Health care firm seeking Maine clients

BELFAST – It may not have any clients in Maine yet, but athenahealth has been working hard to sign them up.

Company founder and chief executive officer Jonathan Bush said the firm has a salesman traveling the state and has had a number of discussions with physicians and clinics about their product.

The company provides Internet-based payment and record services to physician practices and has expanded its reach into 39 states. Founded seven years ago, the company processed $2.7 billion in client collections and posted earnings of more than $100 million in 2007.

Based in Watertown, Mass., the company opened its Belfast facility in the former MBNA office complex here in January. The company currently has 48 employees at its Maine center and expects to have more than 100 on board by the end of the year.

More than 170 area residents attended a job fair here Wednesday night, and the company already has a pool of more than 600 applicants to choose from. The company, which has 648 total employees, also has an operational site in Chennai, India.

In recognition of the overwhelming support received from the community, athenahealth welcomed more than 100 political, business and community leaders to a grand opening pancake breakfast Thursday. Bush, whose uncle and first cousin are the former and current presidents of the United States, took a turn in the serving line as he greeted his guests.

“We don’t have one client in Maine yet, but I have a sales guy, he’s here today, he’s got some prospects and hopefully we’ll have some before the tour and open house is done. We just need to get people to know who we are and what we do,” Bush said Thursday.

Bush said the company had the ability to keep the records of every patient in the state on one chart. Although he predicted that the cost of running the state Medicaid system would be greatly reduced if athenahealth took it over, the company was concentrating its efforts at this time on physicians and clinics.

“Selling to the government always gives me hives,” he joked. “Obviously we’d be thrilled to have Maine, but right now we are focusing on businesses.”

Bush said athenahealth’s athenaNet and athenaCollector computer software link directly to doctors’ offices and are able to sift through the arcane billing systems used by insurance companies, federal health plans and other providers. With a couple of key strokes, physicians can streamline their billings and increase their profits. Bush said athenahealth can cut doctors’ costs by 30 percent, increase their profits by 9 percent and process their paperwork 35 percent faster.

“It’s like going from John Henry to the steam shovel,” he said.

One potential Maine client giving athenahealth a close look is Waldo County General Hospital. Executive director Marc Biscone said the hospital currently uses a different business management service but had already entered into discussions with the company about its offerings. Some of its physicians are hospital employees, while others have privileges there.

“We think athenahealth is a very good company, and we’d like to do business with them,” Biscone said. “We hope that down the road we can have some of our physicians working with them. For employee positions, we’re going to have to do a little tinkering, but I think we can work something out. I think this is an exciting time, this is a good company, and I think they are going to flourish.”

Bush said that while the firm’s services have been widely tested and continue to expand, the company faces a constant challenge in getting physicians to consider them. He said doctors by nature were “deconstruction analysts” taught to break things down to their smallest pieces and are often reluctant to relinquish control of their business to an outside entity.

“People say ‘why can’t I keep doing it the old way instead of the new way,'” he said. “Well, the old way is doing it yourself. The new way is to go on the Internet. We offer a network instead of doing it yourself.”

wgriffin@bangordailynews.net

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