Sometime in late 2004, I started taking note of this interesting, little (but growing) enterprise out of Massachusetts called athenahealth. I became interested in the company, with its lack of capitalization and spacing, after it got (what I believe was) its first mention on HIStalk. Naturally, Tim couldn’t pass up the opportunity to poke at athenahealth’s branding, pointing out the company’s “insufferably cute breaking of the polite laws of grammar.”
Grammatical quirks aside, athenahealth has had a fairly remarkable run of growth since, including a ridiculously popular initial public offering last fall. While the overall economic doldrums have put a damper on the company’s share price, athena has continued to add thousands of new physicians to its rolls.
TriZetto is another interesting company, with somewhat less name recognition, in a sector I think I’ll call healthpay (with apologies to HIStalk for the grammar and American Express for the similarity).
Both work on moving money around the healthcare system, and both are trying to improve accuracy and efficiency in the healthcare billing process. TriZetto has focussed more on getting insurers and payers on board (and thus network hospitals and physicians), while athena has targeted getting physician payees signed up directly. (To a certain extent, athena has even buddied up to payees by aggravating payers a bit.) Whether you’re going after the goose or the gander, both athena and TriZetto have their respective feet well in the door for a market that, I think, could be a real driver for personal and electronic health records.
Think about it. Very little gets done in healthcare that isn’t billed to somebody, one way or another. Therein you have procedure, diagnosis, medication, and allergy code information, however binary (and sometimes, however inaccurate). Since moving everyone in healthcare over to detailed electronic charting remains a long-term goal (let alone portable, accessible, and shareable electronic charts), a billing-system-based, all-in-one-place health record would be a pretty decent start. athena is getting there, and so is TriZetto.
Most physician offices, and many hospital workstations have a personal computer of one variety or another. Web-based solutions like what athena is building seem to be the right direction. Hell, if a practice will at least accept credit cards, why not key in procedure and diagnosis codes into the credit card terminal and get Discover, Visa, MasterCard, and American Express into the personal health record business as well. At least we know they’re already great at sharing information…
Seriously, though, as great as RHIOs and HIEs and PHRs and EMRs are (did I miss any?), the reality is we’re moving far too slowly in the direction of getting everyone and all that information networked together. Smart diagnosis suggestion, adverse event prevention, and test results sharing aren’t going to reach anywhere near their full potential until your pharmacy, general practitioner, nutritionist, specialist, emergency department, urgent care, and DMV records are all somewhat reliably linked together.
And God help us if we let some ridiculous “network” like the credit reporting system develop. The day TransUnion, Equifax, or Experian announce personal health records is the day I’m gonna take all my friends and move to Canada, and we’re gonna die of old age…
“Hello, Mr. Deal? Yes, this is your personal health record bureau monitoring service. Yes, sir, you pay $19.95 a month for our service. You don’t recall subscribing to our services? Well, in any event, sir, I just wanted to be sure you were aware that your gynecologist renewed your prescription. You can pick that up at your convenience at your neighborhood pharmacy in Québec. Oh, yes, actually it does look like your usual pharmacy might be in Los Angeles. You may need to dispute that part of your personal health record. What’s that? Oh, you don’t see a gynecologist, either? Well, you should. Should I go ahead and schedule an appointment for you?”
Please, athena, please hurry…
