athenahealth Partners with Specialty Medical Societies to Roll Out Network Medicine Health Campaigns
February 20 2017 - 8:00AM
athenahealth, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATHN), a leading provider of
network-enabled services and mobile applications for healthcare
providers nationwide, today announced that it will roll out a
series of “Network Medicine” health campaigns. Working in
collaboration with preeminent specialty societies, including the
American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS), the American
College of Cardiology (ACC), and The American College of
Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), these campaigns will
surveil athenahealth’s national cloud network, surface patients who
may be at risk of various health threats, and engage their
providers to accelerate care. This announcement was made at the
2017 HIMSS Annual Conference & Exhibition.
With nearly 100 new clinical guidelines introduced
each month, many of today’s clinicians struggle to stay up-to-date
on ever evolving best practices. This may lead to missed
opportunities, inadvertent outdated treatments, and medical errors.
By leveraging the scale of its network, athenahealth is able to
precisely identify and activate providers treating patients who may
have a high likelihood of being impacted by recent clinical
guidance. As part of this workflow, appropriate care activation can
happen faster than it does in traditional scenarios.
“Keeping abreast of the continuous stream of
relevant clinical guidelines and alerts is challenging for any
provider, regardless of specialty. The idea of Network Medicine –
leveraging a national network to identify patients in need of
certain care and activating a care team around them – will not only
make clinicians smarter, but has great potential to save lives,”
said Dr. Thomas Portuese, MD, Hudson Headwaters Health Network.
“This type of innovation is incredibly exciting for our doctors,
patients and communities.”
To date, athenahealth has seen initial success in
alerting providers and patients at risk of public health crises
such as the Zika virus, identifying over 6,000 patients at risk of
contracting the virus in Wynwood and Miami Beach, Florida, and Rio
Grande Valley, Texas.
“When the Zika virus hit Florida, we were concerned
not only about our pregnant patients, but those who could
potentially become pregnant,” said Dr. Diego I. Shmuels, Director
of Clinical Practice Management, Borinquen Health Care Center of
Miami Dade. “Together with athenahealth, we were able to activate
the CDC’s updated guidelines, identify patients at high risk in our
community, and encourage them to come in for screening.”
Building on the success of this initiative,
athenahealth will roll out new campaigns in 2017 focused on the
following primary, chronic and acute care scenarios:
- Preventing Medication Safety Risks During
Pregnancy – athenahealth has collaborated with ACOG to
help pinpoint and address potential safety risks for pregnant women
taking commonly prescribed hypertension medications – ACE
inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers – which can cause
fetal malformations according to FDA guidelines. The goal of
the collaboration is to identify at-risk patients and notify their
healthcare providers of the potential issue. Armed with this
information, providers can take timely and appropriate actions,
such as suggesting hypertension medications with a safer profile
for pregnant women. To date, athenahealth has already alerted the
providers of more than 60,000 women of child-bearing age who were
taking ACE inhibitors. With an unintended pregnancy rate of 49
percent today in the US, this unique activation of providers and
patients is designed to prevent at-risk pregnancies before they
occur.
- Managing Opioids and Chronic Conditions – In
its guidelines published in April 2016, the CDC identified 12 new
opioid-focused recommendations for primary care clinicians.
Together with providers such as Hudson Headwaters Health Network,
athenahealth is leveraging its network to identify patients with
pre-existing conditions such as sleep apnea, or drug interactions
such as benzodiazepines, and arming providers with the latest
dosage and duration guidance.
- Adjusting Cholesterol Treatment for Cardiovascular
Patients – Based on the ACC’s prescribing guidelines for
moderate to high-intensity statin drugs, athenahealth is working
with providers to identify at-risk patients between the ages of 40
and 79 with an LDL-C between 70 and 189. According to the
guidelines, many of these patients are in need of adjustments to
their prescriptions to reduce the risks of atherosclerotic
cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) events.
New campaigns focusing on HIV prevention and
screening for lung cancer and developmental hip dysplasia are also
planned for 2017.
“Medicine grows more complex each day, and it’s
incredibly difficult for clinicians to stay current on medical
innovation, new research, and therapeutic interventions. Technology
must help connect clinical staff to better information without
bogging them down,” said Jonathan Bush, CEO of athenahealth. “We’ve
made it our mission to build the healthcare internet to make this
industry work as it should. At athenahealth, we can uniquely look
across our national network of nearly 88,000 providers, treating
millions of patients across the U.S., and identify scenarios to
activate care teams and patients. With Network Medicine and in
collaboration with the best health and medical expert organizations
across the country, we are able to drive better health and, in some
instances, stamp out bad medicine.”
To learn more about athenahealth Network Medicine
campaigns, please visit the athenahealth booth #3743 at HIMSS17.
Follow athenahealth’s social media channels for on-site activity
updates, times and locations, as well as timely insights from the
athenahealth network.
About athenahealth,
Inc.athenahealth partners with hospital and ambulatory
clients to drive clinical and financial results. We offer medical
record, revenue cycle, patient engagement, care coordination, and
population health services. We combine insights from our network of
nearly 88,000 providers and nearly 86 million patients with deep
industry knowledge and perform administrative work at scale. For
more information, please visit www.athenahealth.com.
Contact Info:
Holly Spring
athenahealth, Inc. (Media)
media@athenahealth.com
617-402-1631
Dana Quattrochi
athenahealth, Inc. (Investors)
investorrelations@athenahealth.com
617-402-1329
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