ATHENAHEALTH LAUNCHES NATIONAL CLINICAL INTELLIGENCE TEAM IN SUPPORT OF HITECH ACT AND EMERGING COMMERCIAL PAY-FOR-REPORTING INITIATIVES

Network-Based EHR Services to Leverage New athenaNet(R) Clinical Intelligence Team to Assist Providers in Achieving Maximum Stimulus Compliance and Financial Return

CHICAGO (April 05, 2009) – athenahealth, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATHN), a leading provider of internet-based business services to physician practices, today announced at The Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society (HIMSS) Annual Conference being held in Chicago, that it is launching a national Clinical Intelligence Team (CIT) as part of its electronic health record (EHR) and practice management services platform, athenaNet(R). This new service team will look to deliver the maximum allowable stimulus benefit for providers and ensure the Company’s centrally-hosted EHR, athenaClinicalsSM, will be continuously updated and compliant with the new Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act reporting requirements, Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI), and other emerging commercial insurer pay-for-reporting programs nationwide.

In addition to building new services to enable HITECH compliance for its medical practice clients over the course of the new government incentive program, athenahealth’s software-enabled services (SeS) are already designed to deliver consistent financial and clinical results with very low initial investment and rapid implementation and training. With today’s announcement, the athenahealth service offering stands out as a highly cost-effective, emerging best practice for medical providers seeking to achieve maximum stimulus reimbursement while improving overall clinical efficiency, revenue, and accounts receivable performance.

“We have already seen performance-based income emerge as an increasingly large slice of overall physician practice revenue, and from our perspective, the HITECH Act is more of the same,” said Jonathan Bush, Chairman and CEO of athenahealth. “To qualify for the dollars available, practices have to find a way to monitor all of the different programs they are eligible for and then make sure they are practicing and reporting properly to comply with changing requirements. The only approach that really makes sense in this environment is to spread the cost of that effort across many practices by setting up one team of experts to research, qualify, and update all of the new rules and measures as they emerge and make them available via an on-demand network like athenaNet(R). We feel athenahealth is uniquely positioned with our SeS offering to make these changes part of each practice’s workflow, because we have the clinical experts, the network, and have combined athenaClinicals with our virtual back-office services to help keep clients compliant over time with these new programs in order to maximize the quality of care delivered and the payment for it.”

athenaNet Clinical Intelligence Team (CIT)

The new CIT will be lead by Jeremy Delinsky, Vice President of athenaNet Intelligence. Mr. Delinsky is a five year veteran of athenahealth’s payer-rules compliance operations and the new CIT will focus on applying the Company’s 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, PQRI, and new commercial insurer pay-for-reporting programs. The team will also be responsible for new advanced charge capture optimization, E&M coding and other athenaNet functionality and content related to accurately reporting clinical activity for maximum reimbursement.

“What we are hearing overwhelmingly from doctors using EHRs today is that they want much less help with the things they are already trained to know, and much more with things they don’t know, like how to get maximum reimbursement from the HITECH Act and other performance-based programs they are eligible for,” said Jeremy Delinsky. “Physicians know how to practice medicine and desire on-demand solutions that can help automate the process of participating in clinical reporting initiatives. athenahealth’s CIT is dedicated to ensuring that athenaClinicals supports the highest quality care with comprehensive and accurate clinical information and keeping our clients constantly up-to-date with all of the latest performance-based program changes as market dynamics change.”

“athenahealth’s continued PQRI reporting program success earned our surgery department the financial reward defined under the program in 2007 and 2008, and we fully expect the same results for the HITECH reimbursements,” said Jocelyn E. Piccone, MHA, CMPE, Chief Operating Officer of Wright State Physicians, based in Dayton, Ohio. “Because athenahealth’s practice management and EHR are housed on the same centrally-hosted national platform, their internal teams are working on behalf of thousands of practices just like ours to identify, qualify, and upload various clinical measure requirements for participating in emerging pay-for-reporting programs. For the many providers out there seeing the HITECH stimulus as their cue to finally get online with an EHR, we believe a service-based approach like athenaClinicals is going to be the logical choice.”

The HITECH Act

The HITECH Act was signed into law by President Obama on February 17th, 2009 as part of the larger stimulus package known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The Act includes up to $44,000 total in Medicare payment incentives per eligible provider who demonstrates “meaningful use” of an EHR starting in 2011. For additional information on the HITECH Act and athenahealth’s EHR service offering please visit: www.athenahealth.com/HITECHAct

Source: ATHENAHEALTH