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Informatics Corporation of America Launches With Rapid Implementation of First Client, Bassett Healthcare

Posted on: Monday, 11 December 2006, 09:01 CST

NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Marked by the successful pilot implementation of its first client Bassett Healthcare (Bassett), healthcare information technology (IT) executive Gary M. Zegiestowsky, together with Vanderbilt Medical Center (Vanderbilt), announced today the creation of a new clinical software and solutions company, Informatics Corporation of America (ICA).

The formation of ICA began in early 2005 to take the proven informatics- based tools and processes developed and used by physicians at nationally renowned Vanderbilt to the broader healthcare community. Through the utilization of technology, ICA empowers clinicians to access complete patient information, to communicate effectively with all participants in the care process and to act on information based on evidence and best practice.

Already using ICA technologies is the company's first client and flagship health system, Bassett Healthcare in Cooperstown, NY, which completed the production pilot implementation of ICA's core aggregation solution in November of this year. Bassett expects to roll this out across their entire delivery network by early 2007.

"Today, one of the greatest unmet needs of clinicians and healthcare organizations - from rural hospitals to major health systems - is easy and effective access to clinical information across all systems within a hospital or community of providers," says Zegiestowsky, Chief Executive Officer, ICA.

"This challenge is often attributed to incompatible, disparate technology systems that lock valuable clinical information in 'silos', which complicates the care delivery process. By building on and using all IT systems presently functioning within an organization, ICA solves this problem by allowing clinicians to tap into that valuable information and arming them with tools necessary to act on this information."

ICA's solution integrates and builds upon the clinical systems and processes across a delivery network to create a unified electronic medical record solution. The core solution, typically implemented in less than six months, involves aggregating all available patient information and making it easily accessible to clinicians anytime, anywhere. ICA aggregates all available clinical information regardless of source or format - leaving no data behind - as opposed to other aggregation solutions that provide only a subset of patient information.

ICA's solution further expands upon this information foundation by providing communication and workflow tools to improve communications, facilitate data capture, track clinical metrics and incorporate evidence to help clinicians more effectively act on the information available to them.

"The current healthcare environment, with either paper or fragmented electronic information tools, is increasingly unmanageable for providers and patients," says Dr. Henry Weil, Medical Director for Informatics, Bassett. "In ICA, we now have an unmatched solution set that couples complete data aggregation and access tools with workflow revolutionizing capabilities that enable decision support."

"Our key intention for proceeding with ICA's solution was to create an efficient environment for our busy providers," adds Bertine McKenna, Ph.D., Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Bassett.

"We believe this system will reduce chaos for providers, free up more time for the patient experience, facilitate greater safety and quality for patients, and provide expense control to our organization."

The Flagship Health System

ICA's flagship Bassett Healthcare is a rural health system comprised of four hospitals, 23 community health centers and 14 school-based health centers, spanning an eight county service region, or 5,000 square mile area, in central New York state. The first phase of Bassett's implementation went live with the production pilot in November, and the expanded implementation is already underway.

"Our organization for many years followed a 'best in breed' approach to IT - investing in varying state-of-the-art technologies, with expenditures topping 7% of operating revenues during the late 1990s," says Kenneth R. Deans, Jr., Chief Information Officer and Vice President, Bassett. "Despite these significant investments, we faced considerable compatibility issues."

"We chose ICA to answer these compatibility concerns largely because its technologies were built by providers for providers, in a real clinical environment. As a result, we are not forced to solve compatibility issues while sacrificing provider and customer usability - it's quite the opposite. We are significantly enhancing usability and real-time access."

"ICA has taken a proven product and fine-tuned it for use by healthcare organizations nationwide," adds Dr. William Streck, President and Chief Executive Officer, Bassett. "Bassett is committed to evidence-based practice, and this technology clearly positions us for a future of integrated, evidence- based care."

Incubation of ICA Technologies

"When we began the development of these technologies over ten years ago, our goal at Vanderbilt was to improve the inefficient paperwork and communication processes affecting the hospital's ability to deliver cohesive care across the medical center and its affiliated clinics and physicians' practices," says Dr. Harry R. Jacobson, Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs at Vanderbilt University, CEO of Vanderbilt Medical Center, and Senior Advisor for ICA.

Vanderbilt, one of the country's leading research and teaching hospitals, is comprised of four hospitals, 120 outpatient practices, and 1,000 physicians. In FY2006, Vanderbilt had roughly 47,000 admissions and over one million outpatient visits.

Due to the size and diversity of practice areas at Vanderbilt, as well varying IT systems, problems such as poor communication among clinical staff and limited access to complete information resulted in inefficient workflow and increasing medical error.

"We focused first on information aggregation and display, instead of automation, to solve these problems," says Dr. William W. Stead, Associate Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs at Vanderbilt University, CIO and Director of Informatics at Vanderbilt Medical Center, and Senior Advisor for ICA.

"We took data from the existing systems and aggregated it for view in clinical workflow - much like the Internet has done with varying information sources over the past decade. This was the foundation of what became a family of technologies allowing us to incorporate evidence-based and patient-centric care practices into medicine."

Due to the success of the program, ICA was created to evolve the information systems developed at Vanderbilt into a suite of products for providers nationwide. Through a partnership and licensing agreement, ICA retains the exclusive right to use the products outside of Vanderbilt.

ICA Implementation Approach

For the past 15 years, hospitals have typically employed one of two healthcare IT implementation strategies:

1. "Best-in-Breed": Investing in the top IT products available for each specialty or department, which leads to communication and data integration issues. 2. "Single Vendor Solution": Purchasing same-brand products that allow for greater seamlessness and integration, which often requires the elimination of existing systems.

"ICA provides a significant alternative to other products that typically require replacing existing systems or provide limited aggregation capabilities across those systems," says Jeff Cunningham, Chief Technology Officer, ICA. "Our approach allows healthcare providers to leverage the strengths of their IT investments and to further expand those capabilities to provide a fully integrated solution."

Using a "building block" approach to implementation, ICA provides a base solution in four to six months at a cost that is typically far less expensive than comparable solutions - creating short-term wins for health organizations, while building toward long-term value for providers and patients.

Company Leadership Senior Management: -- Gary M. Zegiestowsky, Chief Executive Officer - Former COO of a $500 million division of Cendant and former Director in Strategy Consulting Practice of Andersen Worldwide. -- Jeffrey D. Cunningham, Chief Technology Officer - Former Partner and Senior Strategist for Computer Science Corporation's (CSC's) National Customer Solutions Consulting Practice and CSC's Global Healthcare Solutions. Senior Advisors: -- Harry R. Jacobson, M.D. - Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs at Vanderbilt University, CEO of Vanderbilt Medical Center. Member of the Society of Medical Administrators and the Institute of Medicine. -- William W. Stead, M.D. - A pioneer in the field of bio-medical informatics and CIO and Director of Informatics at Vanderbilt Medical Center. Served as Chairman of the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine and as a Presidential appointee to the Commission on Systemic Interoperability. Board of Directors: -- Fred C. Goad - Co-founder of Voyent Partners, LLC and former Chairman and Co-CEO of ENVOY Corporation. -- Ron Hinds - Former CFO of Renal Care Group. -- Thomas W. ("Tim") Lyles - President and General Counsel of Mission City Management, Inc. and President of MedCare Investment Funds. -- C. Thomas Smith - Former President and CEO of VHA Inc. -- Gary M. Zegiestowsky - CEO of Informatics Corporation of America Informatics Corporation of America (ICA)

ICA is a clinical software and solutions company created with Vanderbilt Medical Center to take the proven informatics-based tools and processes developed and used by physicians at Vanderbilt to the broader healthcare community. ICA's focus is to utilize technology to break down information and communication barriers that hinder patient care - empowering clinicians with the knowledge and tools they need to make critical decisions, better and faster than ever before. For more information, visit http://www.icainformatics.com/.

Informatics Corporation of America

CONTACT: Anne Hancock of Informatics Corporation of America,+1-615-254-0575

Web site: http://www.icainformatics.com/

Source: PRNewswire

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