Clinical Dynamics Offers New Capabilities in DYNAMO to Support Clinical Outcomes Analysis and Quality Improvement.

SANTA CRUZ, Calif.--(BW HealthWire)--Sept. 27, 1999--

Clinical Dynamics, Inc., a healthcare technology company delivering innovative solutions for clinical outcomes analysis and quality improvement, unveiled all new capabilities in its DYNAMO(tm) software during the annual National Association for Healthcare Quality conference.

Now offered as part of the DYNAMO reporting tool set is a wide variety of important analysis functionality that provides clinicians, medical directors, and hospital financial managers even more meaningful information on outcomes, facility and physician profiles, utilization and facility benchmarks.

Key new features include more than 80 ORYX indicators, as well as

the ability to:

-- utilize both RDRG and APR DRG risk-adjustment methodologies. -- create and track customized indicators. -- measure variation in patient management and clinical outcomes at

the patient level. -- use actual cost data to analyze savings opportunities.

In application, these DYNAMO capabilities significantly contribute to facilitating the continuous improvement of the quality of care.

Through its centralized data warehouse, Clinical Dynamics collects, processes, audits and compiles facility-specific and multi-state patient data. Staff in clinical settings can gain access to comparison sets and to its own risk and severity-adjusted data over secure Internet connections with the data warehouse. Standard options in DYNAMO allow authorized hospital staff the ability to evaluate clinical performance, monitor trends in physician practice patterns and various patient populations, and access internal and external benchmarks for analysis of a facility's performance.

A key differentiation with the DYNAMO software is the new capability to implement multiple risk-adjustment methodologies such as Risk-Adjusted Diagnostic Related Groups, or RDRGs, and All Patient Risk-Adjusted Diagnostic Related Groups, or APR DRGs. The flexibility provided with multiple risk-adjusted methodologies allows healthcare managers to easily present and understand the complexity of patient severity and to calculate expected targets for their patient mix. The value of this functionality also encompasses the ability to look at data from a financial perspective through the RDRG data used for ORYX, and from a clinical perspective through APR DRGs, which is data captured at the point of care.

By enabling healthcare professionals to choose from more than 80 ORYX indicators, as well as to create and monitor unlimited customized indicators, Clinical Dynamics, has provided an easy-to-use tool that is uniquely scalable for small facilities as well as in large healthcare systems.

"Users can access multiple benchmarks on a single graph, create customized groups of focused analyses and evaluate cost savings opportunities at the patient level. These are extremely powerful features," said Dave Ziolkowski, Chief Operating Officer for Clinical Dynamics. "DYNAMO is proving itself as a timesaving information resource."

A new analysis feature is providing healthcare teams with new ways to look at clinical data generated within their facilities. The new Statistical Report capability provides the user with easy generation of statistical information such as averages, standard deviations and p-values down to the case level. For example, users can perform physician and hospital profiling and determine the statistical significant of revealed variations.

DYNAMO empowers users to measure full and direct cost savings opportunities. Whereas other software packages estimate the ratio of cost-to-charge values utilizing HCFA cost reports, DYNAMO collects actual cost data, downloaded from a variety of cost accounting system (such as HBOC an TSI), to better measure physician utilization and resource consumption.

Clinical Dynamics was founded in 1995 by a group of doctors, hospital administrators, and clinicians whose purpose was to develop a software reporting tool that meets the needs of medical professionals in monitoring the outcome of clinical care. DYNAMO, Clinical Dynamics' flagship product, is a data warehousing, data analysis and reporting tool that is utilized over a secure Internet environment, making it an accessible, yet sophisticated tool. For more information contact Barbara Norman at 510/793-6695 or visit http://www.clindyn.com.