The folks at cloud-based EHR company athenahealth found cause to celebrate earlier this week when the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid posted the list of EHR products providers used to attest to meaningful use.

The report revealed that although athenahealth's athenaClinicals EHR is used by less than 3 percent of providers, athenahealth clients account for 59.2 percent of providers across the U.S. who have successfully attested to Stage 2 of the Meaningful Use EHR Incentive Program as of May 31. Or, cut and diced in another way, of the 485 eligible providers who have attested for meaningful use Stage 2, 287 use athenaClinicals.

The announcement comes on the heels of a proposal by CMS and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT to ease attestation requirements and delay the program's timelines overall, athenahealth executives point out.

"The loosened requirements and delays for the meaningful use program have been too heavily influenced by the many software vendors who have not been able to upgrade their EHR products, receive certification or adequately support their healthcare provider clients," Jonathan Bush, chairman and CEO of athenahealth, said in a news release. "Providers across the country deserve full transparency around vendors' ability to perform in line with government incentive programs and in comparison to other vendors in the market. Such transparency and accountability is the only way to fully serve the provider and hospital community and to earnestly advance digitization and connectivity in healthcare."

[See also: Athenahealth quits EHR association.]

Bush pointed out that since April 22, athenahealth's clients' performance against Stage 2 measures has been publicly available on the company's online Meaningful Use Dashboard. Athenahealth is currently the only EHR vendor to publicly track its clients' meaningful use performance and offer a guarantee for successful attestations, company officials point out. 
 
Athenahealth also offered a testimonial in its company press release.

"While we've had to work to create a behavioral shift around patient engagement, the work not only helped us receive our reimbursement, but also had the added benefits of saving time and improving care quality and patient satisfaction," Unaiza Hayat, MD, CEO and chief medical officer of Avecinia Wellness Center, said in a statement. "The bottom line is that meaningful use isn't a hardship for us at all -- it's a straightforward, seamless process built right into our workflow."

[See also: athenahealth topples Epic on KLAS list.]

Get access to the CMS report here.