The Chester County Hospital, Supported by Solutions from Siemens Medical Solutions, Wins Prestigious North American Global Excellence Business Process Management and Workflow Award.

LONDON -- The Chester County Hospital (TCCH), West Chester, Pa., USA, has been named the 2006 Gold Winner of the North American Global Excellence in Business Process Management (BPM) and Workflow Award, acknowledging the positive impact on both clinical and business outcomes that TCCH has derived from its implementation of Soarian(R), Siemens Medical Solutions' workflow management solution for healthcare. Today in London, the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) and the Workflow and Reengineering International Association (WARIA) recognized TCCH for its distinction in implementing an innovative workflow management solution that meets TCCH's strategic business objectives.

The award submission highlighted how two Soarian-driven workflows, Bed Management and Infection Control, have yielded important positive outcomes for TCCH by reducing the number of manual steps within the process of identification, notification and tracking. At any one time, the workflow system is evaluating data for over a thousand patients against TCCH's criteria for best practice. In fact, the Bed Management workflow has helped TCCH reduce the number of manual steps by 50 percent, resulting in increased efficiency and productivity. Similarly, TCCH's Infection Control workflow automatically triggers processes defined by TCCH to identify and manage patients at admission who have a positive history of contagious infections, such as Methicillin Resistant Staphylcoccus Aureus (MRSA) and Vancomycin Resistant Enterococcus (VRE), which can spread to other patients on a floor.

"We realized that business process management was one of the keys to the survival of a healthcare system in the 21st century," stated Ray Hess, vice president, Information Management, TCCH. "The Chester County Hospital system upholds the fundamental principles of medicine - the desire to make people well, and to do so in the safest, most effective way possible."

Using Soarian, which integrates the TIBCO iProcess Engine into its core workflow functionality, TCCH's information technology (IT) staff created workflows to address the specific clinical and business challenges in their healthcare organization. These workflows helped TCCH seamlessly move patients, information and resources throughout the healthcare continuum - across disparate technology platforms and systems - to help improve the patient care process.

"Workflow continues to be used to tie diverse systems together ensuring that information is delivered to the right place at the right time, every time," stated lead WARIA judge and BPM industry analyst Derek Miers. "As the healthcare industry has been slower to adopt BPM than other industries, The Chester County Hospital has distinguished itself by investing in workflow management technology that addresses the fluidity of the healthcare industry. In few other industries can streamlined workflow mean the difference between life and death as it can in a healthcare setting."

"Siemens Medical Solutions applauds The Chester County Hospital for its innovation and excellence in workflow management," stated Janet Dillione, president, Healthcare Information Technology Division, Siemens Medical Solutions. "We are proud to work with TCCH to deliver an effective workflow management solution that is today addressing a wide variety of key clinical and administrative issues in the healthcare industry."

Located in West Chester, Pa., with roots dating back to 1892, TCCH is an independent, not-for-profit hospital and is a provider of a full network of healthcare services, including a 234-bed not-for-profit acute care hospital, home care, and many other ancillary services. It provides a full range of medical and surgical treatment with specialties in Cardiology, Oncology, Women's Health and Orthopedics.

The WfMC, founded in August 1993, is a non-profit, international organization of workflow vendors, users, analysts and university/research groups. The Coalition's mission is to promote and develop the use of workflow through the establishment of standards for software terminology, interoperability and connectivity between workflow products. Comprising over 300 members worldwide, the Coalition is the only standards body for this specific software market. The creation of the WfMC Standards Reference Model has proved its importance in other areas of technology, most notably the ISO Seven Layer reference model for computer communications. Please visit www.wfmc.org for more information.

The charter of the BPM-Workflow And Reengineering International Association is to identify and clarify issues that are common to all users of workflow and those who are in the process of reengineering their organizations. BPM-WARIA's mission is to make sense of what's happening at the intersection of Business Process Reengineering, Process Management, Workflow and Electronic Commerce and reach clarity through sharing experiences, product evaluations, networking among users and vendors, education and training. Please visit www.waria.com for more information.

Siemens Medical Solutions of Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) with headquarters in Malvern, Pennsylvania, and Erlangen, Germany, is one of the largest suppliers to the healthcare industry in the world. The company is known for bringing together innovative medical technologies, healthcare information systems, management consulting, and support services, to help customers achieve tangible, sustainable, clinical and financial outcomes. Employing approximately 33,000 people worldwide and operating in more than 120 countries, Siemens Medical Solutions reported sales of 7.6 billion EUR, orders of 8.6 billion EUR and group profit of 976 million EUR for fiscal 2005. More information can be obtained by visiting www.usa.siemens.com/medical-pressroom.