ImageNow Enhances Patient Care at Citizens Memorial Healthcare

Perceptive Software's Document Management Suite Delivers Rapid ROI in Nine Departments

SHAWNEE, KANSAS — (01 Feb 2006) Perceptive Software, Inc., today announced that Citizens Memorial Healthcare (CMH) uses ImageNow® integrated document management, imaging and workflow to provide time and cost savings enterprise-wide.

CMH delivers exemplary medical services to patients at its main hospital in Bolivar, Mo. and 12 other care sites across five counties. The organization sought an electronic document management solution that would integrate with multiple host systems, enhance workflow and eradicate paper in the medical records department. After a thorough market analysis, CMH chose ImageNow.

"ImageNow's flexibility, ease of use and reasonable price point stood out," said Denni McColm, CIO at CMH.

Patented ImageNow technology (LearnMode™) facilitated rapid, seamless integration with CMH's host applications, including MEDITECH®, TeamDME!®, Unisource® and Citrix®. Deployment took less time than CMH had anticipated, as ImageNow blended into workflow without altering existing processes.

"ImageNow was implemented in one week and we were using it the following week," said David Tilley, network administrator at CMH. "ImageNow is so easy to use that we didn't need to give our physicians formal training, we just made instructional posters for them."

CMH selected ImageNow to eliminate paper in the medical records department, but soon realized that the application would be equally valuable in all departments. The organization uses ImageNow in clinical services, registration and multiple other areas, and will soon extend it enterprise-wide. More than 1.75 million documents are scanned into ImageNow annually.

"Our employees are so enthused about ImageNow that we're having a hard time expanding it fast enough," McColm said.

CMH uses ImageNow to capture and store clinical photographs as TIFF files, just one of the 200+ document and file types ImageNow supports. Patient photos from digital cameras and endoscope outpatient surgery images are imported into ImageNow, and electronically printed into the patient's medical record using ImageNow Virtual Printer.

"A physician told me that surgery photos from a laser printer were never quite the right color or contrast, and the images in ImageNow were of better diagnostic quality," Tilley said.

ImageNow also helps CMH deliver state-of-the-art cardiology services. Some patients take home a portable holter monitor that measures their heart rhythms for up to 48 hours. When he or she returns to the CMH hospital, output from the monitor is imported into ImageNow by ImageNow Virtual Printer and linked with the patient's medical history. Before ImageNow, each report of 40 to 120 pages was printed manually and sent to the cardiologist, delaying diagnosis.

"ImageNow has had a positive impact on patient care," McColm said. "A physician can view an EKG and make an immediate diagnosis from his office 40 miles away from the hospital."

Instead of searching through multiple cabinets to find a specific file, CMH employees use ImageNow to access documents with a single click. By eradicating paper in multiple departments, ImageNow has reduced storage overheads.

ImageNow has also curtailed office supply costs by printing documents electronically into CMH’s MEDITECH health information system (HIS), rather than generating hard copies, and eliminating photocopying. After seeing ImageNow in action, CMH administrators reversed their decision to spend $14,000 on a viewing station for surgery photos.

"ImageNow has completely eliminated paper charts for every patient in the hospital and made all the information available to physicians when they need it, wherever they are," McColm said.

About Perceptive Software
Since 1995 Perceptive Software, Inc., has built enterprise content management software, including document management, document imaging and workflow solutions, to help organizations efficiently capture and organize virtually any document, then easily retrieve a precise page at the moment it's needed. More than 60,000 users in 22 countries rely on the ImageNow product suite to simplify their business processes.

###

ImageNow is a registered trademark of Perceptive Software, Inc. Other product or company names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Product Information
To request product information, send an e-mail to info@imagenow.com.