WATERTOWN, Mass. & BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)– athenahealth, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATHN), a leading provider of internet-based business services to physician practices, today announced that Boston-based Caritas Christi Health Care has selected athenahealth’s network-based electronic health record (EHR) service, athenaClinicalsSM, for its owned physician network that currently employs over 500 medical providers. Caritas Christi also plans to offer athenahealth’s services to its affiliated physician network, which consists of an additional 1,200 providers. Caritas Christi is the largest community-based hospital system in New England, providing community-based medicine and tertiary care in eastern Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Caritas Christi’s owned physician network is currently live on athenahealth’s revenue cycle management service, athenaCollectorSM.
“The growing demands on our medical providers and staff to stay current with changing reimbursement protocols, increased consumer responsibility, and performance-based clinical reporting have required our health system to harness more flexible, network-based services like athenahealth’s,” said Caritas Christi CEO and President Ralph de la Torre. “We feel this new clinical platform will allow us to achieve our aggressive quality-of-care goals and execute on new programs like our recently announced Alternative Quality Contract (AQC) with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts.”
The AQC is a significant change from traditional fee-for-service contracts and gives physicians the flexibility to allocate health care resources based on what will have the greatest benefits to patient health. Under the AQC, Caritas Christi will increase its focus on preventative care while optimizing quality and access. In order to maximize the potential of the AQC model for the benefit of its diverse patient population, Caritas Christi has overhauled several corporate structures and is making key strategic partnerships and investments, including a recent agreement with Microsoft to implement the Amalga Unified Intelligence System. The implementation of athenaClinicals as a major system-wide electronic health record platform is aimed at delivering the highest quality of care to patients, while helping to reduce unnecessary costs.
“Given the rapid change we are seeing in health care and what will be required from providers in terms of tracking and reporting clinical information, athenaClinicals will enable us to better control our clinical supply chain, respond to rapidly evolving requirements of emerging programs like the HITECH Act, and enable our physicians to demonstrate meaningful use of an electronic health record system,” said Todd Rothenhaus, M.D., Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Caritas Christi.
athenaClinicals is fully integrated with athenahealth’s revenue cycle management service. Both services are delivered through athenaNet®, athenahealth’s web-based, centrally hosted national software platform. athenahealth is focused on applying its deep knowledge and best practices for rapidly discovering and implementing new payment and clinical rules to the task of continually monitoring emerging requirements for the HITECH Act, Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI), and other emerging commercial insurer pay-for-performance programs. The HITECH Act was signed into law by President Obama on February 17, 2009, as part of the larger stimulus package known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The Act includes up to $44,000 total in Medicare payment incentives per eligible provider who demonstrates “meaningful use” of an EHR starting in 2011.
