Women's Health Care Group of Pennsylvania, LLC Pioneers New Business Model for OB/GYN

athenahealth, Inc., the premier provider of online revenue cycle management services for medical practices, has helped Women’s Health Care Group of Pennsylvania successfully deploy a “super practice” business model, which has allowed obstetrics/gynecology (OB/GYN) practices to survive and even thrive in Pennsylvania’s extremely challenging business environment. Despite Pennsylvania’s very high malpractice insurance rates and some of the lowest fee schedules for OB/GYNs in the nation, Women’s Health Care Group has seen tremendous growth and profitability in its first year, thanks in part to its use of athenahealth’s unique revenue cycle management service.

In 2004, malpractice insurance rates in Pennsylvania had reached an all time high, while at the same time, the state’s health plans had driven down reimbursement for OB/GYN services to near national lows. Practices were forced to close their doors to bring their plight to the attention of lawmakers, and the governor was forced to enact temporary relief. This hostile business environment drove a group of OB/GYN physicians to come up with a new way to preserve the future of OB/GYN practices in the state. Thirty-nine doctors joined together and pooled their resources to bring economies of scale, the power of collective bargaining and the benefit of shared resources to the task of improving quality, providing better services, and finding a way to make it possible for OB/GYNs to have a successful business in the state.

“In many ways, athenahealth was critical to making our vision a reality,” said Dr. Stephen Krell, president of Women’s Health Care Group of Pennsylvania. “athenahealth not only allowed our disparate sites to function as a single practice, but the detailed data they provide helped us pinpoint the areas where we were taking the biggest hits so we could go to our health plans with the right information to prove things had to change. More than that, athena’s low start-up costs and powerful combination of Web-based software, proprietary payor rules, and best practice billing operations allowed us to go from zero receivables to cash flow that could support full salaries in under six weeks.”

In its first year, Women’s Health Care Group of Pennsylvania has proven the merits of its “super practice” business model. The group has grown from thirty-nine founding doctors to forty-nine today. athenahealth’s rich and up-to-date practice performance data has allowed the practice to develop a very clear understanding of its profit centers, enabling it to identify its best growth opportunities and forecast likely returns from new service offerings. As a result, the practice has been able to plan and fund a new fertility and high-risk pregnancy clinic which promises to be highly successful. Going forward, Women’s Health Care Group of Pennsylvania plans to continue to selectively grow its physician base, hoping to be around fifty-five doctors by the end of the year.

“athenahealth was born from the same challenges Women’s Health Care Group of Pennsylvania faced. We began life as an OB practice that just couldn’t survive amid increasingly brutal market conditions, and like them we knew we had to reinvent ourselves to live,” said Todd Park, co-founder and chief development officer, athenahealth. “The success of Women’s Health Care Group of Pennsylvania is about much more than just athenahealth, but it is exciting to see that our approach not only let them get up and running and profitable faster than they ever thought they could, but it also gives them the ongoing insights they need to help them make the right decisions and realize their entrepreneurial vision.”

About athenahealth
athenahealth offers the only physician revenue cycle management service that integrates practice workflow, payor knowledge, and billing and collections specialists into a single service on a single Web-based technology platform. The results are faster payment at lower cost, higher revenue retention and less hassle for more than 6,900 providers nationwide. The company collects over $1.6 billion on behalf of its clients annually. athenahealth is dedicated to helping providers make optimum use of their time, ultimately improving the quality of service delivered and the financial reward for it. For more information about athenahealth, visit our Web site at www.athenahealth.com or call 1-888-652-8200.