ST. PETERSBURG, FL – Suncoast Medical Clinic has replaced its Web-hosted practice management system with athenaCollectorSM, a Web-based revenue cycle management system from athenahealth.
The St. Petersburg, Fla.-based clinic is one of two medical organizations to recently sign contracts with athenahealth, the Watertown, Mass.-based developer of Web-based business services for physician practices.
“We feel (athenaCollector) will enable our staff to prevent insurance claim denials that impact operational performance and the overall patient experience,” said David Bailey, executive director of Suncoast Medical Clinic, which employs more than 60 medical providers in nine locations throughout the greater St. Petersburg area.
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.
“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,” said Bailey.
“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,” said Rob Cosinuke, chief marketing officer for athenahealth.
OrthoArkansas, a Little Rock, Ark.-based sports and medicine group comprised of 21 orthopedic physicians is also deploying athenahealth’s athenaCollector 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. “We felt it would allow us to focus on optimizing our staff and multiple locations.”
Officials say the engine can increase collections, speed-up reimbursement cycles and reduce administrative headaches for physician practices.