WATERTOWN, Mass., May 19, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- athenahealth, Inc. /quotes/comstock/15*!athn/quotes/nls/athn (ATHN 25.74, +0.58, +2.31%) , a leading provider of Internet-based business services to physician practices, today announced that on May 18, 2010, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued athenahealth a patent entitled, 'Automated Configuration of Medical Practice Management Systems' (U.S. Patent No. 7,720,701) related to its automated Self-Service Implementation (SSI) capability. The Company's SSI technology allows a medical practice to virtually implement athenahealth's medical billing and revenue cycle management service, athenaCollector(SM), which is advantageous in that a practice can quickly and efficiently configure athenahealth's service for its individualized needs and the costs of implementation is significantly reduced through automation. This capability is especially critical for small physician practices that have limited staff and operational bandwidth. To date, athenahealth has implemented its web-based services at over 1,000 medical practices leveraging its SSI technology and is currently developing an SSI capability for its electronic health record service, athenaClinicals(SM).
The patent issued covers the self-service implementation of a medical practice management system. The technology involves receiving information about the medical practice (e.g., address, insurance plan information, provider information) prior to the configuration of the medical practice management system, associating that information with payer rules stored in a database, and requesting additional information for configuration of the medical practice management system to ensure that claims transmitted through the system meet payer requirements. A complete description of the patented technology is available through the website of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
"athenahealth's SSI technology has and will continue to play an important role in our ability to grow our national physicians network by making the act of implementing our web-based services and related training more streamlined and less burdensome on our clients," said Jonathan Bush, athenahealth's Chairman and CEO. "With this patent, we have strengthened our competitive positioning and our ability to sell, implement, and train new clients virtually, which has become increasingly vital for the small physician practice market."
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About athenahealth
athenahealth, Inc. is a leading provider of Internet-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 automated and live patient communication 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 advantages of our patented technology. 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.
SOURCE: athenahealth, Inc.
athenahealth, Inc. John Hallock (Media), 617-504-0958 Director, Corporate Communications [email protected] or Jennifer Heizer (Investors), 617-402-1322 Director, Investor Relations [email protected]