SUNNYVALE, Calif., May 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Verity Inc. , a leading provider of enterprise software that enables organizations to maximize the return on their intellectual capital investment, today announced that The Ottawa Hospital (TOH), one of the largest healthcare facilities in Canada, has deployed Verity(R) LiquidOffice(TM), a Web-based business process automation solution on its intranet to improve the efficiency and productivity of employees who review, handle and process many types of forms in performing their duties. Verity partner and systems integrator MedSeek facilitated the implementation of this Web-based eHealth solution. Verity LiquidOffice had been branded Cardiff LiquidOffice prior to its acquisition by Verity in February 2004.
“Healthcare delivery today involves scores of paperwork. At TOH, we make use of 2,500 official hospital forms plus an unknown number of unofficial ones. We’re dealing with that reality by reducing the amount of paper forms dramatically,” said Susan Berezny, an IT project manager at TOH. “We developed and are executing an eForms strategy that will yield consequential benefits. Crucial to making this strategy effective is the application of Verity LiquidOffice on the hospital’s intranet. In a serious way, this initiative saves trees, one click at a time.”
Through the use of Verity LiquidOffice, which will allow most of the hospital’s forms to be put online, TOH can remove the costly duplication process, making paper copies of paper forms. Among the forms now implemented are an internal transfer request for a new position, change of address form, supply requisition and IT hardware/software requests. The overall time involving form completion, submission and approval has been reduced dramatically. For example, Berezny noted employees at the multi-campus healthcare center saw the turnaround process for one of the online forms reduced by one week over the prior paper version.
Logic built into the LiquidOffice-based eForms has helped eliminate errors. An employee cannot move the form along the process without complete, accurate information entered on the eForm. The system won’t allow it to advance. Several of the eForms, such as the internal transfer request, will pre-populate fields based on the user’s ID, further expediting the process.
During the pilot test of this eForms initiative, LiquidOffice regularly demonstrated its ability to conform to TOH’s unique workflow. Built-in programming scripts allowed adaptation to the hospital’s business workflow process to be done simply and easily. Digital signature control was another LiquidOffice feature that performed well according to Berezny. Today the LiquidOffice-powered eForms system is deployed across the entire healthcare center. Training is occurring without taxing the teachers or the employees learning the system, which will eventually have 11,000 users. Response to the eForms method has been uniformly positive at TOH.
“The swift, successful shift from off-line, paper-based forms processing by TOH -- a hospital with more than 1,000 in-patient beds, nearly 630,000 out-patient visits annually and a staff of more than 10,000 -- is a compelling example of why and how even the largest hospitals can make that operational change with confidence, especially with partners like Verity and MedSeek,” said Anthony J. Bettencourt, Verity’s president and chief executive officer.
Other benefits TOH expects to realize with its Verity-Medseek solution are:
-- Less time to locate forms with the creation of an online central repository -- Use of always-up-to-date forms achieved through an eForm update process -- Reduced cost for forms printing, distribution and shipping -- Decreased turnaround time throughout process, from start to finish -- Knowledge-sharing on status of requests via forms tracking mechanism -- Easier compliance with reporting requirements with an online repository of completed forms
“What Susan and the rest of the IS/IT team at TOH have done to improve the hospital’s business processes, increase employee productivity and reduce operational costs, is noteworthy on several levels,” said Gale Wilson-Steele, Medseek’s CEO. “That is why we’re conducting a Webinar next week, during which Susan will discuss in detail TOH’s eForms initiative.”
The online event for healthcare professionals will be held at 11:00 a.m. PDT, Thursday, May 20. Speakers from Medseek and Verity will be available to provide further information on their solutions. To register, log on to https://medseekevents.webex.com/ .
About The Ottawa Hospital
The Ottawa Hospital is a multi-campus academic health sciences centre. With over 1000 beds, 10,000 staff plus 1200 physicians, and an annual operating budget of approximately $600 million, it is one of the largest healthcare organizations in Canada.
In collaboration with the Ottawa Health Research Institute and the University of Ottawa, the Hospital is dedicated to excellence in patient care, to the education of future healthcare professionals, and to research resulting in bench-to-bedside discoveries.
The Ottawa Hospital partners with various organizations to provide comprehensive, high quality, patient-focused healthcare services, in English and French, to over 1.5 million residents of eastern Ontario, and specialized and complex services for residents of northeastern Ontario.
About MedSeek
MedSeek specializes in the development of unique, customized web-based eHealth solutions for healthcare institutions, other providers and related industries. In addition to strategic planning and development, MedSeek provides data integration, custom site functionality, comprehensive project management, site design and sales of their highly scaleable content management system, SiteMaker CMS. The company, which ranked number 17 on the Deloitte & Touche 2003 Los Angeles Technology Fast 50 list, has more than 400 installed hospital clients. To learn more, visit http://www.medseek.com/.
About Verity
Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Verity provides software that enables organizations to maximize the return on their intellectual capital investment. The company’s intellectual capital management (ICM) solutions provide integrated search, classification, recommendation, monitoring and analytics across the real-time flow of enterprise information, along with question and answer interfaces for effective online self-service. Other Verity ICM solutions capture content and drive automated business processes. Verity technology also serves as a core component of more than 260 applications from leading independent software vendors.
Verity software solutions are used by more than 11,500 customers in the private and public sectors. Customers include American Express, AT&T, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Cardinal Health, Cisco Systems, EMC Documentum, Dow Jones, Financial Times, Hewlett-Packard, Home Depot, Lotus, Kaiser Permanente, META Group, SAP, Siemens, the State of California, Stellent, Sybase, the U.S. Departments of Energy and Justice, and the U.S. Army.
The statements in this press release regarding the benefits that Verity expects Ottawa Hospital will receive from Verity LiquidOffice are subject to risks and uncertainties, including the risk that: the benefits may not be obtained due to technical or other reasons; and the structure of The Ottawa Hospital may not be conducive to realizing these benefits. These and other risks relating to Verity and its business and products are set forth under the caption “Risks Relating to Our Operations” in Item 2 of Verity’s Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 12, 2004.
For more information, contact Verity at info@verity.com or at World Wide Web site http://www.verity.com/ or call 408-541-1500.
NOTE: Verity and the Verity logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Verity, Inc.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Verity Inc.
CONTACT: Jennifer Moranz of Verity, Inc., +1-760-936-4711, orjmoranz@verity.com; or Steve Hoechster of ElsterGroup, +1-646-495-5401 or+1-914-393-9219, or shoechster@elstergroup.com, for Verity, Inc.
Web site: http://www.verity.com/
