Dairyland Healthcare Solutions Names Carl Witonsky as Director

GLENWOOD, Minn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dairyland Healthcare Solutions today announced the appointment of healthcare IT veteran Carl Witonsky to its Board of Directors, effective immediately.

Witonsky brings to Dairyland extensive healthcare IT executive experience. He spent 13 years at SMS as its senior executive for software development and operations, helping to grow the company from post start-up to a $500 million successful enterprise. He also served as CEO and Chairman of GMIS, a leading provider of fraud management solutions for the payer industry. Witonsky led a successful IPO for GMIS and later joined St. Paul Venture Capital (SPVC) as managing director of the firm’s healthcare practice. In that role, Witonsky guided SPVC’s investments in a wide range of early-stage healthcare IT companies including Eclipsys, Integrated Medical Management and Medicode—all of which were subsequently acquired or taken public. Currently, Witonsky holds two board positions in addition to Dairyland—one at HCTSi, the clinical connectivity solutions provider and at Sentillion, where he serves as chairman. He also is currently a Managing Director of Falcon Capital Partners, a leading investment banking firm focused on mid market healthcare companies.

Dairyland President & CEO James Burgess, also a Board member, said that Witonsky brings an important perspective to the Dairyland Board. “We are fortunate to have Carl on the Board. His knowledge and experience will be a great advantage to Dairyland as we develop state-of-the-art solutions to help our hospital partners optimize use of their clinical and financial information across the enterprise.” Burgess said. “Carl has the perfect mix of technical expertise and industry knowledge to help guide our strategic development,” he explained.

Witonsky joins a relatively new Dairyland Board of Directors which was created when the company was acquired in June 2007 by Francisco Partners, one of the world's largest technology-focused private equity funds. In addition to Burgess, the Dairyland Board includes John Trzeciak, who is a healthcare advisor to Francisco Partners and served as Dairyland’s interim CEO prior to the appointment of Burgess in September 2007.

Additional Board members include Ezra Perlman, a partner at Francisco Partners with extensive background as a healthcare technology venture capitalist and management consultant; Tom Ludwig, a principal at Francisco Partners who earlier was a Corporate Development Manager at Microsoft Corporation and Petri Oksanen, a Francisco Partners’ associate who also comes from Microsoft and earlier, Morgan Stanley’s Global Technology Investment Banking Group.

About Dairyland Healthcare Systems

Dairyland Healthcare Solutions is an award-winning healthcare information systems company that links essential information between small community hospitals and their healthcare delivery and business networks. Dairyland enables its hospital partners to deliver the highest level of patient care by providing the information infrastructure required to operate effectively in the dynamic and complex healthcare delivery environment. For almost three decades, Dairyland has partnered with leading community hospitals to help them improve efficiencies, enhance profitability and ensure patient safety by providing solutions to manage, integrate and access key financial, clinical and patient information. Dairyland is the only company to be awarded three consecutive “Best in KLAS” ratings in the Community Hospital Information Systems category. To learn more, visit: http://www.dhsnet.com.