The weekend was bookended by good and bad news for athenahealth, Inc., the provider of Web-based billing software and services for physician practices.
Today, athenahealth announced the launch of its athenaCommunicator, a patient communication program that's fully integrated with athenahealth’s physician practice management and electronic health record (EHR) services. The comprehensive suite of Web-based tools is meant to free physicians from burdensome administrative tasks, improving practice operations and the quality of care delivered.
But Friday saw the news that Pomerantz Haudek Grossman & Gross LLP had filed a securities fraud lawsuit against the company in U.S. District Court. The class action suit was filed on behalf of purchasers of athenahealth stock during the period between Sept. 20, 2007 and Feb. 25, 2010. The complaint is related to athenahealth's announcement – after the markets had closed on Feb. 25, 2010 – that it would need to revise its prior financial statements pending an evaluation of its policy for amortizing deferred implementation revenue. That announcement caused the firm's stock to fall 13 percent.
The company's new product, athenaCommunicator is designed to manage patient interactions triggered by practice staff or by automated routines within the Web-based athenaNet platform. Specifically, from a centralized inbox, authorized users can view a record of all patient communications conducted via a patient Web portal, automated messaging platform, or an athenahealth operator. Being Web-based, the service doesn't require doctors to invest in costly software, servers, or phone lines.
Features of the athenaCommunicator service include:
• Automated Messaging Platform, which automates phone calls and e-mails to patients for appointment reminders, past-due balance alerts, disease management initiatives and other compliance-driven campaigns.
• Patient Web Portal, which gives patients a secure and efficient, 24-hour, Web-based approach to scheduling appointments, retrieving test results, viewing personal health information, updating insurance and demographic information, viewing educational health content, reviewing financial statements and making secure credit card payments.
• Live Operator Services, which offers virtual access to the same athenaNet screens currently used by practice staff; athenahealth operators can answer patient calls on a doctor’s behalf and provide convenient and intelligent assistance, easing the burden of high call volume on a practice’s staff while granting greater access and flexibility for patients.
• Self-Pay Reminder Service, which schedules messaging based on balance amounts and aging thresholds, aiming to improve collection rates and self-pay days in accounts receivable. Additionally, automated balance due reminders via phone and e-mail, coupled with soft-collect letters delivered via the patient Web portal, can improve the speed and quantity of dollars collected.
"We have been a long-time client of athenahealth, and our group has already seen the tremendous benefits this new patient communication service can deliver," said Usman Mirza, CEO of the San Antonio Orthopaedic Group. "What is often not discussed when addressing physician practice challenges is the massive volumes of phone calls, faxes, letters, and messages that are required to best serve patients. We had recognized that patient communications have not evolved to take full advantage of mobile communication, Internet, and e-mail, and athenaCommunicator is clearly designed to help us manage a wide variety of patient interactions from one centralized inbox on athenaNet."
Revenue up 38 percent
This past week, before news of the lawsuit, athenahealth finally published its Q4 and FY '09 financial results after their initial delay. The company's total revenue for the three months ending Dec. 31, 2009, was $54.4 million, compared to $40.8 million in the same period in 2008 (an increase of 33 percent). Full year 2009 revenue was $188.5 million, compared to full year 2008 revenue of $136.3 million (an increase of 38 percent).
"I am very proud of our accomplishments in 2009, a year in which we further established athenaClinicals as a leading electronic health record service, strengthened our unique value proposition with a patent issued on our payer rules engine, and stepped up our investments in growth by acquiring Anodyne Health Partners," said Jonathan Bush, athenahealth's president, and CEO. "As physicians face increasing complexity associated with payment reform and incentive programs, I continue to believe that our unique approach as a software-enabled-service will deliver superior results to both physicians and investors."
