Hospitals Partnered with athenahealth Are Getting Paid Faster and Achieving on Average Cash Collections of 5 Percent Over Baseline1
WATERTOWN, Mass., Oct. 19, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- athenahealth, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATHN), a leading provider of network-enabled services for hospitals and ambulatory clients nationwide, today announced the company’s sustained momentum and strong ability to drive financial and operational results for clients across the community hospital market.
As part of its national network of 106,000 providers and 102 million patients, athenahealth supports a growing list of 56 community, rural, and critical access hospitals. Before partnering with athenahealth, many of these hospitals faced dwindling operating margins, declining reimbursement, overworked providers, and inadequate technology. Today, hospital clients live on athenaNet for a full year are achieving on average cash collections of 5 percent over baseline.
“One in three rural hospitals is at financial risk,2 which says to me they need a partner to help them scale innovation as well as eliminate underperforming processes and traditional software tools,” said Kyle Armbrester, chief product officer of athenahealth. “Earlier this year, KLAS reported athenahealth as the primary leader in terms of net gains in the community hospital market.3 We’ve been able to successfully tap into a market fiercely underserved by current healthcare IT vendors and retain 95 percent of hospital clients who we’ve brought live onto our network. We’re thrilled with our growing roster of satisfied clients and the overall industry shift4 from traditional software toward cloud-based services. As we grow our footprint within the hospital space, we will deepen and scale our services to even further improve the financial and operational value we deliver.”
Client Testimonials
Minnie Hamilton Health System, a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) and critical access hospital in Grantsville, West Virginia, was hemorrhaging money with its former EHR and billing system. “We were drowning in fragmented workflows that wasted precious provider time and ultimately cost us revenue,” said Eric Ritchie, chief operating officer of Minnie Hamilton. “We were promised that an expensive software upgrade would allow us to report on certain measures, but it never did. Being able to see and control the revenue cycle is a huge advantage for us, but our former vendor couldn’t give us that insight.”
“Today athenahealth’s cloud-based network gives us a deeper level of insight that allows us to identify bottlenecks and streamline the revenue cycle. athena’s dashboards provide quality measures that have helped us capture data we need to successfully report. Thanks to increased efficiencies, we’ve reduced our days in accounts receivable by 10 days, and 90 percent of providers are completing their charts in the same day,” said Ritchie. “athena is a true partner who is fully invested in the financial and quality performance of our health system. There are no longer hidden costs, expensive software upgrades, and forgotten promises. athena simply listens and delivers.”
Cascade Medical Center in Cascade, Idaho and Seiling Municipal Hospital in Seiling, Oklahoma struggled through years of inconsistent cash flow because of their previous vendor’s poor denial tracking and inferior quality reporting. “Within just a few short months of going live on athena’s cloud platform, we exceeded our expectations with a 75 percent increase in cash collections over baseline,” said Kimberly Dalrymple, chief financial officer of Cascade Medical Center. “For the first time ever, we’re fulfilling every single behavioral Meaningful Use measure and are on track to attest successfully in 2017.” Seiling also saw a 21 percent increase of cash collections over baseline after switching to athenahealth. “We were missing critical charges with our previous vendor, but athena has been able to fill in the gaps, ensuring we leave no revenue on the table,” said Jennifer Coons, chief executive officer of Seiling.
Ellenville Regional Hospital in upstate New York was hobbled by outdated legacy software that was error-prone and inconsistent across departments. With athenaOne, Ellenville now operates on a single network, giving providers access to patient records updated in real-time across departments. “In freeing up our providers from redundant data entry, athenahealth has given us flexibility to be available for our patients,” said Steven Kelley, chief executive officer of Ellenville.
For more information about athenaOne for Hospitals and Health Systems please visit: http://www.athenahealth.com/enterprise.
About athenahealth, Inc.
athenahealth partners with hospital and ambulatory clients to drive clinical and financial results. We offer medical record, revenue cycle, patient engagement, care coordination, and population health services. We combine insights from our network of 106,000 providers and 102 million patients with deep industry knowledge and perform administrative work at scale. For more information, please visit www.athenahealth.com.
Contact Info:
Holly Spring
athenahealth, Inc. (Media)
media@athenahealth.com
617-402-1631
Dana Quattrochi
athenahealth, Inc. (Investors)
investorrelations@athenahealth.com
617-402-1329
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1 “Baseline” is a measure of the client's cash collections prior to being live on athenahealth.
2 John Commins. “Rural America an Afterthought in GOP Health Plan.” HealthLeaders Media. March 8, 2017. http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/community-rural/rural-america-afterthought-gop-health-plan#
3 “US Hospital EMR Market Share 2017: Decision Energy Shifts to the Small Market,” April 2017. © 2017 KLAS Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved. www.KLASresearch.com
4 HIMSS. “2016 HIMSS Analytics Cloud Survey.” Oct. 2016. https://www.cleardata.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2016-HIMSS-Analytics-Cloud-Study.pdf