athenahealth and Colorado Medical Society Partner on RCM Offering

athenahealth, Inc., a leading provider of web-based services, knowledge, and software for medical practices, and the Colorado Medical Society (CMS), the state’s largest physician membership organization, have teamed-up to offer athenahealth’s on-demand clinical and revenue-cycle management services to Colorado physicians. Under the terms of the agreement, the Colorado Medical Society will offer athenahealth’s web-based services to member physicians at preferred pricing.

"As the largest medical society in Colorado, our core mission is to advocate on behalf of thousands of physicians across the state," said Lynn Parry, MD, president of the Colorado Medical Society. "Considering the current market demands being placed on medical groups we feel they need the most effective solutions possible to navigate a constantly evolving healthcare environment that will require physicians to streamline their business operations and the delivery of care."

CMS selected athenahealth because of the company’s strong commitment to healthcare information technology and ability to allow physicians to optimize office workflow. athenahealth’s reporting capabilities and the feedback from other national partner affiliates were other factors that drew CMS to athenahealth’s web-based revenue and clinical cycle management model.

"We believe athenahealth combines the most comprehensive knowledge base of payer coding rules in the nation along with hard working people that together help get practices paid faster for the services they provide. Our partnership with the CMS is based on the common vision that practices should be able to get meaningful results quickly and with minimal frustration and effort," said Derek Hedges, vice president of business development for athenahealth.

"athenahealth’s flexible, service-based offering for medical groups is the key reason we selected them over traditional software-only vendors. We are now part of a growing network of thousands of physicians across the country and can actually look up our insurance carriers, see how well or poorly they are performing in relation to their peers and then make an educated decision on whether we should be making any contract changes," said Thomas Moore, MD, president of the Western Medical Associates and CMS member. "It’s also incredibly helpful to know that athenahealth has a vested interest to make sure my claims are processed and our practice is running at an optimal level. Now we just focus on our primary job — caring for our patients."