WATERTOWN, Mass., April 24, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- athenahealth, Inc. (ATHN), a leading provider of cloud-based services for electronic health record (EHR), practice management and care coordination, today announced the launch of athenahealth Marketplace, a one-stop shop for health care provider organizations and physician practices to browse and select health care IT (HIT) solutions that augment and complement athenahealth's suite of cloud-based services.

Available today, as part of athenahealth Marketplace, are a variety of workflow efficiency and care coordination solutions including technologies from leading HIT vendors Experian Healthcare, InHealth Clinical Documentation Solutions (ICDS), NHXS, iTriage, and Entrada.

At a time when providers are facing compounding pressure to deliver patient care in line with mounting government regulation, changing payment models, decreased budgets, and limited staff, it is increasingly important to arm them with IT that is easily accessible and supports workflows that do not distract from care delivery.

"Caregivers are faced with more burdens today than ever before, and it can be difficult to thrive. Too often, providers are spending time on the wrong types of work; this causes inefficiencies and negatively impacts quality and cost," said Jonathan Bush, CEO and chairman, athenahealth. "Our marketplace is all about bringing the best HIT solutions to the forefront. Similar to what Amazon.com is for consumers, our platform, with the immense support of our Marketplace partners, will serve as a one-stop 'shop' for high-value HIT solutions."

Added Kyle Armbrester, director, Business Development: "athenahealth Marketplace is central to our strategy to create an open, cloud-based platform that -- with the help of APIs, streamlined connectivity, and a growing list of best-of-breed applications -- can solve the challenges facing health care today. What's more, we're holding our partners to a higher calling by making sure they deliver real value to our clients. We're tracking our partners' effect by measuring changes in revenue, cycle time, impact on patient outcomes, as well as other key metrics that we believe are critical to drive the necessary improvements that health care desperately needs."

The athenahealth Marketplace includes both Technology and Clinical Exchange partners. Technology partners are broken out by category based on function and include companies specializing in transcription, scheduling, personal health records, communications, contract management, and more. Because the exchange of patient information is vital to managing patient populations, connections to labs and vaccine registries across the U.S. will also be available within the Marketplace via Clinical Exchange partners.

All live solutions featured within the athenahealth Marketplace have been pilot-tested across care environments, as part of the athenahealth workflow, and by More Disruption Please (MDP). MDP is athenahealth's business development program aimed at launching a massive surge of disruptive innovation in health care. The MDP advantage is that qualified innovators can gain access to athenahealth's growing cloud-based network of about 40,000 providers. Through the MDP program, athenahealth will continue to introduce new services and accelerate the introduction of high-value innovation via the cloud.

"We are excited that athenahealth is giving providers' choice and making it possible to select a clinical documentation solution based on their workflows and needs," said Dana Heller, executive director, ICDS. "We hear from many doctors that their frustrations over the limitations of EHRs are making them choose to retire earlier rather than later; which may sound crazy but is true. A large part of why we are partnering with athenahealth is because they ask providers what they need to thrive. This opened the doors for us to work together and give providers more choice and flexibility in documenting care. It's a huge step forward for the industry in making HIT work for today's providers."

"Teaming up with athenahealth and making our contract management and analysis solutions available to the nearly 40,000 providers on athenahealth's network is a great opportunity," said Dan Buell, general manager of Experian Healthcare. "We are dedicated to giving providers more visibility into their business operations so they can help ensure accurate reimbursement from third-party payers and make better financial decisions. We are excited to be a part of the Marketplace, because it reduces the time it takes to implement these solutions and get providers up and running."

Those interested in learning more about MDP, partnership opportunities and exploring athenahealth Marketplace, please visit http://www.athenahealth.com/disruption.

Read more:

athenahealth Marketplace Brings Shopping to Health Care IT