Suncoast Medical Clinic Selects athenahealth’s On-Demand Practice Management and Billing Service

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. & WATERTOWN, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--athenahealth, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATHN), a leading provider of internet-based business services for physician practices, today announced that Suncoast Medical Clinic, LLC, one of Florida’s leading multi-specialty medical groups will be replacing its web-hosted practice management system with athenahealth’s on-demand practice management and billing service, athenaCollector^SM. Suncoast Medical Clinic employs over 60 medical providers and has nine locations throughout the greater St. Petersburg community.

“Given the size of our group and the growing demands on staff to stay current with changing reimbursement protocols and increased consumer responsibility, we feel practice management software alone, whether it is hosted or client server-based, is simply not able to deliver the kinds of administrative and financial outcomes our group requires,” explained David Bailey, Executive Director of Suncoast Medical Clinic. “athenahealth’s software-enabled service, athenaCollector, is centrally-hosted and continuously updated with new payer-specific coding and documentation information that we feel will enable our staff to prevent insurance claim denials that impact operational performance and the overall patient experience.”

As part of its athenaCollector service, athenahealth has built a proprietary knowledge-base of payer reimbursement process rules, athenaRules, which is designed to enforce medical provider office workflow requirements, and is updated continuously by athenahealth staff. athenaRules acts as a proactive utility that guides clinic staff away from making billing mistakes that impact operational performance and the overall patient experience.

“With there only being one instance of our national software platform, athenaNet®, our teams of analysts are able to keep our national network of medical practices current with the increasingly complex rules, regulations, and administrative processes needed to run their businesses,” said Rob Cosinuke, Chief Marketing Officer for athenahealth. “By leveraging network-based services rather than a software-only solution, Suncoast Medical Clinic will now be able to benefit from the collective operational knowledge of thousands of medical groups around the nation which will allow them to increase their operational transparency and results.”

About Suncoast Medical Clinic

Suncoast Medical Clinic is South Pinellas County's largest physician alliance serving the St. Petersburg community for nearly five decades. Born out of a 1997 merger of the county's two largest and premier multispecialty physician practices -- Suncoast Medical Clinic (est. 1956) and St. Petersburg Medical Clinic (est. 1952) -- the Suncoast team operates with a shared goal of providing quality healthcare services and state-of-the-art technology to meet the changing needs of the residents and visitors of Pinellas County. For more information about Suncoast Medical Clinic call (727) 894-1818 or visit our website at www.suncoastmedicalclinic.com.

About athenahealth

athenahealth is the leading provider of internet-based business services for physician practices. The Company’s service offerings are based on proprietary internet-based practice management and electronic medical record (EMR) software, a continuously updated payer knowledge-base and integrated back-office service operations. For more information visit www.athenahealth.com or call (888) 652-8200.

This press release contains forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding the benefits of the athenahealth’s service offerings. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in these forward-looking statements. In particular, the risks and uncertainties include, among other things: the risk that our services offerings will not operate in the manner that we expect, due to design flaws, security breaches or otherwise; potential interruptions or delays in our internet-based services offerings; our reliance upon third parties, such as computer hardware, software, data-hosting and internet infrastructure providers, which reliance may result in failures or disruptions in our service offerings; errors or omissions included in our payer and clinical intelligence rules engine and database; and the evolving and complex government regulatory compliance environment in which we and our clients operate. Existing and prospective investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. athenahealth, Inc. undertakes no obligation to update or revise the information contained in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or circumstances or otherwise. For additional disclosure regarding these and other risks faced by athenahealth, Inc., see the disclosure contained in our public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.