12-Hospital Sisters of St. Francis Health Services Selects Heartlab's Encompass Cardiac Network.

Business Editors/Health/Medical Writers

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WESTERLY, R.I.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 31, 2003

Contract is record-setting milestone for both

Heartlab and cardiac PACS industry

Sisters of St. Francis Health Services, Inc. (SSFHS), a leading Midwest healthcare system with 10 hospitals in Indiana and two in Illinois, has selected Heartlab's Encompass(R) Cardiac Network to support the organization's multimodality cardiac image management needs at eight of the hospitals, Heartlab announced today. The $3 million contract is the single largest deal in the firm's nine-year history and one of the most significant cardiac PACS projects in the entire industry.

Among the eight SSFHS hospitals to be served by this contract, more than 13,000 cardiac catheterizations in 17 current labs and over 43,000 ultrasound cases are performed annually, with volume anticipated to grow. Six nuclear cameras that perform cardiac imaging are also part of the equipment mix. With installation of Heartlab's Encompass Network, the hospitals will be able to manage cardiac data from multiple modalities for multiple hospitals with a single centralized network system. The single system enables SSFHS to manage patient data at three levels: individual hospitals can store and retrieve data from their cardiac imaging systems; a group or "pod" of hospitals that have business relationships can access the data in a combined view appropriate for that group; and the entire SSFHS system can aggregate non-image data for enterprise-wide statistical reporting and results management.