-- Affordable subscription-based licensing enables
investment in EHR-enabling technologies with minimal
impact on capital budgets
-- Electronic health record and advanced forms automation
solutions to reduce paperwork by at least 50%
ALPHARETTA, Ga., April 27, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- Wray Community Hospital, a 16-bed acute-care facility in Wray, Colo., announced today that it selected the Optio QuickRecord(r) and MedEx(tm) Suites to provide electronic health record and forms management solutions. Wray and Optio will begin a phased rollout of Optio solutions this June. The systems are expected to be in full production by January 2006.
The Optio QuickRecord Suite will help automate Wray Community Hospital's healthcare delivery processes by enabling the organization to move to a paperless operation, improve patient care and enhance workflow efficiency. The QuickRecord Suite is an integrated EHR-enabling solution. It is offered on a subscription license, minimizing the impact on healthcare organizations' capital budgets, while providing lower total cost of ownership than monolithic system replacement strategies.
"Without Optio's affordable and scalable QuickRecord solutions, it would probably have been many years before our rural, critical-access hospital would have been able to implement an electronic health record system," said Wray's Chief Financial Officer Rod Larsen.
"With the small technology footprint, ease of integration with our existing systems such as Siemens MedSeries(r), low overhead requirements and relatively quick return on investment within 18 months, the QuickRecord Suite makes an excellent fit for a facility like ours with only 16 licensed beds and 70 FTEs," Larsen continued.
The QuickRecord Suite will also enable Wray to better coordinate care for its patients. "Today, when a patient is seen in our clinic and later treated in our emergency room, their clinical information is stored in two paper records," said Christy Wall, director of nursing at Wray. "The QuickRecord Suite eliminates these redundancies and the potential for errors in having two charts by providing an integrated electronic document management system that provides secure, web browser access to critical patient information across our two facilities."
In addition, physicians at Wray will also be able to review and sign documents in their queues to assist with chart completion and faster reimbursement cycles. QuickRecord also gives physicians the ability to specify exactly how they want patient information delivered to them based on report type -- via secure messaging, Internet, fax or manual delivery, facilitating a gradual transition from manual to digital documents.
The deployment of Optio solutions also establishes the foundation upon which a community-based EHR can be built. "Our implementation of the QuickRecord Suite puts us in a excellent position to work with other hospitals to form a regional health network that we believe will facilitate improved patient care, cost containment and patient safety," said Larsen, Wray's CFO.
Wray Community Hospital moves toward paperless environment with MedEx
In a related initiative, Wray Community Hospital announced that it would automate its forms management processes by implementing the MedEx Suite in its hospital and adjacent clinic.
"By automating our forms management processes, we will eliminate the costs and inefficiencies associated with preprinted forms," said Wall, Wray's nursing director. "We also begin moving toward a paperless environment in preparation for our QuickRecord implementation. We expect Optio solutions to help us reduce paperwork by at least 50 percent."
"Immediate electronic access to patient records will free up many hours in the workday now spent searching for paper charts and preprinted forms," Wall continued. "It will allow our nursing staff to be more productive and to spend more of their time caring for patients rather than on paperwork."
Part of Optio's integrated portfolio of healthcare solutions, the MedEx Suite provides real-time access to electronic healthcare forms and other patient information -- without the expense and manual effort involved in processing preprinted forms. MedEx produces barcodes, eliminating manual scanning, indexing and filing. The system intercepts print-stream information or HL7 messages from hospital information systems and provides real-time access to patient information in a secure database that supports automated form distribution and on-demand printing.
"We look forward to working with Wray Community Hospital to address their comprehensive electronic health record and document management needs," said Wayne Cape, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Optio Software. "At Optio, we believe electronic health record solutions that help healthcare providers contain costs and increase the quality of patient care should not be the exclusive privilege of large facilities. Our subscription-based licensing allows all healthcare organizations to cost-effectively deploy the QuickRecord Suite. From a technology perspective, we have designed our solutions to scale to meet the needs of small hospital customers like Wray as well as larger institutions such as Sharp HealthCare (San Diego); Banner Health-Colorado Region; St. Joseph's Hospital-Atlanta; and Scripps Health (San Diego)."
About Wray Community Hospital
Wray Community Hospital is one of two not-for-profit, tax-supported district critical access facilities in Yuma County in northeastern Colorado. Licensed for 16 beds, the hospital provides acute inpatient care, emergency care, obstetrics/delivery, general and orthopedic surgery, laboratory and imaging services, as well as a specialty care clinic. Wray Clinic, adjacent to the hospital, delivers primary care services to a rural service area with 5,000 residents within a 30-mile radius of Wray, Colo. The hospital and its adjacent clinic recorded approximately 26,000 total visits last year.
About Optio Healthcare Solutions
More than 700 healthcare organizations use Optio's forms automation, electronic health record and clinical document management solutions to capture, format, scan, view, sign, archive and deliver real-time access to patient information at the point of need. For more information about our healthcare solutions, please visit http://www.optiosoftware.com/Default.aspx?tabid=151.
About Optio Software
Optio Software provides document automation and electronic health record-enabling solutions to help organizations achieve unprecedented speed, accuracy, functionality and quality in their inbound and outbound document processes. More than 5,000 customers use Optio solutions to streamline business documents and reduce costs as they extend their investments in hospital information systems (HIS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications. Founded in 1981, Optio Software has its world headquarters in Alpharetta, Ga., Europe Middle East and Africa headquarters in Paris, and sales offices in Germany and the United Kingdom. More information about Optio Software (OTCBB:OPTO) is available at OptioSoftware.com.
(c) Copyright 2004, Optio Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Optio and Optio QuickRecord are registered trademarks, and Optio MedEx is a trademark of Optio Software, Inc. Other companies and products mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.