ATHENAHEALTH TO ACQUIRE MEDICALMESSAGING.NET ASSETS, GAINING NEW PATIENT COMMUNICATIONS SERVICE CAPABILITIES

WATERTOWN, Mass. (August 04, 2008) – athenahealth, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATHN), a leading provider of internet-based business services for physician practices, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the assets of Crest Line Technologies, LLC (d.b.a. MedicalMessaging.net), a privately held company that provides patient messaging services to medical groups. The purchase price will be $7.7 million of cash, a portion of which will be paid over time based on achievement of milestones. The transaction is expected to close in September.

“Since partnering with MedicalMessaging.net last year we have seen rapid athenahealth customer uptake as well as the tremendous value that their service can add to our clients when combined with our core offering,” said Jonathan Bush, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of athenahealth. “We see enormous value in joining forces to bring our service offerings to the next level and to fully exploit opportunities going forward.”

MedicalMessaging.net and athenahealth have had a partnership in place since September of 2007. Currently, more than 100 practices use both MedicalMessaging.net and athenahealth services in order to reduce patient no show and patient cancellation rates and to thereby improve practice revenues.

athenahealth plans to employ the existing personnel of MedicalMessaging.net, who serve clients out of the Company’s headquarters in Rome, Georgia. athenahealth will also enter into employment agreements with three key principals at MedicalMessaging.net, who will report into athenahealth’s existing operations, sales and product development organizations.

Mr. Bush continued, “In purchasing the assets of MedicalMessaging.net, we add not only a well-developed service capability but also a great team that we welcome into the athenahealth family.”

Like athenahealth’s athenaCollector(SM) and athenaClinicals(SM) services, MedicalMessaging.net’s on-demand services are centrally-hosted and enable automated and live call or e-mail communication services between patients and physician practices. Along with its web-based patient portal platform, these services allow physician practices to better communicate with patients regarding appointment reminders, test results, drug recalls, collections, prescription refills and other compliance driven initiatives. Designed as a service rather than as software functionality, MedicalMessaging.net augments medical practices’ patient communications to improve practice revenue as well as patient care, satisfaction and compliance.

“athenahealth has emerged as a truly disruptive presence in the ambulatory market and is at the forefront of driving consistent and improved operational and clinical outcomes for physician groups,” said David Harvey, Co-Founder and CEO of MedicalMessaging.net. “By embedding our services into the athenahealth network, we will look to deliver value in ways that currently are unavailable in the market. We feel that there is a tremendous opportunity to leverage athenahealth’s software-enabled service offerings for new and existing clients, allowing physician practices to automate patient communications in an increasingly consumer-centric health care environment, giving their patients access to timely and critical personal healthcare information.”

Source: ATHENAHEALTH