athenahealth, Inc. , a leading provider of web-based practice management, electronic health record (EHR), and patient communication services to medical groups, today announced that Southwest Kidney Institute, PLC, one of the nation’s leading kidney disease management groups, has selected athenahealth’s full suite of web-based services to help its 50 medical providers streamline operational procedures and to support improved communications with patients that will enable the delivery of better, more coordinated patient care.
Southwest Kidney Institute’s dialysis centers and programs are designed to deliver dialysis services and education to patients with chronic kidney failure and end-stage renal disease. In January of 2008, Southwest Kidney Institute partnered with DaVita, an expert in dialysis management in the United States, with the intention of allowing the company to focus more on patient care. Southwest Kidney Institute selected athenahealth’s services in an effort to drive better operational and clinical outcomes for their nephrology physician practices. athenahealth announced a partnership with DaVita in March 2010 to market its services to nephrologists across the country.
Southwest Kidney Institute will adopt athenaCommunicator(SM), a patient cycle management tool designed to manage patient interactions triggered by practice staff or by automated routines within athenaNet(R), athenahealth’s web-based platform. This will present the group with expanded accessibility for patients after-hours and on weekends, improved self-pay revenue stream, re-captured staff and physician time, reduced no-shows, as well as elimination of expensive paper-based mailing campaigns.
athenaCommunicator will work seamlessly with athenaCollector(R), athenahealth’s web-based medical billing and practice management service, which is fully integrated with athenahealth’s electronic health record (EHR) service, athenaClinicals(SM). Combined, these three services will provide Southwest Kidney Institute with a single, unified practice management platform that will help to improve their practice and patient communications across a number of fronts.
“When we decided it was time to upgrade our practice management capabilities and current EHR system, we researched a number of companies in the market. After seeing how athenahealth is able to harness the power of the Internet into a flexible solution that meets a number of our needs, we looked no further,” said Pam Young, Chief Administrative Officer for Southwest Kidney Institute. “athenahealth is able to offer us services to support our practice from a billing and health record standpoint, as well as the ability to better communicate with our patients 24/7. We believe this will greatly improve the level of care and attention we can provide to our many patients. Knowing that we have a trusted business partner in athenahealth improves our ability to focus on what matters most: patient care.”
Jonathan Bush, Chairman and CEO of athenahealth, commented, “Like many providers of health care, Southwest Kidney Institute experienced unfortunate limitations with legacy software solutions that are siloed and require new installations with every update. Such software requires burdensome investments and hours and hours of training to keep pace with changes in the industry. Our Internet-based offering is updated automatically, growing more intelligent with every instance of use, and it requires minimal upfront investment of time and dollars. As a result, we are confident that Southwest Kidney Institute will be able to manage their business more effectively and, in turn, focus more energy on caring for patients.”
