Critical Innovation In Healthcare Claims Processing: athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush (Part 5)

SM: Last year you were a $140 million company, correct?

JB: Correct. The fourth quarter’s revenue rate was 47% higher than the fourth quarter of the year prior. You can imagine things are continuing to grow. >>>

Catching Up On Readings: Social Gaming

Here is a summary of the posts from this past week, in case you missed them:

Technology Stocks:
Motorola’s Mobile Phone Share Drops Sharply
Marvell Cleaning Up In Tough Times
Sun Should Pursue OpenSource Full Blast
IBM Wants to Buy Sun? Why?
So, Does HP Buy Brocade Now?
Calling For a Palm-Dell Union

Deal Radar 2009: Mytopia, Social Gaming Network, Zynga

Entrepreneur Journeys:
Billions In The Bubble: Siara CEO Vivek Ragavan
Critical Innovation In Healthcare Claims Processing: athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush

Guest Columns:
Tony Scott: Is It Time For Your CEO To Go?
Greg Gianforte: Entrepreneurial Stimulus At The Local Level
Linda Allen: Before The Cure, The Diagnosis: New Ideas About The Global Financial Crisis

Forbes Column: Gaming the Recession

Before The Cure, The Diagnosis: New Ideas About The Global Financial Crisis

By Guest Author Linda Allen

There has been a lot written about our current financial dilemma. Distinguished professionals have blamed the housing market, the dollar, accounting rules, human nature (i.e., greed), regulation/deregulation, past monetary policy – the list goes on, as does the list of culprits to blame. These pundits also typically have a pet project or magic bullet they promise will solve the problem. Unfortunately, there are no magic bullets – every time the market appears to stabilize (for example during the summer of 2008), there is a new disaster waiting in the wings (Lehman’s bankruptcy and the “weekend that Wall Street died”). I don’t promise any magic solutions. Instead, the solution will take hard work and time. But we will not even be able to get to work until we first diagnose the root cause of the current devastation in global financial markets. >>>

Critical Innovation In Healthcare Claims Processing: athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush (Part 4)

SM: You have innovated a rules engine that drives claims filing, which I am assuming has a bunch of codes and other data you have to file against for the claims to be processed. Would you classify what you have done as an expert system?

JB: An expert system intends to imply artificial intelligence whereas ours is actual intelligence, but yes, it could be considered that. It becomes expert because we teach it new things every day although we have not figured out how to get it to teach itself. >>>

Is It Time For Your CEO To Go? (Part 1)

By guest author Tony Scott of ChampionScott Partners

I originally wrote a version of this piece a few years ago when success for most start-ups was defined as either an IPO, or an acquisition just before an IPO. While most of the core observations are still absolutely valid, I think a few things have changed since then, and I will discuss those changes in a new follow on to this article: “Is It Time For Your CEO To Go? – The New Rules” – to be published next week. >>>

Entrepreneurial Stimulus At The Local Level

By Guest Author Greg Gianforte

Sramana’s recent Forbes article on how to stimulate entrepreneurship and rebuild the economy reminded me of some legislation in Montana that I helped sponsor. >>>

Critical Innovation In Healthcare Claims Processing: athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush (Part 3)

SM: You essentially built a patient information system.

JB: Exactly. We had plans to eventually start billing, and by 1999 we were well on our way down that route. >>>

Forbes Column 2009: Gaming The Recession

Continuing on the topic of gaming and shoestring entrepreneurship that can be pursued without much initial investment, here’s Zero-In this week: Gaming The Recession.