AHN Autoimmunity Institute: Tackling 100+ Autoimmune Diseases Through Collaboration

The AHN Autoimmunity Institute is redefining autoimmune care by fostering an integrated, collaborative environment where specialists work closely across disciplines to improve diagnosis, treatment, and patient outcomes.

Access to a network of specialists

Rather than directing your patient to multiple specialists to establish a diagnosis, referring them to the AHN Autoimmunity Institute gives patients access to a network of 17 specialists spanning areas including lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, celiac disease, inflammatory bowel disease, endocrinology, and more.

The institute promotes collaboration through a unique design that removes traditional physician offices, replacing them with a “huddle hall” where all specialists and support staff gather to discuss patient treatment in real time during appointments.

Care transformation team

As another benefit to patients of the AHN Autoimmunity Institute, we offer a care transformation team made up of four specialists who focus on managing patient needs that are often unmet. The team is comprised of clinical pharmacologists, nutrition experts, behavioral health specialists, and social workers.

This holistic care ensures that each patient is fully supported — from medication management, to addressing anxiety and depression, which affect more than half of autoimmune disease patients according to a recent study.*

“Finally, someone listened to me”

The AHN Autoimmunity Institute has treated patients from 40 states who travel for the quality of care they can only find at AHN.

“Our patients have traveled to us from as far as Alaska and Hawaii. Many have come to us seeking a diagnosis they’ve been in search of for so long — after seeing specialist after specialist,” said Joseph Ahearn, MD, Chair of the AHN Autoimmunity Institute. “At the Autoimmunity Institute, we not only provide the scientific diagnosis and treatment for their medical conditions, but the convenience and validation from a mental health aspect, as well.”

Before a patient is seen, we ask that they submit their medical records so our experts can have a comprehensive review of their often-complex history. After records are submitted, the patient will then receive a call from Dr. Ahearn personally to help determine which specialists will be the best fit to treat their unique case. Dr. Ahearn says that due to this level of personalization and listening, patient satisfaction scores are near 100.

Leading-edge research

At the Institute, we’ve not only integrated patient care, but also leading-edge research into our model. Some of our recent efforts include:

• Biomarker discovery: We’vecommercialized a patent family for one of the best lupus diagnostic tests in the world that integrates novel biomarkers to detect lupus earlier and more accurately.** This was the result of a combination of recruiting patients and working in our labs to discover, validate, and commercialize this test.

• PURPOSE Research Initiative: This is a first-of-its-kind, direct-to-patient study to create a biospecimen repository with clinical data and blood samples from patients across the country living with relapsing polychondritis. The goal of this effort is to advance the way the rare disease is diagnosed, monitored, and treated.

How to refer

At the AHN Autoimmunity Institute, our mantra is: treat the disease and care for the patient. We want to work with you to provide our expert opinion and innovative treatment options to help your patient find the answers they’re looking for.

Make a referral to the AHN Autoimmunity Institute by calling our patient concierge at: 1-844-MD-REFER or 1-833-242-8246.

*Source: Prevalence and identification of neuropsychiatric symptoms in systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases: an international mixed methods study. Academic.oup.com

**Source: Multi-centered clinical validation demonstrating superior precision in lupus diagnosis: T cell autoantibodies and TC4d outperform conventional lupus erythematosus biomarkers. FrontiersIn.org.