athenaCollector: A Medical Practice’s Premier Billing and Workflow Application In 1997, Jonathan Bush and Todd Park purchased a birthing practice in San Diego, California. When they ran into insurance reimbursement issues they began to look for existing electronic medical records (EMR) and practice management solutions to help solve their problems. They were unable to find software that met their needs so they decided to create their own program and as result athenahealth, Inc. was born.
Three years later, co-founders Jonathan Bush and Todd Park introduced a billing and practice management service called, athenaCollector. In 2006, athenahealth, Inc. launched athenaClinicals, advertised as the "first economically sustainable, service-based" electronic medical records (EMR) system (“athenahealth Introduces,” 2006). In August 2008, it announced the acquisition of MedicalMessaging.net (“athenahealth to Acquire,” 2008). Today athenahealth has four main services:
• athenaCollector - A web-based physician billing and practice management solution that reduces administrative red tape that allows you to efficiently assess, plan, and improve practice performance while increasing revenue (“athenaCollector,” 2012).
• athenaClinicals
- An electronic health records (EHR) system, delivering increased revenue, decreased cost, and more clinical control to medical practices. With flexible, web-based Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) certified software, it incorporate government mandates faster (“athenaClinicals,” 2012).
• athenaCommunicator
- A service that deals with daily phone traffic and administrative tasks. It includes an automated messaging platform, patient web portal, live operator and self-pay collections service (“athenaCommunicator,” 2012).
• athenaCoordinator
- A cloud-based care coordination service for order transmission,