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Don't Be Fooled by the athenaHealth Hype

Forgot...First, the "big players" in the field can't affort to replicate what athenahealth has (unless they invest $150m or so to build their own web-native, rules-based, integrated revenue cycle & EMR software, which would be wasted in the end since they would be lightyears behind in playing catch-up by the time they had the technology ready to deploy). If the big boys buy athenahealth (very possible), I certainly want to be holding shares of it! Secondly, what's this about security? Does the author use a bank? Has he looked at the financial services industry lately?? Docs ARE adopting web-based technologies and are as safe with a VPN connection to athenaNet as they are with a primitive client-server network connecting several offices. If I'm correct, the COO of athenahealth was the former CIO of Fidelity Investments. I think they might have this figured out.

Don't Be Fooled by the athenaHealth Hype

Interesting but clearly a guy with no real knowledge of this market and what's really happening out there. 80% of physicians are in small practices. Athena has a huge advantage in affordability of it's web-based platform and it's incredible word-of-mouth marketing campaign. Recurring revenue model and sustained 30% growth over at least the next 5 years. I'd read take the authors analysis with a big grain of salt. The biggest risk for this company, along with all the others that have been in this spot, is ability to implement all of it's new business and realize those new recurring revenues.