GE Demonstrates Flexible Anesthesia Solutions with North Carolina Agreement

Person Hospital in Roxboro latest rural center to benefit from scalable, customized fit from GE Healthcare IT.

Barrington, IL, December 22, 2009 — GE prides itself on being able to custom-fit nearly any solution for its destination. Its Healthcare IT business has proven that commitment once again through its plans to outfit a rural North Carolina hospital with a complete Centricity® Perioperative Anesthesia solution, mapped to fit the hospital’s existing workflow.

Recently recognized by industry analyst KLAS (www.klasresearch.com) as top anesthesia information management solution1, Centricity Perioperative delivers the same benefits to a rural clinic as it does to large academic centers and hospitals, but is completely customized to the center’s needs. After performing a full study and creating a thorough map of the hospital’s workflow, GE designs software to match, accounting for headcount and space limitations. After installation, GE conducts modification trainings on-site, eliminating the need to have to pull resources from what is, in many cases, a “bare bones” IT staff.

“With a staff so small, we can’t afford to lose a person for training all week,” said Kelly Lucas, IT Director at Person Hospital in Roxboro, NC. Person recently signed for GE’s customized solution to improve the workflow and patient services across its four operating rooms. Staff found GE’s model of on-site training particularly beneficial. “GE truly bent over backwards to work with the limited resources we have in our smaller, rural hospital setting and created a new model of implementation, in the process.”

“Person isn’t the only rural community hospital with these challenges,” said Laurent Rotival, vice president and general manager of GE Healthcare IT. “We love working with our customers on any challenges they face including those surrounding limited funding and resources. Frankly, we created this methodology to help them get the most out of the resources they do have rather than force them to focus on what they’re missing.”

Centricity Perioperative Anesthesia was developed collaboratively with anesthesiologists from some of the nation’s leading academic medical centers in consideration of compliance, usability, patient safety, and practice management. It is a comprehensive solution that provides up-to-date information to the appropriate caregiver when and where they need it. GE Healthcare’s solution also provides workflow-enhancing processes such as touch screens, intuitive care event document templates, procedure note scripts, and a robust professional fee-billing component. With Centricity Perioperative Anesthesia’s information management capabilities redundant patient questioning is reduced and satisfaction is increased for both the anesthesia care provider and the patient.

1 “The Growing Market for Anesthesia Software” (11.13.09)

About GE Healthcare
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems.

Our “healthymagination” vision for the future invites the world to join us on our journey as we continuously develop innovations focused on reducing costs, increasing access and improving quality and efficiency around the world. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries. For more information about GE Healthcare, visit www.gehealthcare.com.