Picis Continues Momentum with Veterans Health Administration, Winning Contracts for Six Additional Medical Centers

WAKEFIELD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Continuing to build its presence in the Veterans Affairs medical community, Picis announced today that it has been awarded a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) contract for the Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) 12, also known as the Great Lakes Health Care System. In a very competitive selection process, the system selected Picis Critical Care Manager, part of the CareSuite^® family of high-acuity solutions, to provide intensive-care unit (ICU) clinicians with the point-of-care information they need to help make well-informed treatment decisions and ultimately help improve patient care.

“As an early adopter of electronic health records, the VA hospital system is often seen as a model for effective use of healthcare technology”

With more than 30,000 admissions and 2.5 million outpatient visits per year, the VA’s Great Lakes Health Care System decided to deploy a comprehensive critical care system across its six VA medical centers to better manage patient information and the complex workflow of its ICUs. Picis Critical Care Manager was selected not only for its ability to collect, manage, display and store vital patient information, but also for its clinician-defined rules-based decision support system and its interoperability with the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA). Additionally, eView for Critical Care Manager^™ provides web-based access to key patient trends in diagnostics and consolidates information for the entire ICU patient census in a concise view to help clinicians quickly identify patients requiring attention. eView is designed to help improve care management throughout the ICU process, eliminate data silos, reduce redundant documentation and facilitate clinicians’ access to vital clinical information.

“Critical Care Manager automates documentation of the clinical care process so that regardless of where the ICU caregiver is, the patient’s progress can be tracked and documented,” said Carlos Nunez, M.D., chief physician executive at Picis. “That means VA clinicians can spend less time on mounting administrative work and more time providing our veterans with direct patient care. Enabling increased direct patient care promotes better quality care and greatly reduces costs due to reduced length of stay, fewer errors, improved communication between clinicians and accurate reimbursement.”

The Great Lakes Health Care System medical centers implementing Critical Care Manager as part of the contract award include:

• William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital in Madison, Wis.;
• Clement J. Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Milwaukee, Wis.;
• Jesse Brown VA Medical Center in Chicago, Ill.;
• North Chicago VA Medical Center in North Chicago, Ill.;
• Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital in Hines, Ill.; and
• Iron Mountain VA Medical Center in Iron Mountain, Mich.

These hospitals join more than ten other VA medical centers across the country that have successfully deployed Picis Critical Care Manager. For instance, at the Sierra Pacific VA network — covering VA hospitals in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Sacramento and Fresno, Calif., as well as Reno, Nev., — the Picis system is the first system in the entire VA to be installed across anesthesia, PACU and critical care, integrating the continuum of care in high acuity. Picis solutions have demonstrated seamless interoperability with VistA, a VISN-wide high acuity database and a VISN-wide data analytics system to analyze care quality and outcomes. Just last month, Picis also announced that the New York/New Jersey VA Network had selected Picis to automate anesthesia care record keeping across its five hospitals.

“As an early adopter of electronic health records, the VA hospital system is often seen as a model for effective use of healthcare technology,” said Todd Cozzens, vice chairman and CEO of Picis. “Picis is assisting the Veterans Health Administration to further its leading position as the most automated healthcare system in the world. Our Critical Care Manager product, along with our other high-acuity care information systems in anesthesia, surgery and the emergency department, are the perfect complement to the VA’s own VistA enterprise information system. Along with our seamless interoperability, we offer a level of focused functionality for VA clinicians in the most cost- and resource-intensive areas of the hospital, where the greatest opportunity for helping to improve care quality can be achieved with our focused technology.”

The formal public announcement of this award can be found at: https://www.fbo.gov. For more information on Picis CareSuite solutions, please visit http://www.picis.com/products/default.cfm.

About Picis

Picis is a global provider of innovative information solutions that enable rapid and sustained delivery of clinical, financial and operational results in the acute care areas of the hospital. These high-acuity areas include the emergency department, operating and recovery rooms, and intensive care units. Picis offers the most advanced suite of integrated products focused on these life-critical areas of the hospital where the patients are the most vulnerable, the care process is the most complex and an increasing majority of hospital costs and potential revenue are concentrated. Headquartered in Wakefield, Massachusetts, Picis has licensed systems for use in more than 1,700 hospitals in 19 countries. More information is available at www.picis.com.

© 2009 Picis, Inc. All rights reserved. Picis, CareSuite and eView for Critical Care Manager may be a trademark or registered trademark of Picis, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the properties of their respective owners. This press release contains express or implied forward-looking statements relating to, among other things, Picis’ expectations concerning the functionality and market acceptance of its products, and management’s plans, objectives and strategies. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Picis’ control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in these forward-looking statements.