PINEHURST, N.C. and WATERTOWN, Mass., May 21, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- athenahealth, Inc., a leading provider of web-based services, knowledge, and software for medical practices, today announced at the TEPR 2007 Conference and Exhibition, in Dallas, TX, that FirstHealth Family Care Centers have selected athenahealth's fully-hosted, web-based EMR service, athenaClinicals(sm), to improve the clinical workflow and financial performance of their 7 care facilities throughout North Carolina.
"As market dynamics change for our medical practices, we want to empower them with services that will allow them to optimize operational efficiency while also achieving a higher level of clinical connectivity among our various locations," said Dr. George D. Bussey, Chief Medical Officer of FirstHealth of the Carolinas. "We have used athenahealth's practice management service since April 2003 and feel that their centrally-hosted EMR service will now allow our practices to achieve a greater level of interoperability both clinically and administratively. This will become increasingly important as medical groups look to implement new care processes while driving additional revenue from more efficient billing and pay-for-performance compliance."
Leveraging athenaClinicals, the FirstHealth Family Care Centers will now be able to document all patient visits and procedures, submit orders and manage tasks in a single, secure online patient record hosted by athenahealth. As part of the "Virtual Clinical Back Office" service, athenahealth teams will receive all faxes for the practice, scan relevant clinical data directly into the patient record and automatically place the data into the practice's clinical workflow. athenaClinicals will also submit all lab requests on behalf of the practices, provide electronic verification that all tests results have been received and make communication of abnormal results to the patient a new task in the clinical workflow, which may help to minimize professional liability.
"We are thrilled that one of North Carolina's leading medical groups has selected our integrated clinical and practice management service offering," said Todd Park, Co-Founder and Chief Development Officer of athenahealth. "We designed our services to provide a consistent and measurable return-on-investment and greater level of transparency into all facets of medical practices, which is specifically critical for a multi-facility organization like FirstHealth Family Care Centers."
athenaClinicals is fully-integrated with athenahealth's practice management service, athenaCollector(sm). The combined service is designed to provide continually updated payer-specific coding rules and E & M coding reviews to help providers optimize reimbursement for practice-specific pay-for-performance payer contracts. All areas of the practices are able to share clinical and billing history information for patients, and monitor performance on best practice metrics which are automatically tracked and reported in athenaNet(r), athenahealth's web-based, fully-hosted software platform.
About FirstHealth of the Carolinas
FirstHealth of the Carolinas is a private, non-governmental, not-for-profit health care network serving 15 counties in the mid-Carolinas. FirstHealth of the Carolinas includes three hospitals -- one in Richmond County and one in Montgomery County, as well as the flagship Moore Regional located in Pinehurst -- with a total of 611 licensed beds. In an effort to offer a multi-disciplined continuum of care, FirstHealth also provides inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation services, skilled nursing facility, three sleep disorders centers, three dental clinics for underserved children, seven family care centers, six health and fitness centers, charitable foundations, a Hospice program, a Home Care program, critical care transport, EMS and medical transport services, and an insurance plan. To learn more, visit www.firsthealth.org.
About athenahealth, Inc.
athenahealth provides a physician revenue and clinical cycle management service that integrates Web-based practice management and electronic medical record (EMR) software, continually updated payer knowledge, and back-office processing specialists into a single service. athenahealth is dedicated to helping providers make optimum use of their time, ultimately improving the quality of service delivered and the financial reward for it. For more information, visit www.athenahealth.com or call (888) 652-8200.