athenahealth Delivers 96 Percent Meaningful Use Attestation Rate Among Participating Providers

athenahealth, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATHN), a leading provider of cloud-based electronic health record (EHR), practice management, and care coordination services to medical groups and health systems, today announced that 96 percent of the company’s participating providers successfully attested for 2012 Medicare Meaningful Use Stage 1, Year 1. The company’s 96 percent attestation builds on the 85 percent rate delivered against 2011 Medicare Meaningful Use Stage 1, Year 1 and more than doubles the industry average (low 40 percent).

Jonathan Bush, CEO and Chairman of athenahealth, said, “Our Medicare Meaningful Use attestation rate is the proof in the pudding for cloud-based HIT services. This isn’t just a statistic: successful attestation represents real improvement in our client caregivers’ patient workflows, not to mention receipt of government MU incentive funds. It makes a tangible difference for our clients, which is what we work to do every day.”

The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) recently reported 12 percent of eligible Medicare providers nationwide have successfully attested to Meaningful Use.

Bush continued, “Ironically, this latest evidence of the superiority of the cloud model comes just on the heels of CMS [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] issuing yet another in a series of Meaningful Use program delays. While our software-based competition insists that the MU program sets the bar too high and moves too fast, our results prove otherwise. While we sympathize with CMS having to reconcile athenahealth’s average 90 percent success rate across MU Stage 1 with the persistent failures of our competitors, we are disappointed that CMS continues to prop up health information technology’s laggards. If health information technology is ever to catch up with the rest of the information economy, we cannot afford to keep hitting the brakes.”

athenahealth’s participating providers’ Meaningful Use success stems from the cloud-based service model that provides real-time, on-demand performance data, free performance coaching, and full registration and attestation support. The company also offers the industry's only federal incentive EHR guarantee, a Meaningful Use Resource Center, and a cross-functional team of experts to help clients manage—and even benefit from—Meaningful Use.

“A major advantage of a cloud-based EHR is that it uses real-time data from across the entire user network to continually learn and improve; with athenaClinicals, we benefit from lessons learned at other practices and by providers across the network,” said Dr. Amy Shoptaugh, pediatrician at All About Kids Pediatrics in Tempe, AZ. “While Meaningful Use is confusing in nature, athenahealth simplified the whole process by making the data easy to track and understand, as well as helping us to manage our performance against Meaningful Use measures. It’s not surprising that the majority of my athenahealth colleagues have attested to MU Stage 1 as they benefit from the same version of the cloud-based EHR that I do.”

“athenahealth made attesting for Meaningful Use easy. Tracking and reporting clinical data against Meaningful Use measures is streamlined and built into our EHR documentation workflow; even with additional reporting requirements, we’ve been able to reduce care coordination and administrative work by nearly 80 percent,” said Dr. Jaswant Chaddha of Atlanta West Women’s Center. “The athenaClinicals EHR gave me time back to focus on patients and not on reporting. Ultimately, I believe athenahealth provides more than a certified EMR, they’re Meaningful Use experts who coached me through the process and made sure I attested. Because of them, I was able to collect incentive dollars without distracting from the delivery of care.”

Since the introduction of the HITECH Act, athenahealth has been working closely with its clients to help ensure their full compliance with the requirements of the Medicare and Medicaid incentive program. Through its cloud-based EHR, with providers sharing a single instance of software, athenahealth has a real-time view into how its providers are performing. This enables the company to identify client pain points and focus its array of client services on addressing these challenges for all clients on the network.

Visitors to www.athenahealth.com/mu can explore all 20 Meaningful Use measures, view the up-to-date performance of athenahealth’s physicians on each measure, and learn what steps athenahealth is taking, measure by measure, to help its clients achieve success.

About athenahealth

athenahealth, Inc. is a leading provider of cloud-based Best in KLAS electronic health record (EHR), practice management, and care coordination services to medical groups and health systems. athenahealth’s mission is to be the most trusted service to medical care givers, helping them do well by doing the right thing. For more information, please visit www.athenahealth.com or call 888-652-8200.