Member Benefit of the Week:
athenahealth Helps Physicians Get Paid Quickly, Correctly, and with Minimal Hassle
[Posted 06/15/06]

The complexity of the nonclinical work in a physician’s office is often under appreciated, even by the physician. Practice managers must pay meticulous attention to detail, while learning and applying new operational rules on the fly, dealing with the challenges of staff turnover, training and retraining, and gracefully managing constant telephone disruptions.

Nowhere is the detail more confounding than in the billing and collections process. That’s why CMA has partnered with athenahealth—a leading revenue management company—to help physicians get paid quickly, correctly, and with minimal hassle. athenahealth’s unique web-based practice management services include eligibility verification, claims submission, and insurance collection.

Good news for small practices: At CMA’s urging, athenahealth recently lowered its prices for practices with one or two physicians! And CMA members still receive and additional 6 percent off. Group practices are eligible for the member discount only if all of the physicians are CMA members.

Athenahealth is the only revenue management service for physicians that integrates work flow, billing, and collections into a single web-based service. This HIPAA-compliant system was developed by former medical practice managers who have a thorough understanding of the business problems faced by physicians in California. Athenahealth has the largest real-time database of payor rules and regulations in the country—a database that helps prevent billing problems before they result in denied claims and lost cash flow. Because it’s a web-based service, every time a new rule or feature is added, your practice benefits immediately.

CMA endorsed athenahealth’s award-winning solution after an extensive review of its software and services, lengthy discussions with California customers, and independent confirmation of the company’s unusually high user satisfaction rate. On average, practices that use athenahealth’s revenue cycle management service get paid 20 percent faster and see a 5 to 10 percent increase in collections.

Athenahealth’s services are available to most California physicians. There are, however, a few counties where athenahealth is not yet available.

Contact: Jodi Black, 916/551-2863 or jblack@cmanet.org.