WATERTOWN, Mass. & PORTLAND, Maine--(BUSINESS WIRE)--athenahealth, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATHN), a leading provider of cloud-based practice management, electronic health record (EHR), and patient communication services to medical groups, today announced an agreement with the Maine Medical Center Physician-Hospital Organization (MMC PHO), a not-for-profit partnership of the MMC and the Community Physicians of Maine (CPM). The MMC PHO supports more than 1,000 CPM physician members. The goal of the agreement is to support the implementation of innovative health IT solutions that will help physicians focus on delivering quality care to their patients while reducing administrative cost.
Through the partnership, MMC PHO will introduce their members to athenaCollector®, athenahealth’s practice management and medical billing offering, and athenaClinicals®, its EHR offering. These services can greatly help provider practices to be more productive in meeting the needs of their patients. With these programs, the practices will access tools and information to provide optimal patient care. athenahealth’s services run in the cloud, a web-based environment, which means there are no costly set-up, maintenance, or upgrade fees. The users benefit from cloud technology and the services performed, which together enable the formation of a health information network that continually learns and iterates, using the experience of each user to benefit the broader network. On athenahealth’s network, all users are kept current with clinical requirements and reimbursement rules that enable them to better meet the needs of their patients. From day one, the services backing athenahealth’s technology take on the time-consuming back-office tasks, thereby allowing physicians to focus more of their time on patients.
“Our goal in this partnership is to support member physicians who can benefit from these services. This will bring better value to their patients and our communities in terms of cost-effective, quality care. This is a tough balance to strike, given the obstacles our independent practitioners face,” said Jeff Aalberg, MD, Chief Medical Officer at MMC PHO. “We believe athenahealth’s cloud-based services will help practitioners better manage these administration and care coordination obstacles, effectively taking the burden off their shoulders as they are asked to conform to new rules, protocols, and mandates. This is one of many ways the PHO has brought IT value to our members and the patients whom they serve.”
Jonathan Bush, athenahealth Chairman and CEO, added “athenahealth is a proud employer in Maine, and we are particularly pleased to bring our cloud-based offerings to the state’s physicians and practices in a new way, this time through the MMC PHO partnership. Being able to tap the power and knowledge of a network like athenahealth’s that lives in the cloud is even more critical in a rural state where many practices are small, independent, and geographically siloed. We’re in the business of improving revenue, taking out costs, and providing more clinical control for medical practices, a mission shared by MMC PHO.”
About MMC PHO
The MMC Physician-Hospital Organization (MMC PHO) is a nonprofit organization incorporated in 1994. Over 1,000 physicians in the Community Physicians of Maine (CPM) partner with Maine Medical Center (MMC) with the shared goal of delivering high quality, cost effective healthcare to our communities.
The organization is governed by a Board of Directors with seven representatives from each member organization. The CPM includes physician members from the Greater Portland, Biddeford, Brunswick, Norway, Boothbay Harbor, Damariscotta, Belfast and Camden Rockport communities.
MMC PHO’s vision is “To be the leader in supporting value-based, integrated health care.”
About athenahealth
athenahealth, Inc. is a leading provider of cloud-based business services for physician practices. athenahealth’s service offerings are based on proprietary web-native practice management and electronic health record (EHR) software, a continuously updated payer knowledge-base, integrated back-office service operations, and automated and live patient communication services. For more information, please visit www.athenahealth.com or call (888) 652-8200.
This press release contains forward-looking statements, which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding the anticipated benefits of athenahealth’s service offerings and the nature of prospective markets for those offerings. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in these forward-looking statements. In particular, the risks and uncertainties include, among other things: the risk that our service offerings will not operate in the manner that we expect, due to design flaws, security breaches, or otherwise; potential interruptions or delays in our internet-based service offerings; our reliance upon third parties, such as computer hardware, software, data-hosting, and internet infrastructure providers, which reliance may result in failures or disruptions in our service offerings; errors or omissions included in our payer and clinical intelligence rules engine and database; and the evolving and complex government regulatory compliance environment in which we and our clients operate. Existing and prospective investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. athenahealth undertakes no obligation to update or revise the information contained in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or circumstances, or otherwise. For additional disclosure regarding these and other risks faced by athenahealth, please see the disclosure contained in our public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, available on the Investors section of our website at http://www.athenahealth.com and on the SEC’s website at http://www.sec.gov.