PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION OF HEALTH CARE OFFICE MANAGEMENT SELECTS ATHENAHEALTH FOR NATIONAL MEMBERSHIP
Over 9,000 physician members will have access to athenaCollectorSM and athenaClinicalsSM
N/A (August 27, 2007) – athenahealth, Inc., a provider of internet-based business services for physician practices, today announced that The Professional Association of Health Care Office Management (PAHCOM), will offer athenahealth’s on-demand practice management and EMR services to PAHCOM members in an effort to improve physician practice workflow and reimbursement. Under the terms of the agreement, PAHCOM members will receive a discount on athenahealth’s services.
“During our evaluation of vendors I had the opportunity to visit athenahealth’s Watertown, Massachusetts service operations on two occasions. After touring the Company’s facilities that support their virtual clinical and administrative back office service for thousands of medical providers, I would equate the operational capability of athenahealth to one that is so well coordinated that the U.S. Navy would be dutifully impressed,” commented PAHCOM founder, Richard Blanchette, a retired Lieutenant-Commander in the U.S. Navy’s Medical Department. “I believe that athenahealth will help PAHCOM member physicians across the country improve their interactions with payers, reduce office workloads, and increase revenue.”
athenahealth’s practice management service, athenaCollectorSM, is a physician revenue cycle management offering that integrates internet-based practice management software, continually updated payer knowledge, and back-office processing specialists into a single service. In combination with its award-winning practice management software functionality, athenahealth has built in a proprietary knowledge-base of national payer reimbursement process rules, athenaRulesSM, which is designed to enforce physician office workflow requirements, and is continually updated with payer-specific coding and documentation information.
“The payer universe is dynamic and continuously growing in complexity as rules are changed and new rules are added, making it difficult for physician practices to effectively manage the reimbursement landscape,” said Todd Park, Chief Development Officer for athenahealth. “PAHCOM understands the need to combat this problem and empower their thousands of physician members with athenahealth’s centrally-hosted, internet-based practice management services, which add over 100 new payer rules on average each month that are automatically built into a practice’s workflow.”
“New health benefit plans and reimbursement structures have considerably modified the ways in which physician practices are paid,” continued Blanchette. “As our members grapple with new consumer driven health plans and care-based initiatives, including pay-for-performance (P4P) programs, we expect athenahealth’s results-driven EMR and practice management offerings will assist our members as they look to capture and submit specific clinical and administrative information for increased collections, clinical workflow, and overall patient care.”
Fully integrated with athenaCollector, athenahealth’s CCHIT-Certified EMR service, athenaClinicals, is hosted on the athenaNet® platform and provides traditional EMR software system features while also converting much of the analog information found in a medical practice – faxes, phone calls, patient encounters, etc. – into continuously updated clinical profiles and workflows, substantially reducing office paper volume and closing the loop on key clinical processes such as labs, prescriptions, referrals and health maintenance. athenaClinicals also provides additional functionality to help medical groups complete key processes that affect the clinical care record related to patient care, such as identifying available P4P programs, incentives, and enrollment requirements.
Source: athenahealth
