The orthopedics and sports medicine group OrthoArkansas has deployed a practice management and billing service for its physician organization.
OrthoArkansas, comprised of 21 orthopedic physicians, will use athenaCollector, a Web-based revenue cycle management system offered by Watertown, Mass.-based athenahealth, to update payer knowledge and back-office processing specialists into a single service.
"We have seen a number of leading orthopedic groups move away from software-based practice management systems and select athenahealth's network-based services in order to increase operational performance and the overall patient experience," said Bill Greene, chief executive officer of OrthoArkansas. "As a leading and growing group, we did not want to sustain the costs associated with traditional software, so a Web-hosted, service-based solution like athenaCollector was the obvious choice we felt would allow us to focus on optimizing our staff and multiple locations."
Company officials say athenahealth's proprietary payer and clinical rules engine, athenaRules, is a real-time database of payer rules and regulations with new rules being continuously added. The claims engine helps catch and correct billing errors before they're submitted in claims and lead to denials.
Officials say the engine can increase collections, speed-up reimbursement cycles and reduce administrative headaches for physician practices.
"Our network-based services are designed to provide consistent and measurable results as well as a greater level of transparency, which is especially critical for a multi-facility specialty organization like OrthoArkansas and a core factor in why we are seeing more and more medical groups move away from trying to optimize stagnant software-only solutions," said Jonathan Bush, chairman and CEO of athenahealth.