athenahealth acquires Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s (BIDMC) inpatient EHR system to further penetrate the 100-bed-and-over hospital market.
Cloud based ambulatory EHR provider athenahealth announced today it has purchased webOMR, the web-based inpatient EHR system developed by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) to accelerate the company’s ability to penetrate the hospital and health system market. In addition to the purchase, the two organizations have entered a collaborative agreement to develop athenahealth’s acute care service offering that will support the needs of large providers and health systems across the U.S.
Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital-Needham, a 58-bed community hospital, will serve as the alpha development site for the newly developed athenahealth inpatient functionality. BIDHC will also begin a phased implementation of athenahealth’s athenaOne® suite of EHR, revenue cycle management, and patient engagement services.
Jonathan Bush
“At this stage in our maturity, we believe the right way to grow is through “acqu-hire:” Buy something that works well as it is, write it into athenaNet, our cloud-based network, and tune it up over time. Starting with the proven code sets from RazorInsights for small rural and community hospitals, and now Beth Israel for larger hospitals and health systems, shoots us ahead years in a matter of a month. Both systems will serve as blueprints for us to build deep supporting modalities into our evolving inpatient system, modality by modality, workflow by workflow. Skilled nursing, ambulance, palliative care, etc. We need every modality to be connected so that hospitals can be on a single instance of software, sharing information, and connecting care. I really think this alignment will cause a profound shift for hospitals to get out of the distraction that keeps them from doing what they are uniquely positioned to do,” said Jonathan Bush, chairman and CEO, athenahealth in an official statement.
“There are too many hospitals creating standalone islands of health info, feeding it, editing it, building rules…for only their use. Every hospital that’s coming up against a major capital investment should hit the pause button and think twice. Evaluate the options before getting into a massive crippling investment. This collaborative partnership between athenahealth and BIDMC, added to the acquisition of RazorInsights, is probably the single biggest shift upwards toward a health care internet in our 17 years, said Bush.”
webOMR is regarded as one of the first hospital-built, inpatient and outpatient EHR systems, as well as the first self-built EHR system to achieve Meaningful Use Certification by the federal government. By leveraging webOMR’s proven technology to gain insight into the clinical content, algorithms, and workflows associated with a large, multi-site health system, athenahealth will accelerate its entry into the 100-bed-and-over hospital market, which accounts for approximately 48 percent of all hospitals in the nation. The company recently announced its acquisition of Atlanta-based RazorInsights to enter the 50-bed-and-under inpatient care space.
For more information on the collaboration, see the short video below
