Clinicians to Provide Safer Care With New Perinatal Solution From McKesson

Horizon Perinatal Care Expands Enterprise Clinical Information and Decision Support to Labor and Delivery Environment

Atlanta, GA, 02/15/2005 -- McKesson, the world’s largest healthcare services company, today announced the addition of Horizon Perinatal Care™ to its Horizon Clinicals™ suite of products designed to improve workflow, reduce variability in care and help to enhance patient outcomes. The new solution will link labor and delivery units to enterprise clinical solutions and provide evidenced-based decision support to help nurses and other clinicians improve safety and reduce litigation risk.

Through an agreement with LMS Medical Systems, a leader in the medical use of advanced mathematical modeling and neural networks, McKesson has acquired exclusive rights to private-label LMS’ electronic archival and surveillance capabilities as well as the CALM™ (Computer Assisted Labor Management) Curve, the only FDA-cleared decision support tool for labor. It provides evidence-based analysis of the mother’s labor progress based on variables specific to her situation and on current clinical information that takes into account the interventions commonly used today.

Concord Hospital, a 205-bed hospital in Concord, N.H., implemented the first phase of Horizon Perinatal Care, Surveillance & Archival, in its 18 labor rooms in just two days. The 205-bed facility already uses several other McKesson solutions for order management, clinical documentation, bar-coded medication administration, medical imaging and remote clinician access to patient information. As a result, it is well positioned to take advantage of Horizon Perinatal Care’s full benefits.

"We rely on McKesson solutions to improve patient safety, outcomes and information flow throughout the hospital" said Diane Wood Allen, R.N., M.S., vice president of operations and chief nursing officer. "The joint efforts of McKesson and LMS will extend the advantages of our enterprise solutions to labor and delivery, eventually pulling a traditionally isolated department into the mainstream. Our L&D staff and patients will be able to benefit from solutions that the other units have benefited from for a long time, such as medication administration. That advantage alone is long overdue"

Horizon Perinatal Care will offer seamless information access across hospital departments and shared annotation data between the fetal strip and patient records. For example, a narcotic pain medication administered to the mother will be automatically noted on the fetal strip, allowing the physician to understand why the fetal heart rate dropped at that point in time.

"By incorporating LMS’ technology into our enterprise offering we’ve added much-needed decision support for one of the most litigated areas of the hospital" said Billie Waldo, M.S., R.N., B.C., McKesson’s vice president and general manager of care management solutions. "Beyond that, we are introducing a solution that will ultimately extend from the obstetrician’s office to the emergency room to labor & delivery to the NICU and back to the obstetrician’s office. That sets a new bar not just for labor and delivery but for closed-loop perinatal solutions"

With more than 500,000 clinical users -- including nurses, physicians and other members of the care team -- generating more than 15 million transactions weekly, McKesson is the leader in point-of-care solutions. Healthcare organizations use these solutions to create a collaborative work environment across multiple care settings and disciplines, empowering the care team to coordinate care and care management, manage workload assessment and staffing, drive evidence-based outcomes and compliance, and provide safe and effective care for patients.

About McKesson

McKesson Corporation is a Fortune 16 healthcare services and information technology company dedicated to helping its customers deliver high-quality healthcare by reducing costs, streamlining processes, and improving the quality and safety of patient care. Over the course of its 170-year history, McKesson has grown by providing pharmaceutical and medical-surgical supply management across the spectrum of care; healthcare information technology for hospitals, physicians, homecare and payors; hospital and retail pharmacy automation; and services for manufacturers and payors designed to improve outcomes for patients. For more information, visit us at www.mckesson.com.

About LMS

LMS is a leader in the medical use of advanced mathematical modeling and neural networks. The LMS product suite provides physicians, nursing staff, risk managers and hospital administrators with clinical information systems and decision support tools designed to improve outcomes and patient care for mothers and their infants during labor and delivery. For more information, please refer to www.lmsmedical.com or contact Isabelle Lafortune, marketing manager, at (514) 488-3461 ext. 236.

Contact Information

Paul Adams

Sr. Manager, Public Relations

McKesson

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