athenahealth Announces Stand-Alone Option for Electronic Health Record Service athenaClinicals to Further Support Hospital and Community Physician Market

August 19th, 2010 | Data Management , Technology | 0 Comments »

WATERTOWN, Mass. (August 19, 2010) – athenahealth, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATHN), a leading provider of web-based practice management, electronic health record (EHR), and patient communication services to medical groups, today announced that it will offer its web-based EHR service, athenaClinicalsSM, as a stand-alone offering. Historically, clients were required to adopt athenahealth’s web-based billing and practice management service, athenaCollector® in order to use athenaClinicals as part of a fully-integrated platform. The athenaClinicals stand-alone option will offer athenahealth’s hospital and enterprise clients more flexibility as they execute on their affiliated and clinical community connectivity programs. The stand-alone EHR service will reside on athenahealth’s national web-based platform, athenaNet®, and will be supported by the Company’s clinical document management service as well as athenahealth staff.

The athenaClinicals stand-alone EHR service will include all of the core athenaClinicals EHR functionality, with minor modifications to some services only available with the integrated solution. Some of the components of the stand-alone EHR service are as follows:

  • athenahealth account management and customer support center service will be provided at the same level of support as the integrated EHR service.
  • The new stand-alone offering will be operated from the same athenaNet platform as the integrated solution and will follow the same release timeline and processes.
  • Lab result interface development and management are included.
  • Inbound patient demographics, scheduling, and outbound charge interfaces will be available.
  • Pay-for-Performance (P4P) rules, built directly into athenaNet, will be available.
  • All standard prescription eligibility checking will be available.

For a more detailed product description please visit, www.athenahealth.com/athenaClinicals.

“Providing a stand-alone EHR service illustrates athenahealth’s commitment and ability to meet the unique needs of hospital systems and their affiliated medical practices in this extremely challenging and rapidly changing health care environment. We understand that not all hospitals and affiliated practices may be in a position to implement our full service offering at this time, but are eager to have an EHR that can be rapidly implemented and widely adopted,” said Jonathan Bush, Chairman and CEO of athenahealth. “By offering our EHR service on its own, we hope to eliminate some common purchase barriers faced by community and affiliated physicians looking to participate in hospital-based clinical connectivity strategies. In addition, as the clinical market evolves and physicians seek new web-based EHR technologies like athenaClinicals, they will no longer be held back from joining our network due to legacy billing service contracts or recent expenditures for practice management software licenses

ARRA “Meaningful Use” Certification and Guarantee Program

As of July 2010, the latest version of the athenaClinicals EHR service, Version 10.6, had been inspected by the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT®) and is a certified EHR technology under IFR Stage 1, preliminarily meeting all 24 requirements for Eligible Providers published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the Interim Final Rule (IFR). Inspection information is available at www.cchit.org/products. For the purpose of qualifying products for the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) of 2009 incentives, CCHIT anticipates, but has not yet received, accreditation by HHS. This preliminary IFR Stage 1 certification is related to the HITECH Act, part of the larger ARRA. athenahealth believes that this certification further validates its ability to help physicians qualify for and obtain incentive payments associated with the final definition of “Meaningful Use.”

athenahealth also recently announced that, on the back of the government’s July 13, 2010, release of final rules for EHR “Meaningful Use,” it is extending the deadline for participation in its Federal Stimulus Bonus Payment Guarantee Program. Originally launched in September 2009, this program guarantees that physicians will qualify to receive a HITECH Act bonus payment under the 2011 program year if they sign up for and implement the integrated athenaClinicals and athenaCollector service platform by January of 2011. With this deadline extension, physicians will now have until June 30, 2011, to participate in the program. As part of its new stand-alone EHR service option, athenahealth will guarantee that the software component of the service will be “certified EHR technology” for purposes of meeting the “Meaningful Use” requirements. If athenahealth does not meet this commitment, it will provide six months of the stand-alone EHR service for free. To qualify for athenahealth’s full bonus payment guarantee, a practice would need to use athenahealth’s fully integrated EHR and practice management offering. Visit www.athenahealth.com/bonus to learn more about athenahealth’s EHR and the Federal Stimulus Bonus Payment Guarantee Program.

About athenahealth

athenahealth, Inc. is a leading provider of web-based business services for medical groups. athenahealth’s service offerings are based on proprietary web-native practice management and electronic health record (EHR) software, a continuously updated payer knowledge-base, integrated back-office service operations, and automated and live patient communication services. For more information, please visit www.athenahealth.com or call (888) 652-8200.

This press release contains forward-looking statements, which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding the benefits and potential certification of, and prospective markets for, athenahealth’s service offerings. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in these forward-looking statements. In particular, the risks and uncertainties include, among other things: the risk that our service offerings will not operate in the manner that we expect, due to design flaws, security breaches, or otherwise; potential interruptions or delays in our internet-based service offerings; our reliance upon third parties, such as computer hardware, software, data-hosting, and internet infrastructure providers, which reliance may result in failures or disruptions in our service offerings; errors or omissions included in our payer and clinical intelligence rules engine and database; and the evolving and complex government regulatory compliance environment in which we and our clients operate. Existing and prospective investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. athenahealth undertakes no obligation to update or revise the information contained in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or circumstances, or otherwise. For additional disclosure regarding these and other risks faced by athenahealth, please see the disclosure contained in our public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, available on the Investors section of our website at http://www.athenahealth.com and on the SEC’s website at http://www.sec.gov.

Contact
athenahealth, Inc.
John Hallock (Media), 617-402-1428
Director, Corporate Communications
media@athenahealth.com
or
Jennifer Heizer (Investors), 617-402-1322
Director, Investor Relations
investorrelations@athenahealth.com

Source: athenahealth