WATERTOWN, Mass., June 19, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- athenahealth, Inc.(Nasdaq:ATHN), a leading provider of cloud-based services for electronic health record (EHR), practice management, and care coordination, today announced that its clients account for 59.2 percent of providers across the U.S. who have successfully attested to Stage 2 of the Meaningful Use EHR incentive program as of May 31, 2014. While athenahealth's athenaClinicals® EHR is used by less than three percent of providers across the U.S., the Best in KLAS ranked service leads the industry in Meaningful Use Stage 2 attestations.
athenahealth's announcement of its clients' attestation rates follows the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) report last week to the HIT Policy Committee, and the recent publication of CMS's full list of electronic health record products used for attestation, which can be found online: http://catalog.data.gov/dataset/cms-medicare-and-medicaid-ehr-incentive-program-electronic-health-record-products-used-for. Of the 485 eligible providers who have attested for Meaningful Use Stage 2, 287 use athenaClinicals—representing 59.2 percent of all successful Meaningful Use Stage 2 attestations. This announcement comes on the heels of a proposal by CMS and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) to ease attestation requirements and delay the program's timelines overall.
"The loosened requirements and delays for the Meaningful Use Program have been too heavily influenced by the many software vendors who have not been able to upgrade their EHR products, receive certification, or adequately support their health care provider clients," said Jonathan Bush, chairman and CEO, athenahealth. "Providers across the country deserve full transparency around vendors' ability to perform in line with government incentive programs and in comparison to other vendors in the market. Such transparency and accountability is the only way to fully serve the provider and hospital community and to earnestly advance digitization and connectivity in health care."
Since April 22 of this year, athenahealth's clients' performance against Stage 2 measures has been publicly available on the company's online Meaningful Use Dashboard. athenahealth is currently the only EHR vendor to publicly track its clients' Meaningful Use performance and offer a Meaningful Use Guarantee for successful attestations.
"By partnering with athenahealth as our vendor, we have all the tools at our disposal—including an easy-to-use patient portal—to successfully meet Meaningful Use measure requirements," said Dr. Unaiza Hayat, CEO and chief medical officer of avecinia wellness center. "While we've had to work to create a behavioral shift around patient engagement, the work not only helped us receive our reimbursement, but also had the added benefits of saving time and improving care quality and patient satisfaction. The bottom line is that Meaningful Use isn't a hardship for us at all—it's a straightforward, seamless process built right into our workflow."
Visitors to http://www.athenahealth.com/meaningful-use.php can explore all Meaningful Use Stage 1 and Stage 2 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, Inc.
athenahealth is a leading provider of cloud-based services for electronic health record (EHR), practice management, and care coordination. athenahealth's mission is to be caregivers' most trusted service, helping them do well doing the right thing. For more information, please visit www.athenahealth.com.
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athenahealth, Inc. (Media)
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617-402-1631 / 617-402-6509
Dana Quattrochi
athenahealth, Inc. (Investors)
investorrelations@athenahealth.com
617-402-1329
