Athenahealth plans to add upwards of 1,000 employees company wide in 2015, part of an overarching goal to expand into inpatient settings and bolster existing products.
The company added close to 1,300 employees to athenahealth (Nasdaq: ATHN) in 2014, at its headquarters in Watertown as well as at locations in Belfast, Princeton, Atlanta, Austin, San Francisco and Chennai, bringing the total headcount to 3,700.
But employee growth wasn’t the most noted expansion in athenahealth’s portfolio in the last year. The company also acquired RazorInsights and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s electronic medical record, acquisitions that will help expand electronic medical records into hospitals and other inpatient settings.
“We acquired key personnel, a product footprint, and a successful operating client base that we can learn and grow with,” said athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush, in an investor conference call on Friday morning.
While Bush noted the opportunities that would come from growth in an inpatient market, he was careful to add that the company hadn’t abandoned its existing products.
“While we’re extremely excited about yet another year with yet another new products to build into prototype, we are equally excited about the opportunities to deepen the services we already render,” Bush said.
The company added 12,100 providers to its cloud-based electronic medical record, able to shift providers into the new system in less than 100 days.
Yet not all of the existing applications excelled in the last year.
The mobile app Epocrates that helps doctors determine problematic drug interactions, saw slow growth. Additionally, the shift to an upgraded version of athenahealth, known as Athena PURPLE, and a patient portal known as athenaCommunicator did not help quality scores.
