Updates

Portblue's Hospital Disaster Response System Achieves Milestone For Utah Group

Latter Day Saints Hospital’s Incident Command Center Team MembersGive Enthusiastic Support to PortBlue System LOS ANGELES, Calif. (January 4, 2006) - PortBlue (www.portblue.com), a leading provider of web-based expertise management systems, today announced that it completed the initial testing of the company’s Hospital Incident Response System (HIRS) with Intermountain Health Care (IHC).  IHC is recognized both as one of the country’s leading hospital systems and a trailblazer in adopting technology to improve the environment of care it provides for its patients. Latter Day Saints Hospital (LDSH), the flagship IHC facility, participated in the earthquake and fire hazard simulation in conjunction with PortBlue in late 2005. The simulation involved all members of LDSH’s Incident Command Center, including the incident commander, chief of logistics, chief of materials, chief operating officer, and the personnel manager, each fulfilling their various roles in a tabletop exercise.  The LDSH team unanimously concluded that the system exceeded required elements of emergency coordination.  They reported that HIRS gave the emergency management team critical capacity and other information, dynamically generated customized task lists required in their response to the specific incident as it evolved, and improved overall response time.  One official indicated that HIRS performed like a competitor’s system “on steroids.”  Divided into three modules, Pre-Incident, During-Incident and Post-Incident, HIRS addresses all aspects of an emergency response from assuring that a hospital’s disaster management plan meets best practice standards and the requirements of the Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and to enabling disaster management teams to execute the plan at a high tempo in “All Hazards” environments. HIRS can be readily configured to a full array of hospital attributes, according to their specific organizational structure, geographic risk profile and patient demographics.   HIRS also helps track the costs incurred in incident response for higher levels of reimbursement.             “When 9/11 occurred, one hospital lost an estimated $32 million to untraceable treatment costs because it didn’t have systems in place to adequately capture and track its incurred expenses,” said Paul Dimitruk, founder and CEO of PortBlue. “We’re determined to help hospitals and their communities be prepared to handle such events.  Our system is designed to holistically address the complex expertise required for best practice incident response put it into one easy-to-use, coordinated interface equally accessible to command center personnel and hospital unit and function managers. This tabletop test proves we can make that happen.” HIRS includes protocols for at least 32 different hazards including fires, hurricanes, floods, terrorist strikes, pandemics, and earthquakes.   The system also incorporates contingency plans for less common scenarios such as hazmat exposure, hospital infant abductions, a communications failure or radiological exposure.  Post-incident it helps guide the recovery stage, captures lessons learned andentifies remediation opportunities.             “The customizable nature of PortBlue’s HIRS, its easy-to-use interface and ability to increase the quality and tempo of response in fast-moving, complex situations makes it the new benchmark for incident management.  We also like the fact that we can use it everyday in managing hospital surge and therefore optimize our facilities and staffing,” explains Ann Allen, a senior emergency management coordinator at IHC.  “HIRS supports all three key constituencies in incident management: the emergency department, the safety and security professionals and the hospital administrator.   You always hope you won’t need to use an EMP, but when you need it, you need a highly robust one that can support an effective response to any type of incident. HIRS has these qualities.”   About PortBlue Corporation  Founded in Los Angeles in 2000, PortBlue Corporation (www.portblue.com) provides a highly innovative system for building web-based expertise management systems. The practical know-how of recognized experts is rapidly transformed into web-based training, work process and decision-support tools and systems in the form of PortBlue hosted applications accessible 24/7. PortBlue’s systems effectively mentor and guide users – be they employees, customers, or trainees -- through tasks and processes to optimal decisions and outcomes.   For more information contact:Ken GreenbergEdge Communications, Inc.818-990-5001ken@edgecommunicationsinc.com  Christian MaasSenior Vice President for Knowledge ProductsPortBlue Corporation310-566-7222christian.maas@portblue.com