henahealth, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATHN), a leading provider of web-based practice management, electronic health record, and patient communication services to medical groups, today announced that CHRISTUS Health, a leading Texas-based, not-for-profit, healthcare company that includes more than 50 hospitals and healthcare facilities in nine states, has selected athenahealth's full suite of web-based services for its rapidly growing CHRISTUS Provider Network (CPN) which is currently comprised of over 150 medical providers across more than 40 clinics in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas.
“Some of our physician practices have been using athenahealth's medical billing and practice management system since 2006, and we feel athenahealth has stood apart for its ability to deliver web-based, easily deployed, and flexible clinical and administrative services that are uniquely aligned with the success of our physicians' practices.”
CHRISTUS Health will implement athenaClinicalsSM, athenahealth's electronic health record service, as the backbone of a new clinical platform designed to drive better coordination of care between doctors and their patients. The platform will also enable their providers to participate in new government incentive programs like the HITECH Act. CHRISTUS Health will also leverage athenahealth's web-based physician medical billing and practice management service and medical scheduling service—athenaCollector® and athenaCommunicatorSM—as part of its larger enterprise-wide connectivity strategy. All three services are delivered over athenahealth's centrally hosted physician network, athenaNet®, and together will allow CHRISTUS Health and its growing physician network to support improved communications with patients across the care continuum.
"athenahealth will play a critical role as CHRISTUS Health looks to execute on a major clinical connectivity platform for our growing provider network that will facilitate more effective transfers of clinical and administrative health information across our enterprise. This flow of information is essential in order to improve patient care, reduce costs, and successfully participate in new government incentive programs," Donna J. Mikulecky, President and CEO of the CPN. "Some of our physician practices have been using athenahealth's medical billing and practice management system since 2006, and we feel athenahealth has stood apart for its ability to deliver web-based, easily deployed, and flexible clinical and administrative services that are uniquely aligned with the success of our physicians' practices."
Jonathan Bush, Chairman and CEO of athenahealth added, "Legacy software systems have long kept valuable clinical information siloed, and because they support a static environment, they fall out of step with regulations that impact the administration of care. CHRISTUS Health recognized the benefits of bringing health information out from behind individual server walls, allowing physicians to better manage and coordinate patient care, across all points of care, as well as be compliant with payer protocols and government regulations and incentives as they change and grow more complex. We believe that a connectivity strategy that takes advantage of the utility inherent in the web will drive results across the CPN."
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