SVHC to deploy athenahealth's cloud-based physician medical billing and practice management service

athenahealth, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATHN), a leading provider of web-based practice management, electronic health record (EHR), and patient communication services to medical groups, today announced that St. Vincent's HealthCare (SVHC), a not-for-profit regional medical facility in Jacksonville, Florida, will deploy athenahealth's cloud-based physician medical billing and practice management service, athenaCollector®, to its growing network of more than 120 employed medical providers. SVHC is recognized for its use of technology to drive efficiencies into the health supply chain. athenaCollector will help shift increasingly burdensome administrative functions away from SVHC's network of providers, allowing them to focus on patient care.

“SVHC continues to show why it is an innovator in the overall delivery of care, in its migration to technology to better facilitate financial outcomes that in turn boost the overall quality of care”

"When we decided it was time to replace our revenue cycle management system, we found athenahealth was better positioned to deliver a flexible and constantly evolving solution that meets a number of our needs and helps our physicians, many of whom have been slowed down or burdened by the complexities of healthcare administration," said SVHC CFO, Mark Doyle. "As a cloud-based service that stands in stark comparison to traditional software, athenahealth is able to remove the back office strain and stay current with changing insurance protocols to boost reimbursement without having to reintroduce new iterations that require significant training and capital."

As part of its athenaCollector service, athenahealth offers a patented knowledge-base of payer reimbursement process rules, the athenaNet rules engine, which is designed to enforce medical office workflow requirements and is updated continuously by athenahealth staff. athenahealth's rules engine acts as a proactive utility that guides clinic staff away from making medical billing mistakes that impact operational performance and the overall patient experience.

"SVHC continues to show why it is an innovator in the overall delivery of care, in its migration to technology to better facilitate financial outcomes that in turn boost the overall quality of care," said Jonathan Bush, Chairman and CEO of athenahealth. "Because athenahealth's services are in the cloud, we are able to extrapolate learnings and knowledge on a daily basis and apply these to the benefit of everyone on our network. Legacy software products are simply unable to keep in step with protocols that can have an adverse impact on operations and time spent on administration versus true patient care."