athenahealth Introduces Healthcare Industry's First Economically Sustainable, Service-Based EMR Offering for Medical Practices

athenaClinicals(SM), the premier provider of web-based software, knowledge, and services for medical practices, has unveiled the industry’s first economically sustainable, web-based electronic medical record (EMR) service designed to provide physicians with proven return on investment (ROI). athenaClinicals(SM) builds on athenahealth’s extremely successful web-based revenue cycle and practice management solutions by applying the same powerful combination of intuitive software, billing intelligence, and results-oriented services to a next generation EMR service.

athenaClinicals provides all of the traditional features physicians expect from a traditional EMR software system while also converting the massive amounts of analog information found in a medical practice – faxes, phone calls, patient encounters, etc. – into continuously updated clinical profiles and workflows, eliminating paper and closing the loop on key clinical processes, such as labs, prescriptions, referrals and health maintenance. athenaClinicals provides continually updated payer-specific coding rules and E&M coding reviews, and helps providers optimize reimbursement for practice-specific pay-for-performance (P4P) payer contracts. Plus, every incoming fax to a medical practice is converted into an electronic document via athenahealth’s “virtual back-office” and is routed to the appropriate staff member, so paper congestion is eliminated.

“It is not surprising that less than twenty percent of physicians’ practices have implemented some kind of EMR system to date. Software-based EMRs are far too expensive and cumbersome to implement and providers are struggling with increasing concerns about the impact EMR implementation will have on their practice’s financial viability,” said Jonathan Bush, chairman and chief executive officer of athenahealth. “athenaClinicals is a unique approach to the industry’s current EMR challenge. It is designed to inject knowledge into a medical practice, acting as a proactive utility, providing updated payer coding and documentation requirements, integrated billing and collections, and P4P specific rules that provide doctors guaranteed financial and clinical performance.”

athenaClinicals EMR service includes:

• Web-based EMR – offers a complete clinical workflow that is seamlessly integrated with revenue-cycle management allowing all areas of the practice to share information. The webnative service is hosted, maintained and continually updated by athenahealth, is easy to use and offers unprecedented workflow personalization with guaranteed uptime and availability.

• Clinical & Payer Rules – encompasses clinical and revenue-cycle rules to make sure that appropriate data is captured and that physicians receive maximum reimbursement. The athenaClinicals rules engine includes drug formulary and interactions data, payer-specific coding rules, E&M coding reviews, documentation requirements, and P4P-specific knowledge, helping providers optimize reimbursement for practice-specific P4P payer contracts.

• Virtual Clinical Back-Office – manages practice workflow and eliminates administrative errors by intercepting all inbound faxes and reports, converting them into electronic documents and categorizing them into the physician workflow.

As a fully hosted service, athenaClinicals can be implemented in as little as six weeks and is designed to be affordable for large, medium, and small practices. Practices pay a moderate set-up fee and then a monthly subscription fee per physician. Using athenaClinicals, practices can document all patient visits and procedures, submit orders and manage tasks online in a single, secure “clinical inbox,” giving them instant access to a wide range of information about patients. Designed to tightly integrate with athenahealth’s revenue-cycle solutions, athenaClinicals allows all areas of the practice to share information – physicians can see payer rules that need to be considered at the point of care and billing staff can see the clinical documentation to support claim processing.

athenaClinicals helps practices improve revenue and cost efficiencies by:

• Building and continually updating clinical and billing content and rules

• Converting paper to electronic format, categorizing and routing to appropriate staff members to handle

• Enrolling in, capturing data for, and reporting to P4P registries and other quality programs

• Building and maintaining connectivity between patients and providers

• Maintaining master lists, including referral providers, labs and pharmacies, and closing the loop on lab tests and prescriptions

“athenahealth receives and scans all of the paper that comes into my office, so that we can view all clinical documents and results in a single secure location,” said Dr. Dhiren Sutaria, a one-physician practice with two staff members that has used athenaClinicals since January 2006. “We are also able to document all patient visits and procedures, submit orders and manage tasks via athenaClinicals so all the work we do is captured as part of the new web-based medical record, giving us instant access to a wide range of information about patients. athenaClinicals also automatically closes the loop on all of our lab orders – every time we order a test, athenaClinicals makes sure the test gets taken, the results are received and the results are communicated to the patient.”

As a long-time user of athenahealth’s athenaNet® service for his practice management system, Dr. Sutaria is particularly pleased with how easily it integrates with athenaClinicals as he and his staff are now able to simultaneously see both the clinical and financial history for each patient. “athenaClinicals’ synergy with our revenue-cycle system has been very impressive. The service integrates all the moving parts of my practice – scheduling and billing, automated coding, and clinical task management – into a single clinical workflow system.”