Virtua Adopts GE’s AgileTracTM To Help Maximize Efficiencies, Reduce Costs and Advance Patient Care

Virtua and GE Healthcare announced today that they are collaborating to implement new solutions to help increase efficiencies, lower healthcare costs and improve patient care throughout the health system. Virtua is adopting GE’s AgileTracTM Asset Manager and Enterprise Capacity Management Solution, an automated workflow solution that allows healthcare staff to better track a patient’s inpatient experience, as well as manage the hospital’s assets, ultimately reducing costs and increasing patient satisfaction. AgileTrac is validated under GE’s healthymagination initiative, dedicated to improving the quality, access and cost of healthcare.

“Virtua has been working with GE Healthcare since 2000 to implement processes and technologies that have saved $25 million to-date, and we’re looking forward to driving incremental productivity, while improving patient care and continuing to meet our goal of making every patient’s experience world-class,” said Richard Miller, President & CEO, Virtua. “Central to our future growth is our alliance with GE and applying novel technologies, such as AgileTrac, across Virtua to increase efficiencies and deliver better, more cost-effective care.”

GE’s AgileTrac system is a comprehensive workflow solution that leverages Real-Time Location System (RTLS) technology to help hospitals better manage inventory, streamline the patient care cycle, automate inpatient workflow and increase staff productivity. The technology’s workflow engine drives process improvement for the entire hospital -- from maximizing the use of operating rooms to ensuring that a patient’s length of stay is optimized. Flat-screen monitors with visualization software will be located throughout the hospital in units like the ER, where doctors and nurses can use touch-screen features to see at-a-glance where patients, staff and equipment are located and receive alerts that notify appropriate personnel when a patient is ready for the next step in the care cycle. Real-time tracking of medical equipment will help control asset expenses by driving increased utilization levels and helping locate items, such as infusion pumps, that are often forgotten or misplaced and redistributing them to reduce patient wait times.

“Using innovative technologies such as AgileTrac, GE can help hospitals improve their bottom line by providing real-time insights into the care process,” explained Rob Reilly, General Manager of Solutions, GE Healthcare. “AgileTrac will help staff optimize the use and distribution of medical equipment, as well as streamline patient care by ensuring on-time starts for procedures, reducing patient wait times and expediting admission and discharge.”

Virtua’s collaboration with GE began in 2000 by leveraging GE tools and processes such as Six Sigma®, Lean, and Change Acceleration Process, to drive broad-based hospital improvement in areas such as clinical outcomes, patient and staff satisfaction, market growth and financial results. Virtua now posts the highest operating margins of any hospital in New Jersey, continues to be named Best Employer in the area, and received a Gold Achievement Award for the excellence of its stroke assessment program in 2008.

“We project significant additional savings over the next 10 years based on using novel technologies to reduce unnecessary spending on equipment and supplies, increase the number of patients treated and decrease length of stay,” says Miller.

ABOUT PERFORMANCE SOLUTIONS:

GE Healthcare’s Performance Solutions team is dedicated to the improvement of health systems’ clinical and financial performance. Focusing in areas for improving growth and outcomes, reducing medical errors, creating efficiency, and reducing costs all help position health systems and hospitals for success. Performance Solutions experts advise clients on effective ways to implement Lean, establish new management processes, develop leaders, build strategic plans and help health systems enhance their entire business cycle. Recognizing the significant challenges facing today’s hospitals, Performance Solutions is strategically aligned around four solutions:

• Asset Optimization – Process improvements and technologies that pinpoint when equipment, staff and space are idle, helping hospitals reallocate these assets to cut unnecessary spending and reduce patient wait times for care.
• Service Line Innovations – Support hospitals in identifying their community’s unmet health needs, such as stroke or cancer care, and investing in the staff, resources and technologies necessary to better, more efficiently offer these services to area patients.
• Care Delivery Excellence - Processes and technologies that improve patient flow, quality of care and patient safety by using the broad suite of GE health information technologies to eliminate unnecessary tests, increase the speed and accuracy of diagnosis and treatment, and decrease wait times and length of stay.
• Culture Driven Performance - With its talent development training portfolio, GE coaches hospital management on how to empower staff to deliver the best, most affordable patient care and to improve their organizational leadership excellence.

ABOUT GE HEALTHCARE:

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems.

Our "healthymagination" vision for the future invites the world to join us on our journey as we continuously develop innovations focused on reducing costs, increasing access and improving quality and efficiency around the world. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at www.gehealthcare.com.

ABOUT VIRTUA HEALTHCARE

Virtua is a comprehensive multi-hospital healthcare system headquartered in Marlton, NJ. Its mission is to deliver a world-class patient experience through its programs of excellence in cancer treatment, cardiology, orthopaedics, women's health, pediatrics, surgery, neuroscience and wellness. A non-profit organization, Virtua employs 8,400 clinical and administrative personnel, and approximately 1,800 physicians serve as medical staff members. Virtua has distinguished itself as one of the first Six Sigma organizations in healthcare, as an early adopter of clinical and digital technologies, and for its innovative partnerships with nationally renowned organizations such as GE Healthcare, Fox Chase Cancer Center and A.I. duPont Hospital for Children. It has been honored twice with the New Jersey Governor's award for Clinical Excellence and recognized with the Leadership Award for Outstanding Achievement by Voluntary Hospitals of America. Virtua has been honored as the #1 Best Employer in the Delaware Valley by the Philadelphia Business Journal and is the recipient of the Consumer Choice Awards by National Research Corporation. Virtua is proud to be the official southern New Jersey sponsor of the Go Red for Women and Start! Walking Movements. For more information, visit our website at www.virtua.org or call 1-888-VIRTUA-3 (1-888-847-8823)