athenahealth Announces Release of Meaningful Use Physician Performance Data and Real-Time Online Dashboard

athenahealth, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATHN), a leading provider of cloud-based practice management, electronic health record (EHR), and care coordination services to medical groups, today announced the launch of a new online dashboard to provide clear visibility into the performance of physicians on the athenahealth network against Meaningful Use criteria. Visitors to this regularly updated dashboard will gain valuable insight into how the thousands of providers currently participating in athenahealth’s Meaningful Use reimbursement program are progressing toward meeting all Medicare Meaningful Use measures. The dashboard sheds light on the measures presenting the greatest challenges to providers and their practices as they aim to successfully complete the attestation process and collect their incentive payments.

Since the introduction of the HITECH Act, athenahealth has been working closely with its clients to help ensure their full compliance with the requirements of the Medicare and Medicaid incentive program. Through its cloud-based EHR, with providers sharing a single instance of software, athenahealth has a real-time view into how its providers are performing, enabling the company to identify client pain points and focus its array of client services on addressing these challenges for all clients on the network. Operating as a service in the cloud enables athenahealth to work hand-in-hand with providers—from offering them real-time on-demand pay-for-performance data, to free performance coaching, to full registration and attestation support to get them across the Medicare Meaningful Use finish line.

Visitors to www.athenahealth.com/hitechact can explore all 20 Meaningful Use measures, view the up-to-date performance of athenahealth’s physicians on each measure, and learn what steps athenahealth is taking, measure by measure, to help its clients achieve success.

One of the most challenging measures for providers, as revealed by the athenahealth Meaningful Use dashboard, is the Clinical Summary measure. Under the measure, providers must furnish clinical summaries to patients for at least 50% of all office visits within three business days of the office visit. This has proved difficult for practices to fulfill due to the behavior and workflow changes required, and the fact that data from the EHR must be shared with the patient. athenahealth has focused significant efforts on making it easier for practices to achieve this measure, and is beginning to see significant progress. Clinical summaries are now made available to patients electronically once the encounter is closed and the visit is documented, subject to provider review and editing.

While there are many variables involved in successfully attesting and receiving incentive payments, and there remains a long road ahead, athenahealth physicians appear to be doing well compared to program results reported by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Of the athenahealth physicians participating in the Federal incentive program, 100% are on a Meaningful Use Certified EHR, 11% have attested to the Medicare requirements and 63.3% are two or fewer measures away from meeting all required measures. According to July 2011 data from CMS, there are more than 75,000 clinicians currently registered for the various Medicare and Medicaid Meaningful Use incentive programs. Of these, 2,246 (3%), have successfully attested to meeting all Meaningful Use criteria (or claimed allowed exclusions).

Jonathan Bush, CEO and Chairman of athenahealth said, “In working hand-in-hand with our providers every day it’s become abundantly clear that achieving Meaningful Use is very complex, far more complex and labor intensive than most people could ever have imagined, and by pulling back the covers with this new dashboard we are hoping to get the industry talking about how to best help our nation’s physicians become Meaningful Use compliant. Are some of our providers still a distance from the finish line? Yes. But the beauty is that we can see exactly where they are and we can coach and guide them through the finish line.”

Dr. Reavis T. Eubanks, a solo practitioner in Ashville, NC and athenahealth client, attested in June and earned $18,000 for his year one incentive. He commented, “Purchasing a Meaningful Use certified EHR is one thing, but demonstrating a certain aptitude for using it is another matter entirely. It’s daunting to providers when they read the fine print of Meaningful Use. Luckily for me, my transition from boxes of records to athenahealth’s digital service has not only been swift but comforting because the Company isn’t selling a product and then disappearing. They are a service based on outcomes and aren’t successful unless I’m successful in meeting the Meaningful Use standards. I’d urge all providers to ask questions of their EHR vendors and encourage those vendors to stick their necks out a little further.”

View how Mt. Auburn Hospital physicians used athenahealth to achieve Meaningful Use here.

athenahealth offers a federal stimulus bonus payment guarantee program that assures its cloud-based services will help doctors across the nation to meet EHR certification requirements for achieving Medicare Meaningful Use and to obtain the year one program incentives offered under the HITECH Act. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services formally announced the final definition of Meaningful Use on July 13, 2010, and the program started on schedule on January 3, 2011. Physicians will have until June 30, 2012, to participate in athenahealth's Medicare Meaningful Use guarantee program. athenaClinicals was certified on September 30, 2010 as a Stage 1 ONC-ACTB 2011/2012 complete EHR for all 44 clinical quality measures. Please visit www.athenahealth.com/bonus to learn more about athenahealth's EHR and the federal stimulus bonus payment guarantee program.

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 care coordination 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 and potential for use of athenahealth’s service offerings to achieve meaningful use measures. 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.