Is anyone a user of the Athenahealth EMR?
The AthenaHealth is a a healthcare technology company founded in 1997 which has AthenaClinicals, which, as I understand it, is an almost free CCHIT-certified EHR which rolled out in late 2006. Most of AthanaHealth's revenue is tied directly to the collections for clients. Our Fred Trotter interviewed him on 2/2007- check out this article here.
Actually, I never heard of them, until now, and I'm glad that I looked them up since AthenaHealth may be the reason why President Bush is pushing HIT so strongly. It seems that the CEO is none other than President Bush's cousin, Jonathan Bush, age 37. Read this article on the relationships at CNN. It may be that this Bush is a rebel- he donated funds to BOTH McCain and Obama recently (see this article). In one article he stated that his last President Bush encounter was back in 2001- something that I find it hard to believe.
This publicly traded stock, ATHN, has lost 30% of it's market value over the past YTD, half of which has been lost in the past 2 weeks. It's 52-week high ($47.78) was hit on 11/5/2007 and its 52-week low ($20.72) was hit on 3/24/2008 (signifying an over 50% drop in its stock price!). Over the past month, their COO and others on down have been selling off their shares (see this article), prior to their Q2 earnings release set for 8/4/2008 (see this article).
Interestingly, though, their growth has been great for the past 8 years, and they did report a 36% 2007 to 2008 Q1 growth. I'm not sure why it's been having recent downturns- here is some discussion on the possible difficulties that their EMR may encounter in the future:
"I feel that a major challenge for the athenaClinicals EMR business is security. Could the current generation of doctors be convinced that it’s safe to have patient medical records zapped to a server miles away over the Internet? I know that even the most tech savvy doctors and lawyers are hesitant to place client documents on a computer connected to the Internet. Already on the Q3 conference call, management noted that revenue from athenaClinicals was small and the investment into infrastructure has pulled down overall margin. I do not think this is a product that will take off.Finally, I could see this type of service easily becoming a commodity. With so many players in this competitive field, a shift in the industry could easily allow another provider to dominate. If athenaHealth does not get bought by a larger company like GE Healthcare, it has a good chance to get crushed by a more well-known name in the field."
"If you stick with athenaHealth for the long term, I am certain she will send your portfolio to the hospital!"
"Don't Be Fooled by the athenaHealth Hype", (URL here)
Al Borges, M.D.
● Oncologist in a Small Group Practice in Virginia
● My website URL: http://msofficeemrproject.com/
" it has a good chance to get crushed by a more well-known name in the field."
who are their chief competitors?
The usual "enterprise" EHR vendors- GE, NextGen, Allscripts, Cerner, etc.
It does exist. Its still in its infancy so it's not overly robust.
when you say that, have you actually seen it, say in the last 6 months or did a friend of a friend tell you that. Where is it deficient?
soconfused: did a friend of a friend tell you that.
did a friend of a friend tell you that.
Why would you write that?
I saw it 3 months ago.
I wonder how much of their CCHIT certification is political...
Right, George Bush made phone call on behalf of his cousin to bypass CCHIT requirements so they could be certified. Are you serious?
X-Files movie isn't due out till later this month. That's when we find out about the true cover up.
I know little about their EMR, but believe their billing/collections service is top notch! Best of Breed. Most equate AthenaHealth to this service. Their EMR is relatively new.
As far as equating an EMR to their stock price, consider what the stock price would be of many private EMR's.
Here is a post from Dr. Care who is familiar with the EMR
http://www.emrupdate.com/forums/p/14720/84404.aspx#84404
"I’ve been a user of athena’s billing services for a couple years now, since 2005 when I came to EMRupdate looking for advice, and an investor in the company as soon as I my broker could buy shares. My wife’s practice also uses them but for both billing and EMR, and they could not be happier.
I am not sure what “Sales guy” is referring to in his comments about rates increasing. Niether my wife, or my rate has never increased, and none of my colleagues who use their services have increased either (some of their contracts go back 6 years). I do find myself paying them more now than when I first contracted them, but that is only because I am getting paid more. 3.75% of 800k is a lot more than 3.75% of 600k.
On the EMR side everything is not perfect, but the approach they have taken is very smart. I sat in on my wife’s practice’s emr selection, they looked at NextGen, ECW, Centricity and Athena . After viewing the demo’s and performing site visits with the competitors she decided to go with Athena. It’s been live for a few months now and Athena has blown away all of her (and my) expectations.
On day one her practice was paperless, not because she wanted it to be(which she did) but because Athena made it so. With them you outsource your paper. The 100 or so fax’s she received a day are sent directly to them. They have nurse practitioners who look at each and every one of those inbound faxes, attach it to the patient, tie it to the order, and queue it up for her staff to take action. That's just one of the services they provide that no other EMR vendor takes on.
I don’t want to go into too much detail, but because of the services they provide with their EMR. I am convinced that she will never miss anything in regards to patient care-- again, because Athena makes it so.
I haven’t bit the bullet and purchased it yet, I'll be adding it later this year.
The implementation team was top notch, they sat with each member of the clinical staff and customized the solution so that it fit what they wanted perfectly.
I have to thank whoever puts this forum together, I don't post often, I think its been since 2006 but read every week. It's great to see everyone's great insight."
I wonder how much are the costs of the total AthenaHealth package?
>>> DallasDoc: "Right, George Bush made phone call on behalf of his cousin to bypass CCHIT requirements so they could be certified. Are you serious?"
You don't believe that his association with the President of the United States could even indirectly propel his company? From what I've seen with CCHIT's "dark side" which we have spoken of at length, this type of stuff is not out of the ordinary. CCHIT is a private company which has been endowed by the HHS to oversee the HIT of the United States in a private/public partnership which helps it bypass the very Federal anti-racketeering laws in the United States. It's very representatives are the CEOs and affiliates of "enterprise level" EMRs that have everything to gain by destroying their lesser known competition. These same companies spend multi-thousands of dollars to promote HIT and operations like CCHIT on their behalf, and to have a company that is run by the President of the United States' cousin become CCHIT certified would be a windfall indeed. This is not voodoo or far-out thinking... it's reality.
I'm glad that the AAFP is now beginning to agree with what I've said in the past:
"Leaders at AAPS said that mandating the use of health IT and "quality monitoring" of physicians is similar to regulating the practice of medicine, which Congress "has neither the expertise not the constitutional authority" to do. AAPS officials added that Congress 'cannot delegate to government agencies or private organizations authority it does not have.'"
Cheers,
Al
Who competes with them? Athenahealth handles your PM as an ASP and also handles the submission and posting of claims and of course there is their fancy "rules engine." Is there a competitor to them?
I usually enjoy the Borg rants but I think you're out in left field on this one.
After all, there are objective requirements to passing CCHIT. Don't you think it would be fairly easy for someone to take a look at AthenaHealth EMR and see if it meets basic CCHIT requirements.
Do you really think that the President of the United States gives a hoot about the CCHIT certification of AthenaHealth. I will wager he has never even heard of CCHIT.
His own personal physician doesn't use AthenaHealth, he uses Allscripts. If he was so eagar to have AthenaHealth be the king of EMR's, don't you think he would use this same influence to have his personal doc use it?
Your "reality" is a farce. Get back to what you do best.