COOK CHILDREN’S PHYSICIAN NETWORK PARTNERS WITH ATHENAHEALTH TO OFFER AFFILIATED PHYSICIANS ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORD AND PRACTICE MANAGEMENT SERVICES
Physician Network’s Purchasing Organization, PedsPal, to Offer 1,100 Physician Members in 22 States Access to athenahealth’s Web-based Services
FORT WORTH, Texas & WATERTOWN, Mass (July 13, 2009) – athenahealth, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATHN), a leading provider of Internet-based business services to physician practices, today announced it has partnered with Cook Children’s Physician Network’s (CCPN) purchasing organization, PedsPal, to offer preferred pricing for athenahealth’s electronic health record (EHR) service, athenaClinicalsSM, and its revenue cycle management service, athenaCollectorSM, to CCPN’s 1,100 affiliated physicians as part of a larger national clinical connectivity strategy announced today by Cook Children’s Health System along with athenahealth and Microsoft Corporation. Through Cook Children’s new clinical platform, PedsPal physician members using athenaClinicals will also be able to create a personal health record for their patients through Microsoft’s HealthVault that will be automatically populated from athenahealth’s centrally-hosted EHR with patient data, with no additional effort required by the families Cook Children’s serves.
“PedsPal partnered with athenahealth following Cook Children’s extensive national search for the best clinical solution for our owned practices,” stated Ryan Champlin, Vice President of Operations for CCPN. “athenahealth stands apart from other healthcare technology vendors for a number of reasons, the most fundamental being that they view themselves as a business partner and a service. We were also attracted to athenahealth for their proven track record in improving physician collections, the low entry cost to move onto athenahealth’s national network, and an impressive EHR solution that is fast gaining considerable traction because it does what it is supposed to do-allow physicians to focus on treating the whole patient and to do this more efficiently. CCPN believes that athenahealth will add significant value to our PedsPal-affiliated practices and, with the connectivity strategy that is being developed across the broader system, will allow physicians and their patients from around the country to access the world-class pediatric specialty care offered at Cook Children’s Health System.”
Along with athenahealth’s and PedsPal’s partnership to help connect CCPN’s affiliated physicians across 22 states, practices owned by Cook Children’s will also be using athenaClinicals and athenaCollector, which will be interfaced with Microsoft’s Amalga and HealthVault products in support of a larger extended enterprise connectivity strategy. Cook Children’s new clinical platform will offer a lifetime medical record for all of its patients that will enable the health system to provide better pediatric specialty care to patients across the country. Having greater access to data for all of its patients at all points of care will help Cook Children’s to provide the best possible outcomes and to lower heath care costs.
“Our partnership with CCPN and their PedsPal organization is a critical component of Cook Children’s overall clinical platform strategy that looks to connect thousands of physicians on a common platform on which patient data is shared and better utilized by physicians, their patients, and families,” said Nancy G. Brown, Senior Vice President of Business Development and Government Affairs for athenahealth. “At a time when policy makers debate how best to get health information online and have providers demonstrate meaningful use of that data, Cook Children’s is taking a significant, proactive step forward with a unique solution for storing, connecting, and sharing patient information across the country. Imagine all care givers in a network having at their fingertips the same historical and complete view of the patient at the same instant. This move away from the somewhat siloed treatment approach brings enormous opportunity, and we are excited to be a part of it.”
athenaClinicals is fully integrated with athenahealth’s revenue cycle management service. The combined software-enabled services (SeS) include continually updated payer-specific billing rules, advanced e-prescribing capabilities, back-office processing specialists, and an E&M coding support tool to help providers obtain appropriate reimbursement for practice-specific pay-for-performance payer contracts. All areas of the practices are able to share clinical and billing history information for patients and monitor performance on best practice metrics that are automatically tracked and reported in athenaNet, athenahealth’s web-based, centrally hosted national software platform. athenahealth is focused on applying its deep knowledge and best practices for rapidly discovering and implementing new payment and clinical rules to the task of continually monitoring emerging requirements for the HITECH Act, Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI), and other emerging commercial insurer pay-for-performance programs.
Source: athenahealth
