Jonathan Bush

Jonathan Bush is a healthcare technology entrepreneur known as the cofounder and longtime chief executive of athenahealth, a cloud-based health IT company that transformed how medical providers manage records, billing, and patient communications. Prior to founding athenahealth, Bush served as an EMT for the City of New Orleans, trained as a medic in the U.S. Army, and worked as a management consultant with Booz Allen & Hamilton. These frontline experiences in healthcare informed his perspective on the industry's inefficiencies and influenced his entrepreneurial pursuits. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in the College of Social Studies from Wesleyan University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Bush and Todd Park, a colleague from Booz Allen, founded Athena Women's Health, a women's health and birthing clinic in San Diego. Challenges with tracking insurance claims and payments at the clinic led to the formation of athenahealth, which evolved into a healthcare technology platform offering services to help hospital and ambulatory providers coordinate care and optimize clinical workflows. Bush co-founded the company and led it through significant growth, including a successful initial public offering. Under his leadership, athenahealth grew from a startup to a major health IT company with a market cap exceeding $6 billion. The company received recognition for its growth and workplace culture, including being named one of the top 20 "Best Places to Work" by Boston Business Journal and ranking fourth in the Forbes Fast Tech 25.

Bush is also the author, with Stephen L. Baker, of the New York Times bestseller "Where Does It Hurt?: An Entrepreneur's Guide to Fixing Health Care." In the book, Bush advocates for healthcare reform focused on increasing choice, freedom, and information for consumers at lower costs. His work and vision have been featured in publications such as Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and on National Public Radio, as well as at events including Fortune Brainstorm Tech, The Economist Ideas Economy, and TEDMED, where he discussed the complexities of payer and profit alignment in U.S. healthcare.

After resigning as CEO of athenahealth, Bush founded Zus Health, a shared health data platform designed to accelerate data interoperability by providing accessible data at the point of care through API-embedded components and direct EHR integrations. Zus Health has been recognized for its contributions to healthcare data integration, including winning the Interoperability & Integration Award from HealthTechNode. Bush also serves as executive chairman of Firefly Health, a company specializing in real-time virtual primary care, and sits on the boards of Sondermind, a behavioral healthcare provider, and Innovaccer, a population health technology platform. Bush has announced his candidacy for Governor of Maine, bringing his healthcare and business experience into the public policy arena.