athenahealth Launches National Database of Medical Practice Performance Metrics

athenahealth, Inc., the premier provider of web-based software, knowledge, and services for medical practices, has launched a new service for its customers designed to help physician practices improve their financial and operational performance by measuring themselves against similar practices across the nation. The athenahealth Live Benchmarking Program provides the first real-time, online benchmarking service of its kind. Available to all athenahealth clients, the program has proven to be an extremely effective way to use healthy competition to motivate continuous improvement among practices. As part of the program, athenahealth is offering a quarterly rewards program to further fuel its customers’ motivation to leverage the data and improve their practices’ operational performance through designated metrics.

athenahealth’s Live Benchmarking Program is designed to analyze performance on four of the best practice metrics tracked by athenahealth’s athenaNet® Web-based software. Practices can compare their numbers against other athenahealth practices by state, region, specialty, group size or national average. Practices can look at their real-time ranking for each best practice category for a 7-day or 91-day average. The four benchmarks tracked through athenahealth Live Benchmarking are:

• Charge Entry Lag – The average days elapsed between time of service and charge entry.
• Hold Lag and Manager Hold Lag – As part of athenahealth’s “rules engine” service, which monitors a practice’s front-desk workflow in real-time and identifies billing errors, office staff are able to make corrections well before claim submission. A practice’s claims are put into one of two “hold buckets” awaiting approval before submission. These metrics represent the average number of days a claim waits in the administrator’s or practice manager’s hold buckets.
• Self-pay over 90 days – The percentage of open self-pay balances still unpaid after 90-days.

“athenahealth’s new Live Benchmarking Program combines real-time, standardized performance data that allows practices of all sizes to see dramatic operational and financial improvement – all through the power of peer motivation,” said Jonathan Bush, chairman and chief executive officer of athenahealth. “This industry-first, live benchmarking service is just another manifestation of athenahealth’s obsession with service and customer success.”

The Live Benchmarking Program is designed to tap into the motivational power of competition to help practices improve their overall performance. As an added incentive, athenahealth is awarding prizes to the best performing practices in each category regionally (Northeast, Southern, Midwestern, and Western) and within three specialty groups (Medical Specialties, Primary Care, and Surgical Specialties). Quarterly Live Benchmarking winners will be recognized at athenahealth’s annual User Conference in October 2006 and will be entered into a raffle to receive a week-long trip for four to a tropical getaway.

Family Care Associates, a solo physician practice based in Wellesley, Massachusetts was the Q2 2006 winner among practices in the Northeast for the Primary Care specialty group. “athenahealth’s Live Benchmarking Program allows access to real-time, up-to-the minute data on how we stack up against other practices across the nation,” said Cora Schrader, office manager of Family Care Associates. “I can now look at our practice’s financial and operational numbers each morning and actually create a benchmark for us to beat. This helps set the pace for the day as our office takes great pride in working to improve our numbers. It really feels like we’re competing on a daily basis to be the best practice nationally against what we consider healthy competition. Live benchmarking is another example of the constant innovations and improvements athenahealth keeps building into athenaNet.”

Altavista Medical Center, part of Centra Health in Lynchburg, Virginia was the Southern region winner in the Primary Care specialty group for Q2 2006. “We were very excited when we heard that one of our practices – Altavista Medical Center – had won,” said Tammy Tweedy, Director of Centra Health Professional Services. “We were especially proud since that practice runs with a very lean staff with only one biller on site.”