the answers. To see them, open Chart ▾ and choose athenaNet.

Some things aren't read yet, or only partly: very large scanned files, results filed outside the standard athena sections, and documents added after the brief was written. See Known issues for current gaps with labs, vitals trends and screening dates.

Something was in athena but not in Matic

When you report it to Mat (Support in the top bar), say that you confirmed it was in athena before Done with Intake, and where in athena it was. That one sentence lets us trace why it was missed when other things were picked up.

Refresh or regenerate

  1. On the Prep tab, open the Chart ▾ menu.

  2. Choose Regenerate brief. The current brief stays visible until the new one is ready, usually within a few minutes.

  3. If the header says Brief generation stalled or Chart retrieval failed, click Retry (or Retry chart fetch). A second failure is worth a report with the time it happened.

To add outside records that aren't in athena, use Outside records on the brief. See Get your patient brief.

Problem list changes

Decisions you make on the problem list are saved immediately but written to athena when the patient checks in (the button says Approve, applies at check-in). Until then the schedule row shows Updating problem list… or the approval banner. If athena is unreachable, the row shows Problem list write failed with a Retry chart updates link on Prep.

Open the chart in athena

From Chart ▾ choose athenaNet to open the patient in a new tab when you need something the brief doesn't show.

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