Privia Practice Emerald Psychiatry Puts Scheduling Online

Practice context

Emerald Psychiatry is a behavioral health practice of nearly 100 providers and about 30 clinical support and administrative staff, with offices in Dublin, Reynoldsburg and Cincinnati, Ohio, telehealth statewide, and service lines that range from medication management and therapy to TMS and Spravato. It is a member of Privia Medical Group and runs on athenaOne.

Pretty Good AI has fully passed Privia’s Third Party Assessment Committee (TPAC) review, including TPAC’s review of AI usage, and Emerald is one of several Privia practices Pretty Good AI works with today, on voice as well as scheduling, intake, referral and other AI workflows.

Emerald announced the launch alongside a redesigned website and refreshed brand on September 17, 2026. Pretty Good AI’s own announcement followed on September 19: Emerald Psychiatry launches AI scheduling, referral intake and voice on athenaOne.

The previous process

Behavioral health intake has more steps than most specialties before the first visit is clinically useful: matching to the right provider and service line, consents and releases, and screening questionnaires. Each step is a place a patient can quietly drop out, and each step not finished in advance lands on the front desk on the day of the visit.

What was implemented

Web scheduling, referral and intake automation, and voice went live together in September 2026, built on Emerald’s existing athenaOne configuration. No booking rule, appointment type or form packet was replaced with a generic one.

Web scheduling, as the patient experiences it:

1. The patient opens Emerald’s scheduler and says what kind of care they are looking for. The scheduler applies Emerald’s own service-line and provider rules from athenaOne.
2. Returning patients are matched to their existing chart. New patients provide demographics and a new-patient chart is created in athenaOne.
3. The appointment is written as a real athenaOne appointment against the provider’s schedule, following Emerald’s appointment types and notice periods.
4. Consents, releases and screening questionnaires are completed before the visit and returned to the chart.

Patient self-referral:

1. A patient who was told to “find a psychiatrist” can start from Emerald’s site rather than waiting for a referring office to send a fax.
2. The self-referral is captured into the same intake queue as fax and provider referrals, and matched or created against the athenaOne chart, so staff work one queue instead of three.

What Emerald controls

• Which providers, locations and appointment types are open to online booking, and the notice periods.
• The consent, release and questionnaire packets per service line.
• Clinical triage and any decision about appropriateness of care. The AI books and routes; it does not make clinical decisions.
• Answering the exceptions the workflow hands back to staff.

Where staff still step in

• Uncertain chart matches (a possible duplicate patient).
• Requests outside the online-booking rules, such as a service line not opened to self-scheduling.
• Clinical questions raised during intake.
• Referrals with missing information the referring office does not return.

Exceptions arrive as athenaOne work, not as a separate inbox staff have to remember to check.

Early results

Emerald reports a meaningful lift in patients booking themselves online and in intake paperwork finished ahead of the appointment rather than in the waiting room. This is a qualitative, customer-reported early signal. We are working with Emerald on a fuller look at the results and will publish specifics, with the observation window and the athenaOne reports behind each figure, once the practice has reviewed them.

When we do, each figure will state its cohort, its denominator and its window, and will keep booked visits distinct from attended visits and after-hours share distinct from incremental volume.

Sources

• Emerald Psychiatry’s announcement, September 17, 2026: Emerald Psychiatry unveils new look, improved scheduling.
• Pretty Good AI press release, September 19, 2026: Emerald Psychiatry launches AI scheduling, referral intake and voice on athenaOne.