Transforming Healthcare in Connecticut Communities and Allscripts Announce Health Information Exchange for Healthcare Providers Across Connecticut

Health information exchange to connect electronic health records, other applications to improve patient safety, outcomes and service.

Chicago and Hartford, CT, July 20, 2009 — Allscripts (Nasdaq: MDRX) and Transforming Healthcare in Connecticut Communities (THICC) – a coalition of Connecticut’s leading hospitals, physician practices, employer groups and insurers – today announced the formation of a statewide Health Information Exchange (HIE) to improve the health of Connecticut’s communities. The HIE solves one of the most pressing issues in healthcare today, the lack of readily available patient information when and where it’s needed to make critical patient care decisions.

The formation of THICC is the first step in a groundbreaking effort to develop the “physician office of the future” sharing patient information electronically across multiple healthcare organizations and stakeholders. The THICC HIE will link information from existing Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems and those now being implemented by hospitals and physicians in response to Electronic Health Record incentive funds included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. As more Connecticut providers join the HIE and implement an Electronic Health Record, improved access to timely clinical information will enable more coordinated patient care, better health outcomes and lower costs.

“THICC will help address the decentralized and fragmented nature of our healthcare delivery system and contribute to improved quality and better safety for patients across Connecticut,” said Stephan O’Neill, Vice President of Information Services at Hartford Healthcare Corporation, a THICC member and the non-profit parent organization of Hartford Hospital. “With the passage of the stimulus law and the availability of incentives for physicians to adopt electronic health records, it’s clear that a tipping point has been reached and the time has come for us to provide the linking bridge between all of the applications used by healthcare providers.”

To facilitate THICC’s goals, a number of the coalition members are subsidizing the cost of the Allscripts Electronic Health Record, helping physician members to act now, ahead of the ARRA incentives, which become available in 2011 and are spread over five years. THICC will also enable other Electronic Health Record systems to connect to the HIE. Additionally, THICC will encourage all physicians who are not yet using an Electronic Health Record to immediately subscribe to Allscripts electronic prescribing, a free Web-based solution that eases the transition from paper to digital medicine while improving patient safety by preventing drug-to-drug interactions and other potential errors.

In addition to supporting the HIE and Electronic Health Record rollout, THICC will develop training and deployment tools for physician practices that will allow them to quickly adopt the new health information technologies. Bruce Campbell, MD, Chief Information Officer of ProHealth Physicians, the largest primary care medical group in