WATERTOWN, Mass., May 17, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- athenahealth, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATHN), a leading provider of network-enabled services for hospital and ambulatory clients nationwide, today announced the expansion of the company’s Guarantee Program to include a Meaningful Use (MU) Stage 3 Guarantee for hospitals. The Meaningful Use Stage 3 Guarantee for hospitals joins a growing portfolio of quality initiatives support offered by the company, including a Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) guarantee and client support program.
“Every hospital or health system —no matter the size— wants a partner who can tackle the complex work of getting reimbursed,” said Jonathan Bush, chief executive officer at athenahealth. “As government-mandated programs reinvent themselves year after year, we’ve taken on the reporting administration so our clients can remain focused. By leveraging our national network, our payer and quality measure rules engine, and years of expertise around cracking the code of the complicated, we aim to free providers and care staff to spend more time delivering care.”
The Meaningful Use Stage 3 Guarantee for hospitals is the newest addition to the athenahealth portfolio of industry-leading programs for government-mandated quality reporting, including a Meaningful Use guarantee for ambulatory clients with 96.7 percent of clients successfully attesting in 2016, and a Value Modifier (VM) program in which 96.3 percent of athenahealth providers successfully avoided VM 2017 penalties.
“athenahealth offers an unmatched level of support, especially as the burden to capture quality measures increases every year,” said Clinton Eaves, chief executive officer of Jasper General Hospital in Bay Springs, MS. “Meaningful Use has become simple, thanks to the transparency and ease with which the guidelines and measures are made inherent within our EHR. Not only can we track our performance and make adjustments as needed, but reporting is streamlined despite the program’s complex nature.”
Since entering the hospital market in 2015, athenahealth has contracted with more than 100 community, rural, and critical access hospitals across 35 states to maximize day-to-day efficiencies and staff performance by automating or eliminating the tedious tasks that divert time from patients. Even as the average hospital’s operating budget shrinks and resources become scarce, athenahealth hospitals have thrived. According to the company’s 2016 fiscal data, clients achieved an average of over 106 percent of cash flow above baseline and cut Days in Accounts Receivable by 16 percent.
“Today's hospital market is woefully underserved,” added Jonathan Bush. “athena’s model is uniquely suited to support community hospitals with its low up-front costs, aligned incentives, and no maintenance costs. It’s an attractive value proposition that separates our results-oriented platform model from that of traditional software.”
What is athenahealth guaranteeing?
Under athenahealth’s Meaningful Use Stage 3 Guarantee for hospitals, if a hospital uses athenaOne for Hospitals & Health Systems Service in accordance with athenahealth’s best practices and experiences a downward payment adjustment to its Medicare Part A fee schedule, athenahealth will provide a service fee credit to offset such downward payment adjustment, subject to certain limitations.i Clients will not be charged additional fees nor burdened with upgrades to meet Meaningful Use requirements.
athenaClinicals for Hospitals & Health Systems will be certified EHR technology in the ONC Health IT Certification program for Stage 3 ahead of the reporting period in 2018. To learn more about athenahealth’s Meaningful Use Stage 3 Guarantee for hospitals please visit: www.athenahealth.com/prmeaningfuluse3guarantee
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 99,000 providers and 88 million patients with deep industry knowledge and perform administrative work at scale. For more information, please visit www.athenahealth.com.
i Each client must agree to the Meaningful Use Stage 3 guarantee (the “Guarantee”) terms in an effective services agreement between athenahealth and client. Eligibility conditions apply, including, but not limited to, that the Guarantee is only available to new athenahealth clients and their eligible hospitals with 50 beds or fewer that are live on athenaOne for Hospitals and Health System services by June 30, 2018. If all conditions in the Guarantee terms are met, and our athenaOne for Hospitals and Health System client experiences a downward payment adjustment to its Medicare Part A fee schedule based on failure to satisfy Meaningful Use Stage 3 requirements during the 2018 reporting period, Athena will provide monthly service credits to client during the twelve month period during which CMS imposes such downward payment adjustment, provided that: (i) the amount of any such credit shall not exceed client’s total monthly athenaOne for Hospitals and Health Systems Service Fee with respect to such month; (ii) if the agreement between the parties expires or terminates prior to client receiving the full credit amount, client shall forfeit the remainder of the credit amount; and (iii) provided that the credits will be client’s sole and exclusive remedy with respect to any downward payment adjustment to client’s Medicare Part A fee schedule during the applicable twelve month period. Additional conditions apply and clients should review the Guarantee terms in their service agreement.