CareScience Announces Single-Source Public Reporting and Quality Measurement Tool; CareScience Standards of Care Enables Providers to Measure, Interpret, Report and Act on Multiple Internal and External Inpatient Clinical Quality Measures.

PHILADELPHIA -- CareScience, a division of Quovadx, Inc. (Nasdaq: QVDX) providing care management, clinical analysis, reporting and quality improvement solutions, today announced the general availability of CareScience Standards of Care, a new single-source reporting and benchmarking solution, that, coupled with CareScience Professional Services, allows healthcare providers to streamline the collection, measurement and analysis of clinical quality data for external and internal reporting. The CareScience Standards of Care quality indicator scorecard allows healthcare organizations to be proactive in addressing opportunities for quality improvement prior to public reporting.

"Market forces including new measure sets and the focus on pay for performance initiatives continue to put pressure on healthcare providers to publicly share quality and performance data, increasing the amount and complexity of the data to be reported," said Thomas Zajac, president, CareScience, and executive vice president, Quovadx, Inc. "At CareScience, we believe that clinical reporting should go beyond benchmarking to allow care providers to transform data into useful information that improves the efficacy and safety of patient care throughout their organizations."

CareScience Standards of Care allows hospitals and health systems to prepare for, manage and take action on existing and new quality measures for public reporting of clinical data. Through Standards of Care, providers can use data gathered for public reporting, prior to submission, along with data on internal reporting measures, to create and implement quality improvement plans and develop strategies to address areas with the greatest opportunity for clinical and financial improvement. Real-time quality indicator scorecard reports, combined with benchmarking capability against CareScience National Comparatives or customer defined benchmarks, allows clinicians and executives to enhance the delivery of patient care, as well as measure performance against peers on an ongoing basis.

CareScience Standards of Care also allows providers to reduce the time and resource strain put on their organizations to comply with public reporting requirements by streamlining the data entry, analysis review and submission processes through a single chart review and point of data entry for all measure sets, both internal and external. Further, Standards of Care allows for submission of data requirements directly to external organizations electronically, including CMS, JCAHO, The Leapfrog Group, IHI and more.

"With at least five current measure sets for inpatient acute care, and an additional 300 measures currently proposed by a variety of healthcare and regulatory organizations, it is increasingly important for hospitals and health systems to efficiently manage the data submission and analysis process in order to reap the benefits to patient safety and financial performance that these measures are meant to yield," added Zajac. "In addition, today's focus on pay for performance means that quality of care benchmarks used for gauging performance are likely to have a direct impact on hospital and physician funding, compensation, and patient inflow in the near future; emphasizing the need for providers to not only benchmark, but to act on this information to improve future success."

CareScience Standards of Care is an Internet-based, encrypted and HIPAA-compliant software tool designed for use by clinical staff, quality and performance analysts and executives. Patient data may be electronically uploaded or manually entered, but once in the system, it can be used to meet all of the measure sets a hospital is responsible for reporting -- internally and externally. Data can also be exported to enterprise-wide reporting systems, adding additional value to existing, or planned technology investments. Additionally, organizations using the Cloverleaf(R) Integration Suite from the Integration Solutions division (ISD) of Quovadx can leverage the Cloverleaf(R) engine as an integrated data source for the CareScience Standards of Care product.

CareScience Solutions are augmented by CareScience Professional Services, providing expertise in understanding results, determining opportunities for improvement and helping organizations consistently meet performance expectations and reduce impact on personnel resources. CareScience consultants can also advise in designing electronic medical record (EMR) and computerized provider order entry (CPOE) systems to be sure internal and external quality reporting needs are addressed. To learn more about the Standards of Care solution and CareScience, please visit www.carescience.com.

About CareScience

CareScience, a division of Quovadx, Inc. (QVDX), assists hospitals in translating organizational vision and goals into quality improvement plans that optimize patient outcomes and operational performance, increase staff efficiency and reduce costs. CareScience supplies the people and technology to help its customers ensure that high-quality care is delivered, throughout the healthcare system, through clinical data access and clinical process transformation. For more information, please visit www.carescience.com.

QUOVADX is a trademark and CLOVERLEAF is a registered trade mark of Quovadx, Inc. All other company and product names mentioned may be trademarks of the companies with which they are associated.