If there's one thing athenahealth Cofounder and CEO Jonathan Bush values, it's productivity — both in his personal life and when it comes to his company's EHR.
Mr. Bush, deemed a LinkedIn influencer, writes in a post that he is constantly thinking about asset utilization and waste in all aspects of his life.
"I hate catered meetings at my company because it pains me to think about the uneaten sandwiches — and the time and energy that went into preparing and delivering them…I commute on my bicycle not to save the planet, but because I can merge exercise with transit. Recently I was delighted to find a bike trail so I can dial into conference calls en route without killing myself," Mr. Bush writes.
Mr. Bush writes that athenahealth's average small practice EHR implementation time has been halved from 12 weeks to six weeks in the past year, and now athenahealth has developed a five-day implementation program.
The "Live in 5" initiative seeks to onboard athenahealth's small group clients more quickly than ever. According to an athenahealth spokeswoman, the initiative provides an accelerated approach to onboarding that eliminates more than 150 tasks, reduces the complexity of onboarding tools, enables best practices and pre-configurations to cut the number of decisions required and uses e-signatures and Power of Attorney so athenahealth can complete payer paperwork on behalf of the client.
The chief executive of athenahealth says productivity hacks are "fundamental," and so the vendor has committed itself to significantly reducing EHR implementation time for multiple purposes: A quicker process means less stress on physicians and their productivity, and athenahealth benefits as it can get more clients up and running in less time.
"Healthcare is a gold mine of idle capacity just waiting to be mined," Mr. Bush writes. "We just need more men and women to grab a shovel and tart digging. Just think of the time, and money, we can save."
Note: An athenahealth executive was not able to comment at press time.
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