She's an athena veteran and has just been become our new Vice President of Product Management. Meet Diane Kaye, this month's featured athenista.

aP: Tell us about your new position at athena.
DK: In my new role, I am the Vice President of Product Management which means I'm responsible for the services and features of the products we offer, as well as their pricing and packaging in the market. I'm responsible for tracking the value our products and services offer to customers and defining areas of opportunities for improvement. Currently this includes our revenue cycle and clinical cycle offerings, but I imagine this will likely expand to more in the future--we have a lot to get done on clincials first as our new offering! I am pleased to say that our first alpha went successfully live on athenaClinicals in November and another will be going live in December. We have an ambitious year ahead both in terms of the revenue cycle product and athenaClinicals.

aP: What are you working on now?
DK: As I've transitioned to my new role, my primary focus has been on athenaClinicals and specific elements of our revenue cycle services). On the clinicals side, I've largely been focused on planning for 2006. There are so many moving pieces and parts including ensuring the product is ready for Beta, understanding the specialties that are part of the Beta, determining general implementation timeframes and schedules and planning around the service operations associated with athenaClinicals,. We have a great team focused on all of this which is how we'll make it all happen next year and beyond. It always comes down to the people.

aP: What is your "athena history?" (i.e., how did you first come to work here, what positions have you had, etc.)
DK: I started with athena in January of 2000, so I've been here almost 6 years. I think when I started our employee count was in the 30's. When I started, I worked with Todd in product development. I was focused initially on payor relationships (built and implemented the initial partnerships with United and Oxford), as well as defining processes for setting up payors for claim submission and eligibility. From there I moved into operations and was responsible for researching and opening new markets and ensuring we were ready to submit claims, building transactions, working to fully define our rules building process, enrollment of providers for our transactions, etc. During my tenure in that role, we went from billing in just California and Rhode Island to 26 markets. We also transitioned all transactions to HIPAA compliant formats (and tested every single payor transaction as part of that process so client claims would not be harmed through this massive industry migration). Of course, all of this was accomplished by the work of terrific folks on the teams I led.

In April of 2004, my son was born and when I returned from maternity leave, I took on a role with Jonathan that could better meet the balance I was looking for after having a child. athena is great about this! I worked to define our "unified theory of medical practice" that we presented at this year's users conference. I also did work on revenue cycle product management with Todd and kicked off our efforts in Washington, DC around government policy.

aP: What was the hardest/most frustrating project you worked on at athena?
DK: The hardest project was probably ensuring our readiness for HIPAA transactions because of the amount of work required in a relatively short period of time, while the whole industry was changing, as well. The most frustrating projects occurred in our early days. Clients would go live and were not able to send out their claims electronically. Also, dealing with some of the Medicaid plans on enrollment and pay-to issues were frustrating. MA Medicaid in the early days and NY Medicaid and TX Medicaid thereafter...

aP: What was the best business trip you ever took?
DK: There are a couple. The first was in the early days when we had one of our first meetings with United. We expected a couple of junior folks to meet with us at their headquarters in CT. Instead we walked into a room full of their executives, some of whom had flown in from their headquarters in MN. The meeting was a great success and we could hardly believe that one of the largest payors "got" what we were doing, wanted to know how they could work with us to improve administration for physicians and that was at a time when we had far fewer customers than we have today!! Most recently, the best trip was a trip with Jonathan earlier this year when we were "figuring out" our Washington strategy. After spending the day meeting with folks on Capital Hill about "health IT" and Stark, we had no planned meeting or dinner (which is very unusual) and thus, we took off our "work hats" and hung out with friends at an Ethiopian Restaurant in the Adams Morgan section of D.C. One of the great things about working at athena is the people, but there's not nearly enough time to spend with people not fully focused on work--when those occasions arise, especially while traveling, it's great fun!

aP: Describe a skill, interest, or something from a 'past life' that none of us may know about.
DK: I've always had an interest in psychology. In fact, if I had not been so "practical" when I was younger, I probably would have gone that route. But in past lives, I've both collected and read more psychology books and books on human nature than one might imagine. My husband calls it my library of self help for myself and all others! I actually majored in economics in college, focusing on microeconomics, because I thought it explained human behavior well, and of course, I thought it was much more practical than psychology. I just have a general interest in people, what makes us tick, what makes us behave the ways we do, etc. Beyond that, before I met my husband (who's from South Africa, but may be the only person born in the continent of Africa without an "outdoorsy" bone in his body), I was a very avid skier and bicyclist. I use my husband as my excuse for not doing these things right now, but when my son gets a little older, I'll go back....so I say....

aP: What is your favorite way to unwind after work?
DK: My 19 month old son Nathan takes care of that for me; when I walk in the door he's the focus!! So that's an easy one!