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Rachel Finley
574 TNRB
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
(801) 422-3598
prspecialist@byu.edu

Athenahealth Increasing Health Care Quality

Working as an EMT and an Army medic sparked Jonathan Bush’s interest in health care. While attending Harvard Business School, Bush created the concept of a company with a vision to increase integrity in health care. Now that idea has turned into a reality with 20 million patients worldwide.

Originally, athenahealth’s goal was changing the industry with a more hands-on approach that required health care practitioners to adopt athenahealth’s own clinical model for proper health care. However, the model required doctors to sell a share of their practice, which garnered little interest.

Doctors were interested in the company’s online services, though. Athenahealth had created a web site called athenanet that handled insurance claims and prescriptions; outsourcing those portions of their business appealed to many doctors. Athenahealth focused on the online component, and business has been uphill ever since.

Today athenahealth is achieving its goal to increase quality health care. Its automated systems eliminate the messy paperwork so doctors can focus their efforts on the patients and their needs. Besides these improvements in client care, practices using athenanet also experience an 11 percent increase on average in revenue and a significant decrease in the amount of time to collect accounts receivable.

There were times in the beginning of the business when it looked like Bush would fail. Many people urged him to quit, but he still persisted.

“I had something bigger and better than myself to work for,” he says. “There has to be a way to make doing well and doing good work harmoniously together.”

Today Bush has achieved his goal through athenahealth. With 20 million patients, more than 15,000 doctors in its database, 700 employees, three operation centers, and a software provider in India, the company, in Bush’s opinion, is spreading integrity in the field of health care.

“Athenahealth enables doctors to deliver the original idea of proper health care,” Bush says. He considers his company’s work to be on the “mundane and practical level,” but that is fine with him. Bush lives by Charles Royce’s quote: “Whoever does his work with passion, no matter how humble, is noble.”