Catholic Health East Continues Leadership in Innovation; CHE Selects Surgical Information Systems as Solution Partner for Automated Intelligence in Surgery.

ATLANTA -- Catholic Health East (CHE), one of the largest Catholic health systems in the U.S., recently selected Surgical Information Systems (SIS) as a strategic partner for perioperative information solutions.

A recognized leader and healthcare visionary, Catholic Health East has just begun the fourth year of its 10-year strategic plan -- VISION 2010. This plan provides CHE with a clear vision of the organization's direction for the future, including the role that information technology will play in supporting the organization's clinical and business strategies. Jack Heuter, system CIO for CHE, said, "At CHE, information technology is seen as both an enabler and a catalyst to achieve the organization's mission."

CHE began with an aggressive goal - to standardize quality of care across the organization. The organization's leadership facilitated the opportunity by recognizing and identifying the business of surgery as one of their business critical success factors, known as mission synergy initiatives (MSI) at the organization. CHE also understood that each of the 31 hospitals within the organization held a unique set of needs and goals to successfully serve their individual communities. In order to achieve CHE's business objectives while adhering to their overall mission - to meet the needs of the community first - CHE was faced with the challenge of developing a plan that would simultaneously deliver system and local hospital success.

For years, CHE's individual facilities operated autonomously often resulting in widely divergent success rates. Overall, the organization lacked the ability to share best practices for standardized care delivery. CHE gathered OR directors and physicians together from across the organization to determine collaboratively a) if standardizing quality of care indicators was a good idea, b) how they should accomplish such a goal, and c) what the timeline would be. This approach is paying off. The Perioperative Task Force was open to standardization because they recognized this was critical to their individual success, as well as the success of the system.

The Perioperative Task Force identified the need for a perioperative information system that could deliver fast, accurate, comprehensive information where it was needed most - at the point of care, in materials management, and in the executive boardroom. Additionally, CHE needed a solution that could fully integrate each CHE hospital's departmental systems to their enterprise platform -- Meditech, Siemens and Lawson -- and effectively serve the surgery business of each facility. "In making the decision to partner with SIS, it was important that we consider facility and user preferences, while meeting the organization's overall technology and economic goals. It needed to be highly flexible. The answer was SIS," stated Hueter.

Mercy Hospital of Miami, Fl., a CHE acute care hospital, was the first to act on the newly signed corporate contract, and recently opted for the full SIS suite of solutions. For Mercy, the decision was clear -- SIS was the single vendor that could meet their diverse needs with the most advanced in-room documentation, rich reporting capabilities and a fully integrated nursing and anesthesia product. Furthermore, Mercy recognized that a total solution would deliver faster and greater return on investment, a result that SIS has historically provided, and which it supports through its Guaranteed ROI Program.

"CHE exemplifies the kind of leadership that will successfully transform healthcare in America," Says Bob Schlotman, executive vice president of marketing and product design at SIS. "People like Jack Heuter provide the right combination of inspiration, vision and guidance to effectively make innovative and informed decisions that benefit the organization, as well as the communities it serves."

Surgical Information Systems delivers the only perioperative system that provides clinicians and administrators ALL the clinical and financial data relative to every surgical case. The system includes modules for case and staff scheduling; materials management; rules-based charging; pre-admission testing (PAT); pre-op, intra-op, anesthesia and post-anesthesia care unit (PACU) documentation; and Surgeon's Notes -- enabling healthcare professionals to provide the highest quality care at the lowest possible cost. SIS PACS, the newest module of the Surgical Information Systems product, allows secure access to diagnostic images and videos from anywhere via the Internet. The company also has just released its new StatCom product for both the enterprise and the surgery department. StatCom is a workflow communications tool that tracks the enterprise's most important assets -- patients, beds, staff and equipment. Surgical Information Systems makes it possible for healthcare facilities to operate more profitably, quantify performance and focus on patient care rather than data collection. The Surgical Information Systems product utilizes an open architecture and a Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Windows- or Unix-based operating system that is tied into an Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) database. Visit the company's Web site at http://www.ORsoftware.com.