What’s Next for athenahealth?

Our take on the recent athenahealth acquisition

athenahealth was taken private on Monday, Nov. 11th by Veritas Capital and Evergreen Coast Capital (the PE arm of Elliot Management) following a long, drawn-out process. The real story is Veritas, who has deep expertise in the healthcare IT sector and adds athenahealth to several other recent acquisitions, including GE Healthcare’s IT assets, Cotiviti and former Verscend. There are potential synergies between these assets though few will be easy.

Key Takeaways

• Few cross-sell opportunities between athenahealth and the GE Healthcare assets, with exception of athena’s PHM solution suite.
• Combination of Cotiviti and athenahealth channel creates opportunities to address provider payment integrity needs.
• Under new leadership, athenahealth will see a far more pragmatic go-to-market strategy emerge; it’s forays into the acute care setting will likely be discontinued.
• Serving the debt burden will limit innovation across all solutions.
• The combined athenahealth and GE ambulatory EHR customer base represents ten percent of the market, second to Epic at 27 percent.

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