Unity Health System Selects Physmark's Managed Care Software; MEDICOMP Will Manage Risk Contracts of One of Nation's Largest Health Systems.

DALLAS--(BW HealthWire)--March 10, 1999--Unity Health System, a Strategic Service Unit of the Sisters of Mercy Health System, one of the largest health care systems in the United States, has selected Physmark Inc.'s MEDICOMP software to manage the risk contracts of its various provider networks.

Designed specifically from the point of view of providers and using modern software technologies, MEDICOMP efficiently and effectively monitors, administers and manages risk contracts. This includes maintaining eligibility and benefits; repricing, adjudicating and paying claims; pre-authorization utilization monitoring and case management; and sophisticated financial modeling.

MEDICOMP is also fully web-enabled, allowing physicians to access important data, such as eligibility, referral and claims information, online through the Internet.

As providers take control of the delivery of care, they are joining together on a local level to create networks which, in turn, form larger regional health systems.

The Sisters of Mercy Health System, based in St. Louis (Missouri), sponsors hospitals, physician practices, health plans and other healthcare-related operations in an eight state area, encompassing 28,000 employees, 5,000 staff and 700 salaried physicians, and over 7,000 licensed beds.

Its provider networks include Integrated Delivery Networks and Physician Hospital Organizations.

"MEDICOMP's advanced technology and built-in flexibility are key to addressing Unity's enterprise-wide needs," said Dr. Jacob G. Kuriyan, president of Physmark Inc.

"Healthcare delivery is changing and software to service providers must also change otherwise supplementary manual processes will be needed. Automation offered by our modern software cuts the cost of ownership by reducing operational overhead."

Unity posed three challenges. First, MEDICOMP had never been tested on IBM's popular RS/6000 platform, which Unity uses to run its business and is often chosen for Oracle-based applications. Because MEDICOMP was created using Oracle's Developer/2000, it runs on multiple hardware platforms and operating environments.

MEDICOMP was easily loaded and made available for testing in just a few days.

Second, Unity, being part of a large regional health system, anticipated rapid increases in enrollments that can lower system performance and wanted the least disruptive upgrade path for their hardware. MEDICOMP's scaleability, increasing performance simply by adding multiple processors, addressed this issue directly.

To check scaleability, MEDICOMP's Oracle database was populated with 70,000 enrollees and about 300,000 claims and run on IBM RS/6000 with single and quad processors. The tests performed showed that a 4-way H50 was easily able to handle the increased enrollments and exceeded the performance requirements of Unity.

Third, Unity, like most healthcare organizations, wanted to rigorously test MEDICOMP for Y2K compliance. Every program that had a date field was run and checked to verify that MEDICOMP was Y2K compliant.

The RS/6000 family is designed to serve an exceptional range of business and I/T needs, from powerful desktop workstations to sophisticated systems handling high-end solutions such as ERP, e-business and business intelligence to complex scientific and technical applications.

Based on AIX, IBM's world-class UNIX operating environment, and IBM's leading-edge RISC technology, the RS/6000 platform combines the expertise of IBM with outstanding flexibility, power and performance.

The Sisters of Mercy Health System-St. Louis (SMHS) was established in 1986 to serve as the parent corporation of a variety of health care facilities and services sponsored by the Sisters of Mercy of the St. Louis Regional Community.

The Health System consists of 23 acute care hospitals, a psychiatric hospital, outpatient care facilities, physician practices, skilled nursing and long-term residential care facilities, clinics, a managed care organization and other health-related services.

Today, SMHS operates facilities and services in an eight-state area encompassing Arkansas, Kansas, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas. Health System services are provided by approximately 28,900 employees and 5,000 physicians.

Physmark Inc. is a software and services company that exclusively addresses the data management needs of managed care organizations. A pioneer in the industry, the company is the leading provider of information systems for more than 150 provider-based integrated delivery networks (IDNs), such as Physician Hospital Organizations (PHOs), Management Service Organizations (MSOs), Provider Sponsored Organizations (PSOs) and Independent Practice Associations (IPAs).

MEDICOMP is the exclusive managed care software endorsed by VHA Inc., the purchasing organization for over 1,600 nationwide community hospitals for managing IDNs. Physmark's MEDICOMP software is based on Oracle(R) Corp.'s relational database system and runs on Novell, Windows NT and UNIX platforms provided by Sun Microsystems and IBM Corp., among others.

Corporate headquarters are in Dallas; additional offices are located in Los Angeles, Durham, N.C., Chicago, Denver and Albuquerque, N.M. For more information, call 505/897-7500 or visit Physmark at http://www.physmark.com.

Oracle & Developer/2000 are registered trademarks of Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL). Novell is a registered trademark of Novell Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL). Windows NT is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT). Sun is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) and is also a preferred platform for MEDICOMP users.

IBM, AIX, RS/6000 are registered trademarks or trademarks of the IBM Corp. (NYSE:IBM) in the United States, other countries, or both. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and/or other countries licensed exclusively through X/Open Company Limited.