athenahealth on Pace to Save Ohio Physicians over $80 Million in Averted Claim Denials from Health Insurers.

WATERTOWN, Mass. & COLUMBUS, Ohio -- athenahealth Teams with Ohio State Medical Association to Improve State's Medical Practices' Operational and Financial Performance Through Live Benchmarking

athenahealth, Inc., the premier provider of web-based software, knowledge, and services for medical practices, and the Ohio State Medical Association (OSMA), a statewide association representing 16,000 Ohio physicians, residents, medical students and practice staff, announced major milestones in Ohio for athenahealth's innovative approach for helping physicians get paid for the care and services they provide to patients.

Recent milestones for athenahealth in Ohio include:

--Over 1,300 physicians in over 100 practices throughout Ohio currently use athenahealth to manage their billing and collections.

--During the first quarter of 2006 athenahealth has saved physicians in Ohio approximately $20 million in averted claim denials (claims containing errors that were identified and corrected by athenahealth prior to sending to insurers).

--Ohio has become an early adopter of athenahealth's new Live Benchmarking Program. Ohio medical practices can now compare themselves to other medical practices to see how they stack up in terms of performance on key office business procedures. This information can help practices identify internal problems and initiate operational and financial improvements in their business practices.

"The athenahealth benchmarking information has become extremely helpful. Physician practices - especially smaller ones - have very little data to tell them how well they are actually doing," said Carol Mullinax, senior director of OSMA, the first medical society to partner with athenahealth four years ago. "athenahealth was a natural fit for OSMA because it not only drives medical practices to operate in a highly efficient way but also arms them with data they didn't have before. When you put our two organizations together, we become a very powerful network for our small practices in Ohio. While the OSMA advocates on behalf of physicians before the state legislature and with health plans, athenahealth provides physicians with valuable data to help increase collections and operate more efficiently. It's a win-win for all."

The OSMA, with data provided by athenahealth, led a successful effort several years ago to pass a Prompt Pay law requiring payers to pay claims within 30 days. athenahealth subsequently developed a prompt pay reporting tool that supports the law by providing physicians with a monthly analysis on how well each payer is complying. The combination has increased payer compliance by more than 20 percent, which has dramatically decreased days in accounts receivable (DAR) for Ohio practices and significantly increased collections.

"athenahealth is extremely proud of our relationship with OSMA and the milestones our two organizations have reached on behalf of Ohio physicians," said Todd Park, Chief Development Officer and co-founder of athenahealth. "athenahealth's rapid and continued growth in Ohio is based on our ability to get medical groups paid accurately and in a timely fashion for the services they provide. We do this by providing our industry-unique approach of service, in-depth payer knowledge, and software all through a web-based platform."

OSMA and its physicians are currently part of athenahealth's new Live Benchmarking Program, which provides the first real-time, online benchmarking service of its kind for medical groups. The tool has proven to be an extremely effective way to use healthy competition to motivate continuous improvement among practices. Through athenahealth's athenaNet(R) Web-based software, practices can compare their internal numbers against other athenahealth practices by state, region, specialty, group size or national average. Practices can then look at their real-time ranking for each best practice category for a 7-day or 91-day average.

"Like many smaller practices, we are really good clinicians but are not as savvy when it comes to actually running the business," said Kathleen J. Strine, RN, practice manager at Ashland Family Practice, which has been using athenahealth since 2002. "athenahealth has given us a really deep understanding of the key operational and financial information for our practice. From real-time eligibility checking to clean billing to reporting, athenahealth has taught us how to do things the right way the first time, which has made a huge impact on our bottom line. When physicians can spend more time with the patients and less time with the claims, I don't have to tell you what that means to us."

athenahealth's unique knowledge-based approach gives the company the ability to capture complex, ever-changing payer data. As the company expands its physician network, it is able to continually improve the performance of physician practices in a given state. In addition, with athenahealth's payer data network, physicians experience an immediate reduction in accounts receivable and a significant increase in collections. This effect is especially powerful in Ohio where athenahealth has had a significant presence for over four years and has a large base of physicians using the system.

In May 2006, athenahealth launched its first annual "PayerView" rankings that analyze claim performance data from more than 7,000 providers using athenahealth's athenaNet(R) system database to rank national and regional health insurers according to specific measures of financial and administrative performance and medical policy complexity. The complete "PayerView" rankings, including Ohio-based insurers are available in interactive form at www.athenaPayerView.com.

About The OSMA

OSMA is a statewide association representing 16,000 Ohio physicians, residents, medical students and practice staff. It is dedicated to improving the practice of medicine for physicians, their staff and patients, by advocating their position, saving them time and money, and promoting the medical profession. The OSMA is affiliated with the American Medical Association on the national level and county medical societies on the local level. For more information please visit our website at www.osma.org or call 800-766-6762.

About athenahealth

athenahealth provides the only physician revenue and clinical cycle management offering that integrates web-based practice management and EMR software, continually updated payer knowledge, and back office processing specialists into a single service. The results are faster payment at lower cost, improved patient care, higher revenue retention and less hassle for the more than 7,000 providers using athenahealth nationwide. The company collects nearly $2 billion on behalf of its clients annually. athenahealth is dedicated to helping providers make optimum use of their time, ultimately improving the quality of service delivered and the financial reward for it. For more information about athenahealth, visit our Web site at www.athenahealth.com or call 1-888-652-8200.