athenahealth began as a women's health practice near San Diego that could not get insurers to pay its bills. Its founders, Jonathan Bush and Todd Park, built software to fix that, and the software became the company. By 2007 athenahealth ran billing for medical practices across the country from its base outside Boston. It did the work over the web, for a cut of what it collected. Its stock nearly doubled on its first day of trading.

The Clinic That Couldn't Collect

Bush and Park incorporated the company in August 1997. Running their own practice taught them how much money doctors lost to denied and delayed insurance claims. Their answer was athenaCollector, a service that handled a practice's billing through software and a team that knew each insurer's rules. Doctors paid a percentage of what came in, so athenahealth only did well when they did. The company moved to Watertown, Massachusetts, and later added medical records and patient messaging services.

Ninety-Seven Percent on Day One

athenahealth priced 6.3 million shares at $18 on September 19, 2007, above its $14 to $16 range. The stock opened on Nasdaq the next day at $30 under the ticker ATHN and closed at $35.50, up 97 percent. Shares kept climbing for years. In 2018 the activist investor Elliott Management pushed for change, and Bush stepped down that June. Veritas Capital and Elliott agreed in November 2018 to buy the company for $5.7 billion, taking it private.

Cover: Minerva, Adriaen Collaert. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for Minerva, the Roman Athena (athenahealth).