PortBlue Releases Its HICS IV Compliant CommandAware(TM) Hospital Incident Response System.

New Version Enables Hospitals to Meet New, More Stringent Federal and Accreditation Requirements for Incident Management

LOS ANGELES -- PortBlue Corporation (www.portblue.com), a leading provider of web-based expert systems, today announced the launch of its latest version of the CommandAware[TM] Hospital Incident Management software, providing hospitals with the tools and information they need to develop and deploy a HICS IV-compliant incident management system.

HICS IV is an incident management system based on the Incident Command System (ICS) that assists hospitals in improving their emergency management planning, response, and recovery capabilities for unplanned and planned events, developed by leading experts in the industry. HICS is compliant with the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and will strengthen hospital disaster preparedness activities. The quick implementation time underscores the strength of the PortBlue agile technology platform.

"As American hospitals face a federal mandate to prepare for the unthinkable, disaster-preparedness staff often don't have the time to become resident experts on the tougher, tighter guidelines," said Paul Dimitruk, CEO of PortBlue. "CommandAware builds that expertise into a robust emergency management system that helps facilities of every size perform like disaster-recovery experts, even under crisis conditions."

The HICS and NIMS frameworks promote common terminology and command structure between the many entities responsible for disaster management in a community. This commonality enables more effective communication and collaboration between groups such as hospitals, state and local governments, and first responders during disasters. In an effort to improve coordination between hospitals and other key national resources, the federal government, through the Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD 5) and through the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), has mandated that all US hospitals become NIMS compliant by August 31, 2008.

JCAHO, the leading national accreditation organization, has also mandated in their environment of care standards that hospitals meet this NIMS compliance requirement by implementing the HICS IV framework. Hospitals must meet JCAHO's standards to qualify for federal reimbursement through the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

CommandAware offers hospitals best practice guidance in developing a comprehensive incident management plan, built on a resource management platform that can be used in all operational conditions, from everyday hospital capacity management to mass casualty events.

The CommandAware mission is threefold: to ensure that hospitals have a state of the art disaster management plan that complies with best practices and accreditation standards, to give disaster managers the information, work process tools, and resources they need to effectively respond to a full "all hazards" array of incidents, and to ensure that hospitals recover from incidents effectively, tracking vital data to capture lessons learned from both emergency drills and actual incidents so that mistakes are not repeated and process improvements are made. Clients include Intermountain Healthcare, which standardized on CommandAware across six Utah hospitals.

The updated HICS IV-compliance features make it easier for hospitals to improve and execute disaster-preparedness plans that meet the latest in standards and best practices - without hiring or retraining staff. CommandAware eases the compliance and education burden on hospital safety, security, emergency services and disaster management teams by building the most important HICS IV tenets right into the application. Users can apply best practices, even if they aren't disaster-management experts or haven't yet received HICS IV training. CommandAware simplifies the process of assigning different responsibilities to staff members under different hazard conditions. For example, with a few simple clicks, emergency management staff can establish different response teams and procedures for a tornado versus an earthquake. CommandAware also supplies many of the new HICS IV forms directly from the system, so users can easily find them when they need them.

About PortBlue

PortBlue Corporation (www.portblue.com) develops and hosts knowledge based systems for the healthcare sector. The practical know-how of recognized experts is rapidly transformed into web-based training, work process and decision-support tools in the form of PortBlue hosted applications. PortBlue's systems mentor and guide users through key tasks and processes to optimal decisions and outcomes.