athenahealth's EMR Service, athenaClinicals, Receives CCHIT Certification

The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT)(sm) announced that the software component of athenahealth’s service-based EMR, athenaClinicals(sm) Version .15 Release, is CCHIT Certified(sm) and meets CCHIT ambulatory electronic health record (EHR) criteria for 2006. Ambulatory EHRs are designed for physician offices and clinics where most Americans get their healthcare. CCHIT is a Recognized Certification Body in the United States for certifying health information technology products — an independent, nonprofit organization that sets the benchmark for EHRs.

As a CCHIT Certified product, the web-based athenaClinicals(sm) EMR software has been tested and passed inspection of 100 percent of a comprehensive set of criteria for:

• Functionality (ability to create and manage electronic records for all patients, as well as automating workflow in a physician’s office),
• Interoperability (a first step in the ability to receive and send electronic data to other entities such as laboratories), and
• Security (ability to keep patients’ information safe).

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The CCHIT Certified mark — a "seal of approval" for EHR products — provides the first consensus-based, consistent benchmark for ambulatory products. By looking to products with the CCHIT Certified seal, physicians and other providers can be assured they are making a reliable investment and insurers and other payers know the products meet expected industry standards.

"Physicians who purchase certified products have the assurance that they have been reviewed by a panel of judges, including practicing physicians, and that they are being evaluated against standards set by professionals in the field and successfully piloted with products from large and small companies," said Mark Leavitt, M.D., Ph.D., chair, CCHIT. "The quality and safety of EHR products can now be measured using certification criteria that were developed specifically for that purpose."

The goals of CCHIT product certification are to reduce the risk of HIT investment by physicians and other providers; ensure interoperability of HIT products; enhance the availability of HIT adoption incentives from purchasers and payers; and protect the privacy of personal health information.

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"athenahealth is pleased that CCHIT has granted full certification to the software component of our service-based EMR offering," said Jonathan Bush, Chairman and CEO of athenahealth. "We designed athenaClinicals to be a clinical cycle management service that combines intuitive, fully hosted EMR software, continually updated clinical and payer rules, and a ‘virtual clinical back office’ service that together delivers consistent and measurable results for medical groups of all sizes."

"As medical groups continue to grapple with new emerging pay-for-performance programs and best practice guidelines it will be critical that they look to results-oriented services that are aimed at maximizing quality-of-care and the payment for it," Bush continued.

CCHIT’s certification compliance criteria and its design for a certification inspection process have been thoroughly researched, taking into account the state of the art of EHRs and available standards, and comparing certification processes in other industries and other countries. The inspection process is based on real-life medical scenarios designed to test products rigorously against the clinical needs of providers and the quality and safety needs of healthcare consumers and payers. One script, for example, recreates a scenario of an elderly man with poorly controlled diabetes, hypertension and other chronic conditions in order to test EHR functions such as potential adverse drug reactions, disease management and treatment plans.

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"Our practice has been a long-time user of athenahealth’s athenaCollector(sm) revenue cycle management service and felt athenaClinicals provided a truly different approach than software-only EMRs," said Thomas Mohr, M.D., president of Pediatric Partners, MPC, a multi-location group based in Temecula, California. "Given the massive amount of paper that comes into any medical office, having a centrally hosted EMR service that scans and categorizes every incoming fax, then matches clinical documents to existing patients and patient orders has given our group an incredible amount of process control on both the clinical and operational fronts."