Recently, Virginia HIT, a Health Information Technology extension center, and the Center for Innovative Technology together selected Athenahealth Inc. (ATHN) as an electronic health record (EHR) solution partner. Athenahealth’s innovative technologies would allow the physicians across the Commonwealth of Virginia to extensively avail the benefits of EHR services.
Athenahealth is a leading provider of Internet-based business services for physician practices. Athenahealth’s services product offerings include Athenaclinicals that automates and manages medical-record-related functions for physician practices and includes the EHR platform.
Virginia HIT provides direct, individualized and on-site technical assistance to small and rural primary care units and helps in selecting and implementing a certified EHR to achieve “Meaningful Use” and qualify for Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments, as well as avoid future penalties.
The partnership with Athenahealth will help physicians attain “Meaningful Use” promptly and upgrade patient care with EHR solution, a continuously updated payer knowledge base provided via the Internet. Physicians find the EHR solution very flexible, cost effective as well as time-saving.
Athenahealth’s Services revenue increased 32.0% year over year to $52.6 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2010. The market penetration of EHR was relatively insignificant during the quarter with only 1,867 active medical providers of whom 1,275 were physicians, compared with 949 providers and 574 physicians in the first quarter of fiscal 2009. The Healthcare Information Technology (HCIT) program, which is expected to start by January 2011, holds significant opportunity for the company to increase its EHR Sales.
Furthermore, Athenahealth recently launched a guarantee program to meet EHR certification requirements for achieving “Meaningful Use” and thereby qualify for reimbursement funds authorized by the HITECH Act. The HITECH provisions (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health), are estimated to provide $35 billion or more of incentive payments and stiff reimbursement penalties, which are expected to drastically increase EHR software adoption in the coming years.
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