Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network Upgrades to IDX(R) Carecast(TM) Enterprise Clinical System

Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network Upgrades to IDX(R) Carecast(TM) Enterprise Clinical System

Long-time IDX customer will use next-generation system to expand electronic medical record, CPOE, interdisciplinary care plans

BURLINGTON, Vt., and LEHIGH VALLEY, Pa., Feb. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- IDX Systems Corporation (NASDAQ:IDXC) and Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network (LVHHN) today announced an upgrade agreement for the IDX(R) Carecast(TM) enterprise clinical system. The integrated delivery network will use the advanced functionality in Carecast to support its goal of providing a completely paperless electronic medical record (EMR) across its three community teaching hospitals, while moving forward with interdisciplinary care plans and expanding the organization's use of computerized physician order entry (CPOE).

"More than a decade ago, we began creating an IT infrastructure that would lead to the electronic medical record we have today," said Sandy Haldeman, LVHHN Director of the Carecast upgrade project. "Using the IDX clinical system has allowed us to focus our efforts on patient safety initiatives recommended by the Institute of Medicine. Upgrading to Carecast is the next step for us."

Through its ongoing use of CPOE and wireless barcode medication charting, LVHHN has strengthened medication safety across the entire cycle of ordering, dispensing and administration. By combining CPOE and barcode charting, the organization has documented a 44 percent reduction in medication error rates to date, and will continue to expand its use of technology to enhance patient safety. Today, attending physicians enter more than 65 percent of all inpatient orders electronically at LVHHN, and the organization plans to complete its roll-out of CPOE in 2005.

"Creating a comprehensive safety net has been our highest priority, and with Carecast, we'll be able to keep pushing the envelope," said Donald Levick, MD, Medical Staff President at LVHHN. "We are moving closer and closer to a completely paperless electronic medical record that spans care settings and enables clinicians to actively work as a care team."

The LVHHN nursing team has also been an intrinsic part of the organization's commitment to error prevention across the medication cycle, reflecting the commitment to nursing excellence at LVHHN's three Magnet- certified hospitals. LVHHN nurses use wireless barcode medication charting to prevent errors during medication administration - the second most likely place for medication errors to occur, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) (1998).

Wireless barcoding is widely recognized in the industry as vital to ensuring the "five rights" of medication administration: right drug, right dose, right patient, right route and right time. Nurses at LVHHN use the technology to close the loop on medication safety by scanning the drug and the patient's armband at the bedside - with patient and drug information automatically checked and confirmed by the IDX enterprise clinical system. LVHHN has documented that the technology enables the institution to successfully prevent 50 potential medication errors out of 10,000 doses administered. This means that on the average 30-bed medical unit, LVHHN prevents 50 medication errors per month.

"The integrated wireless barcoding system has become an inherent part of our nurses' workflow, providing a final safety check to support their advanced clinical skills," said Jan Wilson, RN, MS, Nursing Informatics IS liaison. "The nursing staff is looking forward to even greater patient safety outcomes with advanced care plans and additional new functionality in Carecast."

LVHHN physicians, nurses and ancillary caregivers will use Carecast's interdisciplinary care plans to map out the activities that need to be completed for an individual patient over an entire hospital stay, track activities, and view results from clinicians' interactions with the patient.

Carecast is built on the HP NonStop(TM) platform, known for its ability to deliver 99.9 percent uptime and subsecond response time. The NonStop server's reliability has prevented any system-wide unscheduled downtime since LVHHN implemented IDX(R) LastWord(R), Carecast's predecessor. LVHHN's experience reflects one of the key differentiators of IDX Carecast and LastWord on the NonStop platform, and a timely consideration for healthcare organizations embarking on electronic health records. In a recent report, Gartner, Inc., emphasized that "as care delivery organizations increase computer-based patient record use for clinical care, they will become increasingly intolerant of downtime." (Hieb, Barry, M.D.; Scott, D., 9 November 2004 "Clinical Automation to Drive High Availability Requirements.") LastWord's uptime performance has reinforced the LVHHN's expansion of information technology that directly supports patient safety during care, Haldeman noted.

"As one of the leading community teaching hospitals to successfully deploy CPOE, LVHHN has shown tremendous commitment and innovation," said Mike Raymer, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the IDX Carecast Operating Unit. "We look forward to supporting LVHHN's further roll-out of CPOE and greater expansion of electronic health records with Carecast."

A long-time customer of LastWord, LVHHN also uses the IDX(R) Imagecast(TM) Radiology Information System and IDX(R) Flowcast(TM) practice management system in its inpatient and ambulatory facilities. Through its Carecast implementation, LVHHN will also implement access to Imagecast's full-fidelity images directly within the electronic patient record.

About Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network

Based in Allentown and Bethlehem, Pa., Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network is composed of Lehigh Valley Hospital -- Cedar Crest & I-78, Lehigh Valley Hospital -- 17th & Chew, Lehigh Valley Hospital -- Muhlenberg and Lehigh Valley Health Services, which includes home health, hospice, rehabilitation, pharmacy and health management. Advanced regional resources at these non-profit hospitals include a Level I Trauma Center with added pediatric qualifications, as well as burn, kidney and pancreas transplant, perinatal/neonatal, cardiac, cancer care, and neurology and complex neurosurgery. LVHHN hospitals are designated national Magnet hospitals for excellence in nursing, and were recently honored with the National Committee for Quality Health Care's National Quality Health Care Award. LVHHN is also one of the 100 Most Wired Hospitals in the United States, as designated by the Hospitals & Health Networks' Most Wired Survey and Benchmarking Study, 2004.

About IDX(R) Carecast(TM)

Carecast is IDX's next generation of electronic clinical information solutions, delivering unsurpassed response time and reliability to support fast-paced clinical environments. The system automates workflow throughout the healthcare enterprise and enables rapid access to patient records across the care continuum, from admission to discharge, including pharmacy and ambulatory care. Carecast is a fully integrated clinical, financial and administrative system, combining core clinical processes for orders, results, pharmacy and clinical documentation with administrative and financial processes for scheduling, registration, admitting, charging and billing. The result is a comprehensive lifetime patient record that enhances the quality of care and promotes operational efficiencies. Developed by and for providers -- in collaboration with some of the nation's leading hospitals, clinicians and healthcare executives -- Carecast builds on 25 years of innovation with the IDX(R) LastWord(R) enterprise clinical system.

About IDX

Founded in 1969, IDX Systems Corporation provides information technology solutions to maximize value in the delivery of healthcare, improve the quality of patient service, enhance medical outcomes, and reduce the costs of care. IDX supports these objectives with a broad range of complementary and functionally rich products installed at 3,300 customer sites. Customers include 138,000 physicians who utilize practice management systems to improve patient care and other workflow processes. IDX software solutions are installed at:

-- 380 integrated delivery networks (IDNs) representing more than 500
hospitals
-- 175 large group practices with more than 200 physicians
-- 665 mid-size group practices with less than 200 physicians



IDX also provides its enterprise clinical software as a subcontractor to BT and Fujitsu Services, Local Service Providers for the United Kingdom National Health Service's National Programme for Information Technology, an initiative to establish electronic patient records for 50 million patients.

The IDX web strategy includes browser technology, e-commerce and web-based tools -- built using Internet architecture -- that facilitates access for patients, physicians and care providers to vital health information and data managed by the IDX clinical, administrative, financial, and managed care products. IDX has approximately 2,100 full-time employees.

IDX, Carecast and LastWord are registered trademarks or trademarks of IDX Investment Corporation.

This press release contains forward-looking statements about IDX Systems Corporation that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Among the important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements are uncertainties or difficulties in developing new services, including Carecast, possible failure of IDX to realize the benefits of developing clinical guidelines, difficulties in implementing systems, possible deferral, delay or cancellation by customers of computer system or service purchase decisions, possible delay of system installations and service implementations, development by competitors of new or superior technologies, changing economic, political and regulatory influences on the healthcare and e-Commerce industries, possible disruptions in the national economy caused by terrorist activities and foreign conflicts, changes in product pricing policies, governmental regulation of IDX's software and operations, the possibility of product-related liabilities, and factors detailed from time to time in IDX's periodic reports and registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which important factors are incorporated herein by reference. IDX undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect changed assumptions, the occurrence of unanticipated events, or changes in future operating results, financial condition or business over time.

For more information, contact:

Jamie Gier


Senior Director of Marketing, IDX Carecast, 206.607.5472, Jamie_Gier@idx.com

Catherine Sweeney

Media Relations, IDX Carecast, 206.607.5462, Catherine_Sweeney@idx.com


Source: IDX Systems Corporation

CONTACT: Jamie Gier, Senior Director of Marketing, +1-206-607-5472,
Jamie_Gier@idx.com; or Catherine Sweeney, Media Relations, +1-206-607-5462,
Catherine_Sweeney@idx.com, both of IDX Carecast

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


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