Harrison Medical Center is a non-profit community hospital and Level III Trauma Center serving a four-county region west of Seattle. The system includes four major campuses, and the organization plans to open an additional campus later this year. Caring more than 100,000 patients each year, the peninsula's busiest health system selected GE Centricity solutions to help maintain and expand their vision for providing completely connected patient care.

Adar Palis, Vice President and CIO of Harrison Medical Center, said the organization spent more than two years evaluating technology from several vendors before selecting GE Healthcare, largely based the company's stability and a shared commitment to putting patients at the center of care.

Harrison plans to roll out Centricity® Electronic Medical Record and additional Centricity solutions to 25 of its employed physicians who provide care in the organization's community care clinics. Harrison will also extend the benefits of HIT to their broader community by offering Centricity EMR and Centricity solutions for document management, eHealth and clinical messaging to over 100 physicians. Harrison intends to help community physicians adopt the EMR by funding the maximum amount available under regulations of the Stark Relaxation Law.

To tie it all together, Harrison will deploy the Centricity Health Information Exchange (HIE) Services offering to connect patient data that will reside in the EMR at employed and community physician practices with medical records stored in the hospital's existing clinical information system. By enabling document-based information sharing via a secure, standards-based HIE infrastructure, this connectivity will create community-based patient charts with shared problems, medications, allergies and lab data.

"With its decision to fund this significant investment in EMR, HIE and other HIT solutions, even in a difficult economy, the Medical Center's Board of Directors has made a clear statement of their commitment to improving care for Harrison's patients," said Scott Bosch, President and CEO of Harrison Medical Center. Palis continued, "Patients expect and deserve coordinated care, but within the industry we all know this has not been a simple goal to achieve. It will take dedication, new investments, and highly evolved IT solutions. Through our collaboration with GE Healthcare and the creation of a shared community health exchange, we will take big strides towards providing the best patient care possible."

Jim Smalley, Chairman of the Board of Harrison Medical Center, commented, "At Harrison, we build systems to ensure our patients are treated with world-class, evidence-based medical care. Our investment in information technology is a key example of this focus. The Board is dedicated to fulfilling our mission and meeting the needs of the community, and we intend to get it right - the first time - with GE."

The government's injection of stimulus funding for the adoption of HIT, though the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and HITECH Act for Healthcare, reaffirms Harrison's direction and validates their investment. While many specifics of the bill have yet to be determined, the Centricity solutions Harrison plans to implement should help their providers prepare to demonstrate "meaningful use" of EMR technology, and may allow them to qualify for incentive payments.

James M. Corrigan, Vice President and General Manager at GE Healthcare, commented, "Harrison Medical Center is making a strategic investment in the future of healthcare that exemplifies the leadership this country is ready to embrace. For more than 40 years, GE Healthcare has been at the forefront of supporting innovative leaders in healthcare, enabling our customers' business performance while helping them optimize clinical care. At Harrison and elsewhere, the powerful combination of EMR, HIE, practice management and patient portal solutions can have a combined impact even greater than the sum of its parts, and we look forward to working with an organization that believes so strongly in the role IT plays in advancing patient care."

Providing physicians with tools to measure the quality of care they provide is a key part of Harrison's strategy for improving patient health, particularly for the management of chronic diseases such as diabetes. GE's Medical Quality Improvement Consortium (MQIC), a leading quality outcomes reporting solution, can help Harrison benchmark indicators of care at the clinic, regional, and national level. MQIC enables healthcare organizations to create a cycle of continuous improvement - without disrupting clinic workflow. The solution is certified by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as a reporting registry for the Medicare Physician Quality Improvement Initiative (PQRI), and can simplify participation in this and other pay for performance programs.

Harrison also believes strongly in involving patients in their care, with eHealth tools and services that can alleviate many of the common frustrations and inefficiencies in today's healthcare experience. The Centricity Practice - Patient Portal, a web-based service that streamlines patient/clinic communications and gives patients round-the-clock access to portal services, was also purchased from GE. Through the Portal, patients will be able to register as a new patient, request appointments and medication refills, make billing inquiries, and update demographics such as contact information.

In addition, the organization expects to improve their bottom line through the implementation of Centricity Practice Management in their outpatient clinics. GE's proven system for managing the revenue cycle works seamlessly with Centricity EMR, and its powerful patient-centered capabilities will help Harrison reduce entry errors and repetitive manual data entry, improve charge capture, and automate the claims submission process.

For more information on Harrison's program to help community providers adopt the Centricity EMR, visit www.heromd.org.

ABOUT GE HEALTHCARE:
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, performance improvement, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians around the world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform, treat, and monitor disease, so patients can live their lives to the fullest.

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.

ABOUT HARRISON MEDICAL CENTER:
Harrison is a not-for-profit community hospital whose origins date to the flu epidemic of 1918. Today, it is the region's busiest medical center; with four campuses serving Kitsap, Jefferson, Clallam, and north Mason counties. At the main hospital in East Bremerton, and facilities in Silverdale, Port Orchard, and Belfair, Harrison offers a comprehensive range of services, including OB/GYN and pediatrics; cardiology, including open-heart surgery; orthopedics; oncology; diagnostic imaging; laser, laparoscopic, and retinal surgery; rehabilitation; mental health; emergency and urgent care. Harrison is a Level III Trauma Center.

Harrison's ER and urgent care staff treat more than 90,000 patients annually, making it one of the busiest emergency departments in the region. Some 17,000 patients are admitted to Harrison each year. More than 2,000 babies are born annually at the Women's & Children's Center in Silverdale and more than 12,000 surgeries are performed at two Harrison facilities. For more information, visit www.harrisonmedical.org .