Athenahealth (ATHN), a vendor of cloud-based services for physician practices, recently announced that Medicare meaningful use incentive payments have been released to its first physician customer utilizing athenaClinicals, the company’s Electronic Health Record (“EHR”) service. This marks the culmination of the initial step in the company’s Federal Stimulus Bonus Payment Guarantee Program.
The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act), of 2009, set aside $19.2 billion in federal incentives to promote physician adoption of EHR. As per the Act, physicians may receive as much as $44,000 from the Medicare program, over a 5-year period, as incentive for meaningful use of a certified EHR. Starting this year, physicians reimbursed by the Medicaid program may, under state guidelines, receive as much as $63,750.
Athenahealth is privy to a real-time view as to how each physician is using an EHR. This enables the company’s performance team to mentor each provider about best practices, which culminates in achievement of meaningful use criteria. AthenaClinicals is simultaneously able to reduce the provider’s administrative burden emanating from meaningful use requirements.
The company added that as new meaningful use criteria emerge under Stages 2 and 3 of the program, its model will speedily incorporate such measures without providers having to reinvest in additional training and funding.
One doctor, who is an early adopter of athenaClinicals, was recently a recipient of the maximum single-year reimbursement payment of $18,000 and is eligible for an additional 10% for practicing in a Healthcare Professional Shortage Area. This payment marks the first step in the realization of Athenahealth’s guarantee, unusual in the industry, of assuring federal meaningful use incentive payments, over and above meaningful use certification.
For its part, the company stated that, while it was pleased with the initial success, its goal is to ensure that all its providers are in compliance with meaningful use requirements with minimal associated administrative hassle.
Athenahealth provides a federal stimulus bonus payment guarantee program that assures its web-based offerings will assist doctors satisfy EHR certification requirements, for meeting Medicare meaningful use, to receive the initial year program incentives offered by the HITECH Act. athenaClinicals was certified, in September 2010, as a Stage 1 ONC-ACTB 2011/2012 complete EHR for all 44 clinical quality measures.
Massachusetts-based Athenahealth is a leading provider of web-based business services for physician practices. Sustained strong adoption of the company’s athenaClinicals EHR service has contributed to revenue growth of 28% in first-quarter fiscal 2011. Utilization of the flagship product, athenaClinicals, by medical providers, more than doubled year over year in the quarter.
However, Athenahealth continues to face stiff competition across all of its operating platforms with established healthcare IT players such as Allscripts-Misys (MDRX) and Quality Systems (QSII) posing a major threat to the company. Nevertheless, the company is well placed for growth boosted by the expanded adoption of its premium solutions.
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