Eclipsys, AtStaff Announce Strategic Alliance to Expand Adoption of Outcomes-Driven Staffing and Improve Clinical, Financial Results

Eclipsys Corporation® (NASDAQ:ECLP), The Outcomes Company® and AtStaff, Inc., today announced they have entered into a strategic business relationship that will help healthcare organizations leverage their wealth of clinical data and better align staffing to patient-specific needs, improving care quality, cost-effectiveness and satisfaction. The integration of Eclipsys clinical systems with Sunrise Demand Manager™ and Sunrise Staff Manager™ software, powered by AtStaff, will enable hospitals and health systems to precisely deploy staffing workload according to each patient’s clinical requirements ? a key driver of positive clinical, financial and operational outcomes. "AtStaff is very excited about this strategic alliance with Eclipsys, a leader in clinical information solutions, since it’s another clear validation of our clinical orientation to healthcare staffing. This will allow greater numbers of hospitals to utilize their rich patient information to achieve positive patient outcomes,” says Beth Pickard, AtStaff’s president and chief executive officer. "Achieving positive outcomes requires accurately measuring and predicting each patient’s demand for staffing care. To do that, you must have real-time access and integration to patient-specific clinical data.” UK HealthCare selects Sunrise Demand Manager and Sunrise Staff Manager The University of Kentucky’s award-winning tertiary care and research health system commonly referred to as UK HealthCare (UKHC), based in Lexington, KY, is the first Eclipsys customer to benefit from the partnership, following UKHC’s recent purchase of Sunrise Demand Manager and Sunrise Staff Manager. "With nearly 100-percent physician adoption for computerized physician order entry using Sunrise Clinical Manager solutions, UKHC already benefits from seamless care across the various inpatient units,” says Kathleen Kopser, the health system’s interim chief nursing officer. "The addition of Sunrise Demand Manager and Sunrise Staff Manager will automate the collection and analysis of key staffing information and help to eliminate manual data entry of that information. This will help nursing leadership more quickly and effectively match ever-changing patient care needs to nurse skill levels and staffing.” Sunrise Demand Manager monitors and forecasts patient demand so that staffing resources are precisely planned and deployed to meet each patient’s individual demand requirements for successful clinical outcomes. The software tracks — via real-time, event-driven HL7 connectivity — each patient’s progress along his or her care plan. As events, acuity assessments and/or changes occur, the patient’s pattern and corresponding workload requirements are adjusted. Care management is alerted when patients are not progressing to the expected patient progress plan, while predicting patient demand for the next two to four days. Sunrise Staff Manager is an advanced, Web-based toolset that facilitates interdisciplinary daily scheduling, communication and staffing. It helps ensure that staffing resources are appropriately managed and aligned based on the patient-specific tracking and demand prediction achieved by Sunrise Demand Manager. The solutions will work in conjunction with Eclipsys’ integrated patient classification and acuity system, Sunrise Patient Acuity™, which UK HealthCare also selected to support its nursing team. "The value of a strategic partnership between Eclipsys and AtStaff is in bringing to market a leading integrated solution that automatically calculates patient acuity as a byproduct of interdisciplinary documentation, and recommends staffing based on precise calculation of the workload for staffing levels, skill mix and credentials to achieve patient-specific outcomes,” states Jay Deady, Eclipsys executive vice president of Client Solutions. "In doing so we can help nursing leadership at our client healthcare organizations improve outcomes on multiple fronts. This includes helping improve care quality and safety, heightening satisfaction of patients and nurses, and generating cost savings by reducing overtime or agency staffing.” Aligning Clinical and Financial Objectives, Improving Staff Satisfaction Outcomes-driven staffing through Sunrise Demand Manager and Sunrise Staff Manager also addresses financial objectives because staffing utilization is aligned according to industry best practices and documented clinical conditions of each patient. Since patients are tracked according to their progress, care managers and case managers can rely on the staffing software to manage patients to their planned length-of-stay expectations. In addition, because the solutions empower nurses in their mission to deliver safe, quality care, they support staff satisfaction and retention. "Study after study shows that the nursing shortage is one of the top 10 issues that keep CNOs and CEOs awake at night,” Deady says. "With the combination of Eclipsys and AtStaff solutions, they — along with their staff and patients — will have confidence that the best-possible care is being delivered.” For more information on the combination of Eclipsys and AtStaff solutions, contact an AtStaff representative or email the company at info@atstaff.com or contact an Eclipsys representative or email the company at info@eclipsys.com. About UK HealthCare UK HealthCare is the trade name for the University of Kentucky’s healthcare programs. These programs include the University of Kentucky Albert B. Chandler Hospital, UK HealthCare Good Samaritan Hospital and Kentucky Children's Hospital; clinical activities of the UK colleges of Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Nursing, Health Sciences, Public Health; and including the Kentucky Clinic and multidisciplinary centers such as the Markey Cancer Center, Gill Heart Institute and Kentucky Neuroscience Institute. Also included as part of UK HealthCare are other outreach activities such as Kentucky Clinic operations at UK Polk-Dalton Clinic and UK HealthCare East; cancer treatment centers in Berea and Georgetown; Gill Heart Institute – Danville; and radiation medicine treatment facilities located in Berea, Georgetown, Maysville and Morehead. For details, see www.ukhealthcare.uky.edu. The opinions of those quoted are those of the individual so quoted and do not constitute a commercial endorsement of the University of Kentucky. About AtStaff AtStaff develops demand management and staff management software that enables healthcare organizations to improve healthcare quality and patient safety, increase profitability, and enhance staff recruitment and retention. Hospital enterprise solutions and physician scheduling systems from AtStaff serve more than 1,200 healthcare organizations, medical facilities, nursing departments and group practices. For more information, visit www.atstaff.com. About Eclipsys Eclipsys is a leading provider of advanced integrated clinical, revenue cycle and financial performance-improvement software, clinical content and professional services that help healthcare organizations improve clinical, financial, operational and client-satisfaction outcomes. For more information, see www.eclipsys.com. Statements in this news release concerning the benefits provided by Eclipsys software and its use with AtStaff third-party software are forward-looking statements and actual results may differ from those projected due to a variety of risks and uncertainties. Implementation and customization of Eclipsys and AtStaff software is complex and time-consuming. Results depend upon a variety of factors and can vary by client. Each client’s circumstances are unique and may include unforeseen issues that make it more difficult than anticipated to implement or derive benefit from software or its use with AtStaff third-party software. The success and timeliness of the company’s services will depend at least in part upon client involvement, which can be difficult to control. Eclipsys is required to meet specified performance standards, and the contract can be terminated or its scope reduced under certain circumstances. More information about company risks is available in recent Form 10-Q and 10-K filings made by Eclipsys from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Special attention is directed to the portions of those documents entitled "Risk Factors” and "Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.” Eclipsys Corporation and The Outcomes Company are registered trademarks of Eclipsys Corporation. Sunrise Staff Manager, Sunrise Demand Manager, and Sunrise Patient Acuity are trademarks of Eclipsys Corporation. AtStaff is a trademark of AtStaff, Inc. Other product and company names in this news release are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies.