Athenahealth posted $35.4 million in third-quarter sales, a 35 percent gain over the same period in 2007. The company's net income for the third quarter was $3.7 million, compared to $500,000 in the same period last year. What do you credit for this success given the tough economic times?

Athenahealth continues to experience tremendous growth of our national physician network as we saw a 50 percent gain in the number of providers using our services over the same period a year ago in the third quarter. We also updated investors at our Investor Summit in December that we are expanding our five-year growth targets.

Athenahealth is completely Web-based and because we centrally-host our platform, athenaNet, and handle all of the work associated with getting the doctor paid or updating their medial chart, we are a source of new capital,  not a drain on the doctor during a time when the medical reimbursement and economic climate is quite challenging. This is in stark contrast to traditional software-only EHR vendors that sell only software and IT.

What has been athenahealth's biggest success so far?

Our corporate culture is our single greatest asset and achievement. As a service provider we are extremely close to our clients and in order to fulfill our mission to be medical groups most trusted business service, we need to have a culture that promotes continuous teaching, learning and transparency.

What is your next big opportunity?
 
We made our first acquisition in 2008 in purchasing the assets of MedicalMessaging.net, a provider of patient messaging services to medical groups. We are currently selling a unique service called ReminderCall, which is an automated system for managing appointment confirmations and reminders that effectively reduce no-shows, increases arrival rates, and improves bottom-line revenue for medical groups. This year, we plan to launch a more comprehensive patient communication service, athenaCommunicator, which will look to bring the same level of automation and process control to a medical group's interaction with patients that athenaCollector and athenaClinicals have done for the billing and clinical office workflow.

What do you wish you had done differently between the founding of athenahealth in 1997 and now?

I don't know if there is a specific thing, as the original concept Todd Park and I had in mind is quite different than what athenahealth is today. We originally looked to own and operate birthing centers and soon encountered the byzantine rules and process breakdowns in healthcare that prevented us from getting paid and effectively operating our offices. It was then we created athenaNet and began our journey to help bring process integrity to the delivery and payment of medical care.

Is the $20B-plus designated for healthcare IT in the government's economic stimulus package the right amount at the right time?

In terms of the right amount, I really can't say. However, what looks very promising is that the Obama Administration and Congress allocated the vast majority of the Healthcare IT funding in the form of incentives or pay-for-data programs. It is clear with recent industry numbers indicating only 4 percent of U.S. doctors are using a fully-functional EHR that the traditional systems being sold for the past decade or so have not worked.

HCIT vendors will now have to make a shift from just selling tools to a doctor to actually helping her utilize a clinical system in order to participate in whatever incentive-based program is rolled out. I think this will be a market changing event as some legacy software vendors will have to experience a painful tradition in order to do so. Obviously, athenahealth is unique in our ability to keep our network current daily with clinical, billing and other various privacy and interoperability standards  -  that is part of our service.

What are you reading?

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao  -  It's an intense and beautiful book that I hope my kids are given in English 101 in college some day.