After a month and a half of quietly laying folks off, athenahealth finally announced to the rest of us that today multiple people were layed off. Some being entire teams. They refuse to comment on how many people. They did, however, state that athena needs different skills and will be creating new positions. Have these people never heard of training?
15 replies (most recent on top)
@hz i work in this industry and use athena directly; this whole narrative is at worst false and at best a small fraction of what is happening. I also work with doctors offices on other technology solutions (EHRs) and none of them are shrinking-- all are growing. There is something unique going on with Athenahealth
6 weeks severance with employer-subsidized health insurance until the end of the month. Eligible for unemployment/masshealth (MA resident). I heard they declined to give numbers during one of the zone all-hands when asked in q&a. Clinicals got hit pretty hard. But yeah let's increase velocity by 10x (for those unaware - this is the benchmark they set in an email back in may) while still fully expecting 10x of ops support, marketing, release previews and a reduced headcount. Thats definitely doable. The culture that they bragged about when I first joined not long ago was a bait and switch.
8 weeks salary severance, 12 week healthcare severance. Not enough for safety.
@yq looking at the list, appears athena targeted employees on leave or eligible for sabbatical. List of cuts by zone appear random as if done by AI. Wouldn't be surprised if more cuts are on the way given lower expected revenue and Healthcare utilization
Do we know how many people were impacted?
@ye Look on the bright side — with the money saved on payroll, they'll almost certainly be able to fix the WiFi.
@jc not that robust. I got 8 weeks. Now I'm gonna have to worry about how to pay for health insurance for my newborn.
I was laid off just two days before my baby was born and before I was to start my paternity leave.
What a shameful way to treat employees as a "Healthcare company". Leadership from director up clearly don't have a vision for the product. I've never seen a cohesive strategy. Seems like decisions are made in a vacuum rather than actually understanding the industry and customers. Lots of wasted R&D spend such as making all of R&D train on AI. Likely cost the company millions on in person training that could have been an online seminar. Smh.
I and most of my zone were laid off, and I am literally weeks away from what would have been the start of my sabbatical. :(
@jc only 1.5 months
Lay off in the Denials/Denials Management team that I heard about. I'm wondering if anyone heard of any other layoffs in that team, or if possibly that team was entirely cut?
Curious to those who were cut, we were told you got severance packages but I want to know how robust they were. Previously athenahealth has given 3 to 6 months severance, so I'm hoping hoping hoping my former colleagues have the support they need to find a new role.
Here's the reason for the recent rounds of layoffs:
Athena is being crushed to death by crippling debt that they are struggling to sustain because of declining revenues.
Why so much debt?
Because back in 2021, Athena was sold by one private equity form to another private equity using a leveraged buyout. In other words, private equity company 'A' walked away from the deal with $17 billion, while private equity company 'B' bought athena with borrowed money, and all of that debt is now on Athena's balance sheet. Athena has had to make payments on that debt for the last five years, which is below investment grade according to Standard & Poors as of May 2026.
Why are revenues shrinking?
There are different reasons:
- The Big Beautiful Bill has kicked millions of people from the Medicaid rolls
- Eliminating ACA subsidies is forcing millions to drop policies that they can no longer afford
- Thousands of layoffs across various industries.
Fewer people with health insurance means fewer visits to the doctor, which means fewer claim and thus, less revenue capture for Athena.
It will be interesting to see if Athena's executive leadership team can cost cut their way to a sustainable position in the market. Eventually, the private equity owners will want to divest themselves of the company, but it's hard to see how they will do that. They talked about an IPO in the past, but that seems unappealing given the company's current situation.
@cw My friend worked there for 10 years and his sabbatical was a few months ago. So, I don't think it's related to sabbaticals. It's likely more along the lines of slashing payroll to reduce expenditures, to artificially inflate profits, to make the investors happy. He was a Local Director, in the R&D division, for the software developers. He said that he, and his entire team, were laid off yesterday. Also, he mentioned that it appears that 10-15% of the US R&D division were laid off. The words being thrown about were "restructuring" and "reorganization".
They do training. We just did 3 days off ai training at the end of June/ beginning of July. This isn't about traing I think that's an excuse. I think they got rid of everyone with a sabbatical coming up. Mine would have been in a year and I talked to others who got laid off with similar stories.