Courion Supplies Provisioning Solution to Catholic Healthcare West; Nation's Eighth Largest Hospital System Extends its Identity Management Infrastructure to Centralize Access Control.

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. -- Courion(R) Corporation, the provisioning specialist, today announced Catholic Healthcare West's (CHW) deployment of its Enterprise Provisioning Suite(TM) solution. By leveraging efficiencies afforded by Courion, the healthcare system of 41 hospitals and medical centers is provisioning its 44,000 plus users, including thousands of temporary hospital staff and volunteers, quickly and securely. As a result, workers will have improved access to the information and applications they need to do their jobs.

Founded in 1986, CHW provides healthcare services to a population of 22 million with its network of approximately 7,500 physicians and 45,000 staff and volunteers. The organization needed a more centralized, automated and integrated process to seamlessly enable clinicians' access to 200 key applications. As an extension of its effort to put in place a best-in-class IT infrastructure, Catholic Healthcare West tapped Courion to help automate its user provisioning and access verification audit process.

As part of its commitment to data security and patient privacy, CHW determined the need to maintain greater control of who had what level of access to its highly sensitive information. The company issued an RFP to a number of provisioning vendors. According to Dwayne Paul, Vice President, ITS Business Services, Catholic Healthcare West, "Courion rose to the top fairly early in the selection process. Each vendor product analyzed differed in its focus; some based on role creation, others on backend connectivity. Courion's strength in business workflow most closely aligned with our needs."

Paul added, "Courion's approach to automated role creation was also a determining factor. In fact, early discussions with Courion helped us develop our strategy for defining roles and linking them to appropriate levels of access."

With robust approval and provisioning workflows, CHW increases the flexibility and communication with key enterprise systems, such as service desk applications, and has the ability to easily drive these capabilities to new users.

In searching for a provisioning provider, CHW subjected all vendors to the same criteria it applies to all IT vendors: the need for a standards-based product that would seamlessly fit into the existing architecture. Unlike competitive technologies that impose additional infrastructure requirements and proprietary approaches that force customers to adapt their business processes based on technology constraints, Courion's provisioning solution leverages customers' existing infrastructure and data to accelerate time-to-value. Courion's extensive experience with the nuances of the healthcare industry was an added benefit.

"Hospitals are in the business of critical care and critical care doesn't afford the luxury of time," said Deb Pappas, Vice President of Market Strategy, Courion. "With Courion's Enterprise Provisioning Suite, Catholic Healthcare West can rest assured that their staff has the access they need to do their jobs, when they need it."

ABOUT COURION

Courion's rapid business impact approach enables you to avoid the pitfalls of traditional user provisioning and achieve lasting business value. By eliminating dependencies, prerequisites, and other barriers to provisioning success, Courion is able to address the specific business needs of customers and provide both extensibility and adaptability to the changes that are the reality of today's business environment. Powered by the industry's most flexible provisioning technology, Dynamic Community(TM) set-based provisioning, Courion offers an integrated suite of solutions for user provisioning, role management, enterprise single sign-on, audit compliance and password management. For more information, please visit our website at www.courion.com.

ABOUT CATHOLIC HEATHCARE WEST

Catholic Healthcare West (CHW), headquartered in San Francisco CA, is a system of 41 hospitals and medical centers in California, Arizona and Nevada. Founded in 1986, it is one of the nation's largest not-for-profit health care systems and the largest Catholic health care system based in the Western United States. CHW is committed to delivering compassionate, high-quality, affordable health care services with special attention to the poor and underserved. The CHW network of more than 7,500 physicians and approximately 44,000 employees provides health care services to more than four million people annually. In 2005 CHW provided more than $623 million in charity care and unsponsored community benefit. For more information, please visit our website at www.chwHEALTH.org.

Courion is a registered trademark. Enterprise Provisioning Suite and Dynamic Community are trademarks of Courion Corporation. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners