National Center for Healthcare Leadership and GE Healthcare Launch New Institute for Transformational Healthcare Leadership.

Innovative collaboration seeks to drive organizational excellence

CHICAGO & WAUKESHA, Wis. -- The National Center for Healthcare Leadership (NCHL) and GE Healthcare today announced they are collaborating to launch The Institute for Transformational Healthcare Leadership. The Institute will develop an integrated portfolio of educational offerings designed to create and sustain leadership excellence across a highly complex healthcare system. These unique offerings include assessment and planning methods, learning programs to systematically develop leaders from the front line to senior executive level and access to in-depth, onsite guidance and expertise.

The Institute's vision is to broadly and quickly deploy a comprehensive framework for achieving transformational and sustainable improvement in efficiency, quality, safety and access. The Institute will focus on individually and organizationally measured performance improvement--empowering healthcare leaders to strategically manage change and create a culture of accountability. Through the combined capabilities of GE's successful management systems and NCHL's leadership research, evaluation and benchmarking, healthcare organizations can enhance their ability to recruit and retain the best people, elevating healthcare as a preferred industry for top talent.

Ultimately, this strategic collaboration can help to accelerate the achievement of the six quality aims of the Institute of Medicine and address the growing and persistent challenges of access, quality, finance, capacity and workforce. Such issues have been clearly defined in recent reports from the Commonwealth Fund and the Agency for Healthcare Research Quality, among others. Both NCHL and GE Healthcare agree that strong leadership is at the core of transformation as the single most important factor in navigating through these issues.

"Healthcare leaders face unprecedented challenges, and past leadership approaches may no longer be sufficient," said Joseph M. Hogan, President and CEO of GE Healthcare. "As healthcare providers seek to improve the quality, safety and cost- effectiveness of their services, they will need to significantly raise the bar and even reinvent their underlying management systems. We believe the Institute for Transformational Healthcare Leadership represents a major step in that direction and we're delighted to be able to partner with NCHL on this endeavor."

"NCHL's goal is to transform the nation's healthcare by developing the leadership capacity necessary to achieve this goal. Our collaboration with GE Healthcare will substantially expand and accelerate NCHL's ability to provide all healthcare leaders with an enriched learning experience and enhance the pipeline of high-quality leaders," said Marie E. Sinioris, NCHL's president and CEO. "GE Healthcare will provide a trusted national and global vehicle to deliver healthcare leadership development programs, furthering our impact and influence on healthcare leadership."

Scheduled to launch in fall 2007, the Institute will offer educational programs and leadership development and organizational effectiveness tools. Participants will also have access to healthcare and industry thought leaders and management expertise in transformation. Additional information on The Institute for Transformational Healthcare Leadership is available online at www.nchl.gehealthcare.com.

Apart from the Institute, both NCHL and GE Healthcare's Performance Solutions will maintain their respective business initiatives. NCHL will continue to build its nationally recognized Leadership Excellence Networks (LENS), expand its research and demonstration projects and work with universities and others on graduate health management education, recruitment to careers in health management and diversity leadership. Performance Solutions will continue to deliver a diverse range of professional services for healthcare providers, addressing key issues across the organization such as patient flow, service line optimization, technology implementation and Lean Six Sigma.

About GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare's broad range of products and services enable healthcare providers to better diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases and other conditions earlier. Our vision for the future is to enable a new "early health" model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and disease prevention. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at www.gehealthcare.com.

GE Healthcare's Performance Solutions provides consulting and educational offerings designed to assist healthcare organizations in achieving their most critical objectives - from the emergency room to the boardroom. For more information on Performance Solutions, please visit the web site at www.gehealthcare.com/solutions.

About the National Center for Healthcare Leadership

The National Center for Healthcare Leadership (NCHL) is a not-for-profit organization that is an industry catalyst to assure the availability of accountable and transformational healthcare leadership for the 21st century. Its vision is to optimize the health of the public through leadership and organizational excellence.

As the authoritative and objective source on healthcare leadership, NCHL conducts research on global best practices and tests new models for leadership excellence within its Leadership Excellence Networks (LENS). LENS participants are leading healthcare systems and universities that are committed to raising the bar for leadership and organizational performance. Results are shared with the field through peer reviewed and trade journals and are disseminated across the healthcare field. NCHL provides innovative leadership development programs through strategic relationships with leading organizations. For more information please visit NCHL's website at www.nchl.org.