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Humboldt County Memorial Hospital adopts PACS to improve
patient care for community of more than 10,000

MINNEAPOLIS—June 11 , 2008—7 Medical Systems™, LLC, a leader in on-demand picture archiving and communication system (PACS) and electronic medical record (EMR) solutions for healthcare, today announced the successful adoption of on-demand PACS at Humboldt County Memorial Hospital.

Humboldt County Memorial Hospital (HCMH) is a 21-bed critical access hospital located in Humboldt, an Iowa city with a population of nearly 4,500 residents, and serving a greater Humboldt County community of more than 10,000. The hospital specializes in acute and skilled care, as well as long-term care, and offers the following medical services: outpatient diagnostic testing, 24-hour emergency, ambulatory surgery, rehabilitation, home and community health, nutrition and ambulance. In addition to medical services, the hospital campus also includes Springvale Independent and Assisted Living for seniors.

In its continuing effort to take advantage of technology to improve patient care and services, HCMH’s progressive doctors looked to implement a PACS for the diagnostic imaging department. The hospital launched an initiative to migrate from film and manual processes to more efficient digital imaging technologies. To do this, HCMH had to consider solutions that would best serve the hospital and patients in the following areas:

• Costs, including upfront capital and ongoing operational costs
• Experience and resources for planning and implementation
• Training and change management
• Ease-of-use for staff, reading radiologists and referring physicians
• PACS and IT resources for ongoing maintenance and support
• Disaster recovery protection and backup of patient data, including HIPAA compliance
• Flexibility for growth and integration

“Sometimes you have to think outside the box. We had to be open to considering all options. Any solution, regardless of whether it was in-house or outsourced, had to be the right balance of cost versus benefit,” said Rob Colerick, Chief Executive Officer of HCMH. “We’re all for technology as long as it makes sense for our physicians, staff and, most importantly, our patients.”

“We continue to see costs, technology complexity and politics among other challenges preventing or delaying the adoption of PACS and other technologies that make landmark differences in healthcare today,” said Jason Strudsrud, CEO of 7 Medical Systems. “We commend the team at Humboldt County Memorial Hospital for embracing technology and making positive changes to improve patient care and business operations while reducing risk. They broke down those barriers and put the on-demand business model to their advantage.”

In July 2007, after careful research and analysis, HCMH chose to outsource to 7 Medical Systems because its on-demand PACS solution, the 7i Digital Imaging-on-Demand Suite™, delivered on all counts. After nine months of use, HCMH’s PACS supports five modalities, including computed radiography (CR or digital X-ray), CAT scan, nuclear medicine, ultrasound and MRI. The system successfully manages and routes images electronically between the hospital and reading radiologists, handling volumes of 500 patient studies per month. More than 60 physicians, nurses and staff use the Web viewer to pull up and view patient images online. HCMH has completely moved away from developing images on film, eliminating all film and related courier costs except in the case of mammograms, although digital mammography is in the works.

The hospital has implemented PACS while reducing costs by more than 50 percent. Patient information and images are routed to reading radiologists in real-time. Read-times and results are returned to physicians significantly quicker than with film—hours instead of days. That means physicians can diagnose and recommend treatment for patients in a more timely manner. Patient images can be burned to CD/DVD at no extra cost if patients need their images sent to other care providers or specialists.

“Managing the change for our physicians and staff was also very important to us,” said Stacy Clarken, radiology director of HCMH. “7 Medical provided the necessary training for our staff during implementation. We’ve had very few issues with the PACS system. We have to be realistic and expect some issues will arise, and we value having a PACS support team at our fingertips 24 hours a day. Had we known how easy it was going to be, we would have done it sooner. Our workflows and productivity have increased dramatically since we’ve installed the system.”

In addition to built-in disaster recovery benefits, the PACS solution also is easily scalable for growth. As the hospital adds more physicians and additional modalities, image study counts will increase and the system is designed with the flexibility to scale as necessary, without limits. All technology, hardware and software updates and upgrades are automatically included, so costs are predictable and there are no surprises.

“In light of recent natural disasters such as the tornados here in Iowa and throughout the Midwest, we’re pleased that our data is stored in a safe place that protects patient privacy and that is easily accessible,” said Colerick. “Overall, we’re very satisfied with the system because the PACS provides all the features and functionality we need without being too costly.”

To view or download the full story, visit www.7medical.com/solutions/casestudies/humboldt.html.

About 7 Medical Systems, LLC
7 Medical Systems™, LLC (www.7medical.com) is a leading provider of on-demand PACS, EMR and computing solutions for healthcare. The Minneapolis-based company delivers reliable, affordable solutions to critical access hospitals, imaging centers, radiology groups and ambulatory clinics. Rather than investing capital to own and manage servers, hardware, software and IT resources in-house, healthcare companies outsource these critical functions to 7 Medical. They trade in hefty capital expenses for more affordable monthly usage fees—paying only for what they use. 7 Medical’s clinical project managers enable facilities to efficiently automate workflows and integrate disparate systems to ensure successful integration, implementation and training. On-demand services are available anytime, anywhere, with 24/7 service and support and built-in disaster recovery.

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7 Medical Systems™, 7p PRM-on-Demand™, 7i Imaging-on-Demand™ and the 7 Medical Systems logo are trademarks for 7 Medical Systems, LLC. All other trademarks or trade names are the properties of their respective holders.

Media Contact:
Loan D. Gordon
7 Medical Systems, LLC
952.230.9220
lgordon@7medical.com