Health Management Associates Selects athenahealth for Strategic Partnership

Health Management Associates, Inc.239-598-3131Vice President of Financial Relationsorathenahealth (Business Media)212-446-1861orathenahealth (Industry Media)617-502-4300orathenahealth (Investors)617-402-1329

, Inc. (NYSE: HMA) announced today a partnership with athenahealth, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATHN), a leading provider of cloud-based , (), and care coordination services to medical groups. Through this partnership, athenahealth’s solutions will be implemented for Health Management Association’s employed physician network of more than 1,200 providers operating in fifteen states at more than 300 locations.

In addition, athenahealth will offer its suite of services to the nearly 10,000 independent physicians affiliated with Health Management hospitals.

“The Health Management Physician Network is focused on enabling our employed and affiliated physicians by providing the best tools available to deliver top-quality patient care and outcomes,” said Patrick Easterling, President of the Health Management Physician Network. “Our partnership with athenahealth allows us to enhance our current initiatives by providing additional support to our physicians using athenahealth’s cost-effective and proven practice and clinical management solutions.”

The services offered to Health Management employed and affiliated physicians through the partnership include:

“We are excited for the opportunity to work with one of the nation’s largest and most progressive hospital companies,” said Jonathan Bush, Chairman and CEO of athenahealth. “Health Management’s physician network will benefit from the power of cloud technology to constantly iterate and extrapolate from the collective clinical and operational knowledge and best practices of thousands of medical groups around the nation already on the athenaNet platform, in turn enabling them to pull out greater efficiencies from their clinical operations. The shared goal is to support physicians so that they can deliver the best care possible.”

Health Management selected athenahealth after a twelve-month review and due diligence process that involved more than 350 clinical experts, including more than 200 physicians. The evaluation process included detailed questionnaires, onsite and virtual demonstrations, site visits, and clinical template shootouts.

“Emerging incentive programs and new federal reform laws place more importance on having the most effective clinical and financial solutions in place than in the past,” said Dr. Ron Riner, Chief Medical Officer for Health Management Associates. “Most physicians see the benefit of migrating to an electronic health record system. We made sure our physicians were actively engaged in the selection process, as they will ultimately be the ones adopting these solutions to improve patient care in their communities.”

athenahealth’s solutions will play a vital role as Health Management continues to implement and adopt policies and technology to meet “” and other criteria laid out by the federal government. EHRs are a core component to accessing and participating in many of the governmental and commercial payer sponsored quality initiatives that are on the horizon. Health Management will begin to implement athenahealth solutions in markets over the course of the next several months.

Health Management Associates enables America's best local health care by providing the people, processes, capital and expertise necessary for its hospital and physician partners to fulfill their local missions of delivering superior health care services. Health Management, through its subsidiaries, operates 70 hospitals, with approximately 10,500 licensed beds, in non-urban communities located throughout the United States. All references to "Health Management" and the “Company” used in this release refer to Health Management Associates, Inc. and its affiliates.

athenahealth, Inc. is a leading provider of cloud-based business services for physician practices. athenahealth's service offerings are based on proprietary web-native and () software, a continuously updated payer knowledge-base, integrated back-office service operations, and care coordination services. For more information, please visit or call 888-652-8200.

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions and are identified by words such as "expects," "estimates," "projects," "anticipates," "believes," “intends,” "plans," “may,” “continues,” “should,” "could" and other similar words. All statements addressing operating performance, events or developments that Health Management Associates, Inc. or athenahealth, Inc. expect or anticipate will occur in the future, including but not limited to incurrence of indebtedness, projections of revenue, income or loss, capital expenditures, earnings per share, debt structure, bad debt expense, capital structure, repayment of indebtedness, the amount and timing of funds under the meaningful use measurement standard of various Healthcare Information Technology (“HCIT”) incentive programs, other financial items and operating statistics, statements regarding the potential for adoption of athenahealth, Inc.’s services or the timeline for their implementation, statements regarding the plans and objectives of management for future operations, innovations, or market service development, statements regarding acquisitions, joint ventures, divestitures and other proposed or contemplated transactions (including but not limited to statements regarding the potential for future acquisitions and perceived benefits of acquisitions), statements of future economic performance, statements regarding legal proceedings and other loss contingencies, statements regarding market risk exposures, statements regarding the effects and/or interpretations of recently enacted or future health care laws and regulations, statements of the assumptions underlying or relating to any of the foregoing statements, and other statements which are other than statements of historical fact, are considered to be "forward-looking statements."

Because they are forward-looking, such statements should be evaluated in light of important risk factors and uncertainties. These risk factors and uncertainties are more fully described in Health Management Associates, Inc.'s and athenahealth, Inc.’s most recent Annual Reports on Form 10-K, under the heading entitled "Risk Factors." Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should any of Health Management Associates, Inc.'s or athenahealth, Inc.’s underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results could vary materially from those currently anticipated. In addition, undue reliance should not be placed on any such forward-looking statements. Except as required by law, Health Management Associates, Inc. and athenahealth, Inc. each disclaim any obligation to update its risk factors or to publicly announce updates to the forward-looking statements contained in this press release to reflect new information, future events or other developments.

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