Gordon Sprenger Joins Bridge Medical Board.

Business Editors & Health/Medical Writers

SAN DIEGO--(BW HealthWire)--April 12, 2001

Allina Health System CEO, Member of Harvard Medical

Error Collaborative, Says Better Support for Caregivers

is Vitally Important to Patient Safety

Bridge Medical Inc. today announced that Gordon Sprenger, president and chief executive officer of Allina Health System, has been elected to Bridge's board of directors.

Mr. Sprenger is past-chairman of the American Hospital Association board of trustees and past board chair of Voluntary Hospitals of America. Mr. Sprenger also serves on the boards of Medtronic Inc. and The St. Paul Companies Inc.

"We are proud to welcome Gordon as a member of Bridge Medical's Board of Directors," said John Grotting, president and chief executive officer, Bridge Medical. "Our mission at Bridge is to help health care providers prevent medication errors and adverse drug events. There is no one I can think of who better understands these problems and the challenges hospitals and health care systems face in addressing them. Gordon has made patient safety a major organizational goal for the Allina system, integrating it into the strategic and organizational plan."

Mr. Sprenger served as a member of the Executive Session on Medical Error and Patient Safety, a collaborative group of health care leaders organized by the Harvard Schools of Public Health, Medicine, Government and the university-wide Division of Health Policy, Research and Education. The Executive Session is a forum that brings together industry leaders to examine a difficult social problem. The Executive Session on Medical Error and Patient Safety, which includes CEOs of leading health care systems, has met for the past three years to help develop novel patient safety and medical error prevention strategies, assist members in making progress as quickly as possible and contribute to the dissemination of technology.

"I am very happy to be joining Bridge's Board," Gordon Sprenger said. "Bridge's technologies and services will be a tremendously valuable resources for health care providers," Sprenger stated. "As the complexity of the medication therapies delivered in hospitals grows, it is vitally important to provide nurses, pharmacists and physicians with the tools they need to prevent medication errors and provide optimum care. If we're serious about eliminating error, we have to provide the support the people delivering care need to prevent error. Bridge's bar-code and networking technology brings powerful new resources to the bedside."

Bridge Medical, headquartered in Solana Beach, Calif., was founded in 1996 to help health care providers prevent medication errors and adverse drug events, reduce costs and improve the outcomes of drug therapy.

The Bridge MedPoint(TM) system uses bar-coding, innovative software and computer networking to allow nurses to verify the five rights (right drug, patient, dose, route of administration and time) before a medication is administered. The bedside system also provides vital medication alerts and automates the Medication Administration Report, eliminating a time-consuming manual task for nursing. For more information about Bridge and the MedPoint system, including a video clip of the system in use, access BridgeMedical.com.

For more information about the problem of medication errors, continuing education programs or "Beyond Blame," Bridge's award-winning documentary, access Bridge's educational site at www.mederrors.com.