"Every time I come to the User Conference, I learn something new. There's no time in the office to learn the little tricks. It's amazing the things athenaNet does for us!"
Mary-Carol McMahon
Anchor Medical, Rhode Island
Letter from Jonathan
Thanks to everyone who attended this year's User Conference. With your help, we continued to improve the Unified Theory by connecting the efforts made by our clients on athenaNet and results generated by those efforts into one unified theory of medical practice which can be used by all of us to improve performance. This year's User Conference content was more thorough and detailed than ever before. If you weren't there be sure to get the materials from your athenahealth Account Manager. This new depth of content allowed us to obtain insight from all of you to inform our program development efforts towards a simpler, more comprehensive athenaNet. Congrats to Dr. Deborah Hazen of Shrewsbury, MA for winning the Live Benchmarking Program's grand prize. Read about the grand prize award as well as the Q3 Live Benchmarking winners in this issue. I hope all who attended the User Conference had the opportunity to attend an athenaClincials demonstration. Check out the E-prescribing article for the latest on using athenaClinicals to submit and review prescription data electronically. And to stay on top of compliance issues, check out Ann and Natalie's article on updating your compliance plan in response to the Office of the Inspector General's 2007 Work Plan. Hope to see you at next year's User Conference.
athenahealth's 5th Annual User Conference: If you couldn't make it, read on...
No time during a busy day at work to figure out athenaNet Wizards or explore functions that would make your life easier? Need help strategizing about maximizing payer reimbursement? The annual athenahealth User Conference is the place to learn all of that and more...
Live Benchmarking winners for Q3 and grand prize winner
Congratulations to the Live Benchmarking Program's third quarter winners and grand prize winner from athenahealth's 5th annual User Conference. Dr. Hazen won a trip for four to Las Vegas. Click here to check out Dr. Hazen's stats and to see the Q3 winners.
Spotlight on athenaClinicals E-Prescribing Tool
Most states have now passed legislation encouraging physicians to adopt electronic prescribing. How does athenaClinicals incorporate this increasingly important (and time-saving) feature? Find out here.
Ann & Natalie's Compliance Corner
Welcome back to Ann & Natalie's Compliance Corner! This month, we bring you guidance on updating your compliance plan in response to the Office of the Inspector General's (OIG) 2007 Work Plan.
athenista spotlight: Meet Shawn Mullins
Claiming to have a handle on the "paperwork," Shawn Mullins, manager of the Paper Claims Team at athenahealth, is proud to be part of the athenahealth family. Meet Shawn Mullins and hear the story of how he got Jonathan Bush to come to work dressed as Batman!
Help welcome new athenista Chris Cousins, Vice President of Client Operations for the Southern Region
athenahealth is pleased to announce the arrival of our newest Client Operations leader. Click here to learn about Chris.
Vital Stats
Days in Accounts Receivable (DAR) dropped 1.7% between October 2005 and October 2006, despite the fact that Medicare's payment hiatus in September caused a residual lag on Medicare's DAR for October. Lost patient care revenue (LPCR) was up at 5.3%. Some of our biggest improvements came in our most challenging payer segments (Self-Pay, Medicaid).
athenaFunnies: An episode from the User Conference
True stories from the athenahealth vault
A client called the CSC to ask what time it was in Boston so she could figure out when to call her account manager who was at the User Conference here. Maybe athenahealth's next venture should be in time zone education!
Best wishes,
Johnathan Bush
