Athenahealth's Stand-Alone Option Enhances Hospital and Physician Market

By Anuradha Shukla
TMCnet Contributor

athenahealth, Inc., a provider of web-based practice management, electronic health record (EHR), and patient communication services to medical groups, announced the offering of its web-based EHR service, athenaClinicalsSM, as a stand-alone offering.

Earlier clients were required to adopt athenahealth`s web-based billing and practice management service, athenaCollector, if they wanted to use athenaClinicals as part of a fully-integrated platform.

However the athenaClinicals stand-alone option offers athenahealth`s hospital and enterprise clients flexibility as they execute on their affiliated and clinical community connectivity programs. The stand-alone EHR service, supported by the company’s clinical document management service as well the athenahealth.staff will reside on athenahealth`s national web-based platform, athenaNet.

Key features of the stand-alone EHR service include:

--athenahealth account management and customer support center service to be provided at the same level of support as the integrated EHR service.

--The stand-alone offering will be operated from the athenaNet platform

--Includes Lab result interface development and management

-Inbound patient demographics, scheduling, and outbound charge interfaces will be available.

--Pay-for-Performance (P4P) rules, built directly into athenaNet

--All standard prescription eligibility checking will be available.

Jonathan Bush, chairman and CEO of athenahealth explained that the stand-alone EHR service was proof of athenahealth`s commitment and ability to meet the needs of hospital systems and their affiliated medical practices. He added that by offering the EHR service on its own, they were looking to eliminate some common purchase barriers faced by community and affiliated physicians looking to participate in hospital-based clinical connectivity strategies.

Bush further added that the clinical market is continually evolving and physicians need new web-based EHR technologies such as the kind that athenahealth can offer.