athenahealth Leads Industry in Stage 2 Meaningful Use

According to an Accenture report released earlier this year, the global market for electronic health records (EHR) is projected to grow 5.5% over the period 2012 to 2015 to $22.3 billion by 2015. The US is estimated to be the largest market worth $9.3 billion by 2015 at a 7.1% compounded annual growth rate over the period 2012 through 2015.

athenahealth’s Financials
athenahealth’s (NASDAQ: ATHN) first quarter revenues grew 30% over the year to $163 million, ahead of the Street’s target of $170 million. Adjusted loss of $0.08 per share was worse than the market’s projections of a loss of $0.01 per share for the quarter. A year ago, athenahealth had reported earnings of $0.16 per share.

By segment, revenues from business services grew 27% over the year to $154.5 million and revenues from implementation and others grew 181% to $10.2 million.

athenahealth’s Products Lead the Market
athenahealth’s success can be gauged from the fact that they now lead the healthcare industry in Meaningful Use Stage 2 attestations. Of the total healthcare providers in the country, 59% of the population is part of their clientele who have successfully attested to Stage 2 of the Meaningful Use electronic health record (EHR) incentive program as of May this year.

Epocrates, the medical app that athenahealth had acquired, is also leading the digital health market. This is the fifth year in a row that the medical reference app has the lead among smartphones.

athenahealth’s Product Upgrade
athenahealth remains focused on expanding their product offerings and recently integrated Epocrates with athenaClinicals. Now, caregivers will be able to refer to the medical reference app without leaving the athenaClinicals website. They are also working on a new athenaNet offering which features a simpler and intuitive user experience. Finally, athenaCommunicator released the latest component of their patient engagement services focused on population health. They released an enhanced group call service that users can join on an optional basis. Known as athenaOne, the service currently offers targeted campaigns on influence of vaccinations, Medicare Annual Wellness Visits, Diabetes, Hypertension, and Colorectal Cancer Screenings. athenahealth plans to add more campaigns to the service and will be releasing groups for breast cancer, diabetes screenings, and adult preventative visits.

athenahealth and Einhorn’s Dissent
Recently, the stock suffered a setback because of certain remarks made by Greenlight’s head, Mr. David Einhorn. The investor commented that athenahealth was more a Business Process Outsourcing firm than a high-end cloud and software-as-a-services provider that the company would like its investors to believe. The management shot back and claimed that they are convinced that the stock is worth $1,000. But Einhorn’s comments had hurt the stock and its price fell 15% to a low of $108.00.

athenahealth’s stock has recovered since then and is currently trading at $127.09 with a market capitalization of $4.81 billion. It had touched a 52-week high of $206.70 in February this year.