Leading medical billing and records software provider athenahealth (ATHN) has expanded its partnership with University Hospitals (“UH”), a major community-based health systems in the U.S.
Under the agreement, UH will deploy Athenahealth’s flagship web-based medical billing and practice management solution “athenaCollector” to University Hospitals Case Medical Center, its academic medical center. Cleveland-based University Hospitals Case Medical Center, the primary affiliate of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, has more than 1,000 health care providers.
Ohio-based UH is a leading non-profit medical center operating through an integrated network of hospitals, outpatient centers and primary care physicians. The deal extends the collaboration between UH and Athenahealth. UH has been using athenaCollector in some of its practices since 2009.
Massachusetts-based Athenahealth is a leading provider of web-based business services for physician practices. Through constantly updated knowledge base and automation created within its main product athenaCollector, the company is now the clear leader for billing software in the ambulatory market.
Athenahealth has done a commendable job in differentiating athenaCollector in order to build it as one of the strongest brands within the Health IT market. The product differentiates itself from a traditional “do-it-yourself” software model, in which, customers make a large upfront investment, installs or hosts the software, and pays an annual maintenance fee.
Under Athenahealth’s model, the software is essentially free and clients outsource their billing function to the company. Athenahealth books a percentage of cash collections.
Higher adoption of athenaCollector and athenaClinical electronic health record (“EHR”) solution by physicians and medical providers fueled a revenue growth of roughly 28% in first-quarter fiscal 2011. Use of athenaCollector by medical providers and physicians rose 16.5% and 20.8% year over year, respectively, in the quarter. Roughly 19,778 active physicians were using athenaCollector at the end of the quarter.
However, athenahealth continues to face stiff competition across all of its operating platforms with established Health IT players such as Allscripts-Misys (MDRX) and Quality Systems (QSII) posing a major threat to the company.
Nevertheless, Athenahealth remains positive about its growth prospects in each of its market segments. The company is well placed to benefit from its expanding athenaCollector client base.
