Alteer Corp. Receives CareStandard Certification from CareScience Inc.; Alteer Office Capabilities Now Objectively Linked to the Needs of Health-Care Organizations.

Business Editors & Health/Medical Writers

IRVINE, Calif.--(BW HealthWire)--March 24, 2000

Alteer Corp., the premier e-health company providing solutions to automate workflow in physician offices, has received CareStandard Certification(TM) for its Alteer Office application, the first integrated ASP (application service provider) that incorporates all clinical and business functions within a doctor's office.

Issued by CareScience, a provider of Internet-based tools designed to improve the quality and efficiency of health care, CareStandard Certification designates health information products for the Santa Barbara County Care Data Exchange. CareStandard Certified products will assist in the nationwide effort to share clinical data, offering secure and open-standard systems to health-care providers.

"This is a real triumph for Alteer. CareScience has objectively linked our product's capabilities to the needs of health-care providers," said Charlie Hearn, president and CEO of Alteer Corp. "Alteer Office is already deployed in physicians' offices throughout Orange County.

"These physicians have found that Alteer Office gives them greater control over their practices, improves patient care and satisfaction, and streamlines practice workflow, not to mention that it reduces administrative costs by more than 20%."

Because the health-care industry is information intensive, it is turning more and more to information technology to automate, incorporate and share medical and clinical information. Health-care professionals spend more than 80% of their time collecting, processing, retrieving, communicating and generally dealing with information.

Alteer Office has been revolutionizing the way today's physicians practice by fully automating and electronically connecting physicians with staff, patients and other partners in the health-care industry.

Currently, the vast majority of the physicians' offices in the United States still operate each day in a paper- and labor-intensive environment that wastes time and resources, and as a result, provides less-than-optimal services to patients.

In order to overcome such information barriers and fragmentation in care delivery, CareScience is building the care data utility for the sharing and application of clinical data. To this end, CareScience is certifying products like Alteer Office that work toward quality care objectives and meet a stringent list of criteria.

CareStandard Certification is based on a product's ability to demonstrate the following characteristics: commitment to industry standards and security practices, financial viability, Internet-based technology, interoperability, and product efficacy and proven capability.

Because Alteer Office meets these criteria, it may now be considered for implementation by members of the Santa Barbara County Care Data Exchange.

CareStandard Certification is not a product endorsement and does not imply a warranty or guarantee about product performance, but it provides an objective link between Alteer Office's capabilities as a health-care information product and the needs of health-care organizations.

In a survey by Modern Physician and PricewaterhouseCoopers, more than 45% of physicians are considering buying a computerized patient record (CPR) system in the next 24 months. The CareStandard Certification will assist physicians in their search for applications that provide them with a proper return on their investments -- in administrative costs, IT expenditures and patient care.

"CareStandard Certification allows us to offer a choice of products among physicians and other care givers, while ensuring interchangeability among them," said David J. Brailer, M.D., Ph.D., CEO of CareScience.

CareScience's CareStandard Certification project is funded by the California HealthCare Foundation, a nonprofit philanthropic organization whose mission is to expand access to affordable, quality health care for underserved individuals and communities to promote fundamental improvements in the health status of the people of California.

For more information on Alteer Office, contact Scott Belcher, 949/789-0500.

About Alteer Corp.

Alteer Corp. (http://www.alteer.com), with headquarters in Irvine, is an e-health company deploying its solutions as an application service provider (ASP) for physicians' offices.

Alteer utilizes Web-based solutions for its software applications that address the administrative and communications needs of physician practice groups, to improve their operational efficiency and the quality of care.

Alteer is the only solution that completely automates the entire workflow in the physician's office -- from scheduling to prescription renewals to billing to eligibility verification and pre-authorization.

Alteer re-engineers the workflow, information, documents and patient flow within the office. A private company, Alteer was founded in 1996. Institutional investors in Alteer Corp. include Edgewater Funds, Kingsbury Capital Partners and Bluestem Capital Co.

About CareScience Inc.

CareScience Inc. provides Internet-based tools designed to improve the quality and efficiency of health care. Its objective is to facilitate improvements in health-care quality and efficiency by using the Internet to become the leader in collection, analysis and exchange of comprehensive, community-wide clinical data.

CareScience was founded in 1992 to commercialize intellectual property developed at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and The Wharton School. The company launched its first Internet-based commercial product based on this technology in 1996, and it now provides a suite of technologies for the collection, analysis and sharing of clinical data.

Its products allow hospital, health system, health plan, physician and pharmaceutical manufacturer users to cost-effectively evaluate and manage the key quality factors in care delivery.