NEWS

Quantros Regulatory Reporting Management Solution and Outcome’s Patient Management Tool® application improves hospital access to American Heart Association quality improvement program

April 28, 2009 - Dallas, TX - The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, Quantros and Outcome Sciences, Inc. d/b/a Outcome announce that hospitals can now participate more efficiently in the American Heart Association’s award winning quality improvement program, Get With The Guidelines^SM. Quantros has enhanced its Regulatory Reporting Management Solution (RRM) to capture data concerning stroke and heart failure patients and allow participating hospitals to transfer stroke and heart failure data directly into Outcome’s Patient Management Tool® application. The transmission of data from the Quantros RRM to Outcome’s Patient Management Tool® module is accomplished via a specified Outcome™ Web Service. This data submission capability, an enhancement offered in Quantros RRM, eliminates the need for duplicative entry of data already being collected.

Get With The Guidelines helps hospitals close the gap between recommended treatment and actual treatment of patients with coronary artery disease, stroke, and heart failure. The program emphasizes protocols created to ensure cardiovascular patients are cared for according to nationally accepted standards and the latest evidence-based guidelines and recommendations. Hospitals implementing Get With The Guidelines generally see measurable improvements in the quality of care in a short period of time.

“This enhancement gives Quantros hospitals a seamless data-sharing solution so they can take advantage of all that Get With The Guidelines program has to offer,” said Gregg C. Fonarow, M.D., volunteer chair of the American Heart Association’s national Get With The Guidelines steering committee. “Studies have proven that hospitals implementing Get With The Guidelines have increased guidelines adherence and improved quality of cardiovascular care they provide to their patients.”

The Quantros RRM solution helps hospital clients leverage clinical and regulatory data to improve the quality of care by:

• Streamlining the entire process of managing and distributing quality indicator data
• Meeting the increasing standards for performance monitoring
• Improving quality of reports to key stakeholders
• Automating transmission of data to GWTG

In addition to the benefits provided by Quantros RRM, Get With The Guidelines currently offers three modules that are managed by Outcome: coronary artery disease, heart failure and stroke. Participating hospitals receive:

• national and local recognition for adherence to guidelines;
• ongoing quality improvement training through accredited educational opportunities;
• live workshops with collaborative breakout sessions;
• Webinars led by cardiovascular science thought leaders;
• online courses, quality improvement newsletters and local American Heart Association GWTG staff support.

Hospitals may access Outcome’s Patient Management Tool® application from any computer connected to the Internet. This web-based system includes a number of value-added features, such as smart forms and hospital-specific data collection. The Patient Management Tool® module provides hospitals with numerous standard reports available for on-demand generation.

Quantros customers can learn more about Get With The Guidelines by visiting www.americanheart.org/getwiththeguidelines. To learn more about the Quantros Regulatory Reporting Management solution, visit http://quantros.com/rrm.htm

Interested individuals can learn more about the services Outcome provides for the GWTG programs by visiting http://www.outcome.com/qi-ahagwtg.htm.

About Get With The Guidelines^SM

The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association’s Get With The Guidelines program helps hospitals follow the latest scientific guidelines and manage the care of cardiovascular disease patients. Used by more than 1,600 hospitals nationwide since its inception in 2000, Get With The Guidelines has improved care for more than a million patients. In 2007, the program won the eHI award for Transforming Care Delivery at the Point of Care. For more information, visit www.americanheart.org/getwiththeguidelines.

About Quantros

Quantros provides real-time knowledge creation solutions for benchmarking, patient safety, accreditation and compliance, and outcomes monitoring for leading healthcare providers, payers, and pharmaceutical manufacturers. Quantros' web delivered applications provide a standard platform for automating resource intensive manual processes. Through a variety of direct sales and vendor partners, more than 2,000 healthcare facilities use Quantros' web-based technology solutions.

In the areas of quality and performance improvement, the Quantros RRM solution is used for collecting and reporting data to The Joint Commission®, CMS, the ACC-NCDR CathPCI Registry®, AHA Get with the Guidelines (AHA GWTG) programs and STS Cardiovascular Registry database and state mandated reporting systems. Quantros RRM currently helps more than 650 healthcare providers as they strive to continually improvement quality and performance improvement within their organizations. Visit Quantros on the web at www.quantros.com.

About Outcome

Outcome is the leading provider of patient registries, studies, quality improvement programs, and integrated technologies for evaluating real-world outcomes. Outcome has designed, developed, and managed more than 150 patient registries, involving more than 2,500 hospitals and thousands of physician practices.

Outcome’s TotalQuality™ system is the leading clinical quality measurement registry that includes more than 100 national quality measures, specialized therapeutic focused programs, pay-for-performance, reimbursement, and certification solutions, and Joint Commission® and CMS reporting. In addition, the TotalQuality system is a CMS PQRI qualified registry and is interoperable with a growing number of practice management and electronic health records (EHRs). Outcome’s QI offerings are backed by intuitive technology, excellent customer service, and high-quality training services. For more information, please visit www.outcome.com.