Electronic Health Reporter

WATERTOWN, Mass., (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — athenahealth, Inc.(Nasdaq:ATHN), a leading provider of cloud-based services for electronic health record (EHR), practice management, and care coordination, today announced that it has earned five Best in KLAS rankings within the “2013 Best in KLAS Awards: Software & Services” annual reportⁱ. As rated by thousands of health care providers across the U.S., athenahealth is now rated #1 in the following categories:

• 2013 Best in KLAS Overall Software Vendor
• 2013 Best in KLAS Overall Physician Practice Vendor
• 2013 Best in KLAS Practice Management Service, athenaCollector®, for the 1-10 and 11-75 physician segments
• 2013 Best in KLAS Patient Portal, athenaCommunicator®

“We are thrilled to be receiving five Best in KLAS awards, but are especially pleased with our Best in KLAS Overall Vendor award which recognizes the combined strength of all our services. Clearly, the tide is changing in health care. The old guard of HIT leaders is finally being displaced by more nimble, innovative models designed for health care’s future – not for its past,” said Jonathan Bush, chairman and CEO, athenahealth. “At athenahealth, we are connecting a national network of care from which information can move seamlessly across care settings to follow the patient. Through a combination of our cloud-based platform and our continually evolving set of services, we’re supporting physician practices and large health care enterprises to thrive under any scenario.”

The annual KLAS report is based on feedback from thousands of health care providers. It delivers insight as to how health care IT vendors across multiple categories are performing for their clients and against one another. The Overall Physician Practice Vendor award recognizes athenahealth as the HIT vendor with the highest average score for its Ambulatory EMR (athenaClinicals®) and Practice Management service (athenaCollector) across all segments. The Overall Software Vendor award recognizes athenahealth for having the highest average score across three products—athenaClinicals, athenaCollector, and athenaCommunicator, its patient portal and communication service. athenaClinicals, the most usable ambulatory EMR system, as rated by health care providers in the 2013 KLAS report on Ambulatory EMR Usability, ranked second in the ambulatory EMR category for the 1-10 and 11-75 physician segments.

“Our philosophy is to partner with our clients, and to take on work that we can execute on more efficiently at scale,” adds Bush. “We build the pipes and handle the logistics for care coordination and population health; we guarantee and deliver on Meaningful Use and ICD-10; we get claims paid and wrangle with payers; we foster meaningful patient engagement. It is an honor to be seen in the eyes of health care providers as #1 at what we do, and we look forward to continuing to earn our top position in the eyes of our most important critics, our customers.”

“We listened to the providers, and these are the results,” said Adam Gale, CEO and president of KLAS Research. “This report isn’t about KLAS. It is a reflection of thousands of providers who wanted to be heard and counted. That is the reason top-performing vendors should be proud of their achievements.”

The scalability of the cloud and athenahealth’s unique five-stage workflow methodology helps more than 47,000 providers thrive in the face of industry change and pressure. In 2012, athenahealth led the industry in Meaningful Use attestation, with 96 percent of participating providers attesting to Stage 1 during the year. Today, 100 percent of athenaClinicals users are on a 2014 Certified Complete EHR, and, to support clients’ transition to ICD-10, athenahealth has guaranteed a smooth transition or clients don’t have to pay. See more detail on the ICD-10 guarantee here: http://www.athenahealth.com/ICD-10/ICD-10.php.

For more information on athenahealth’s Best in KLAS suite of services, please visit www.athenahealth.com.

About athenahealth, Inc.

athenahealth is a leading provider of cloud-based services for electronic health record (EHR), practice management, and care coordination. athenahealth’s mission is to be caregivers’ most trusted service, helping them do well doing the right thing. For more information, please visit www.athenahealth.com.

About KLAS

KLAS is a research firm on a global mission to improve healthcare delivery by enabling providers to be heard and counted. Working with thousands of healthcare professionals and clinicians, KLAS gathers data on software, services, medical equipment and infrastructure systems to deliver timely reports, trends and statistical overviews. The research directly represents the provider voice and acts as a catalyst for improving vendor performance. Follow KLAS on Twitter at www.twitter.com/KLASresearch.