Read this
article for more detailed information about Athenahealth.
Some details:
-Software is delivered over the internet.
-The company gets a cut of its customers' revenue, based in part on how much the firm collects from health insurance companies, rather than making most of its money from software sales and licensing fees.
-Athena typically charges its customers between 4 and 8 percent of their billing revenue, depending on the number of services a customer is getting from the company.
-As of March 31 had fewer than 2,000 physicians using the EMR.
-Jonathan Bush, the company president, is President George W. Bush's first cousin. Todd Park, Athenahealth co-founder, was appointed chief technology officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by President Obama (so I guess their piece of the HITECH pie is secure).
-Athena's stock price dropped more than 18 percent after it disclosed on April 29 that its first-quarter profits slid 80 percent.
So, your patient's data is in the hands of a company with some shaky financials, a minuscule user base, that controls your billing and deducts its cut before you get any money.
Sounds risky to me.
