GE Healthcare Performance Solutions and Dr Foster Intelligence form Partnership to Drive Quality and Performance Improvement across Hospitals in England

• The partnership combines Dr Fosters’ thorough benchmarking data from hospitals across England with GE’s world-recognised operations methodologies and advisory expertise

• The partnership offering called intelligent Process Improvement (iPI), provides hospitals access to very specific, individualised data in four strategic areas – patient experience, workforce, effectiveness and efficiency – to rapidly achieve significant cost savings, improved efficiency and higher quality of care.

• Early adopter, Ipswich NHS Trust, has realised significant benefits including numerous quality improvements and an estimated £1.8 million in overall savings.

Manchester – July 6, 2011 – GE Healthcare Performance Solutions, a business unit of GE Healthcare (NYSE: GE), and Dr Foster Intelligence, a leading global benchmarking and data-driven analytics company, today announced a partnership that looks to improve the quality of care and efficiencies of hospitals across England. The partnership offering, called intelligent Process Improvement (iPI), aims to aid NHS trusts that are under pressure to deliver between £15 billion and £20 billion in efficiency savings by 2014. This new offering will combine hospital intelligence and benchmarking data from Dr Foster with the advisory expertise of GE Healthcare Performance Solutions to help English hospitals better understand and deliver on opportunities for change and rapidly deliver and embed sustainable improvements.

“Demographic change and an increase in people with long-term conditions are driving a need for greater efficiencies whilst maintaining or improving quality in the NHS,” said Tim Baker, Chief Executive of Dr Foster. “With the ever increasing pressures of today’s environment, many hospitals are looking to identify where there is room for improvement, and how sustainable improvements can be made to reduce unnecessary costs, improve patient experience and staff satisfaction. Pairing Dr Foster’s data intelligence and benchmarking analytics with GE Healthcare’s operational expertise will be a powerful combination for hospitals in England.”

Dr Foster has been benchmarking data across all English hospitals since 2001. This in-depth data and analysis, coupled with GE’s powerful combination of advisory services, technology and leadership strategies will enable hospitals to forecast and target financial and productivity benefits.

More importantly, hospitals will be able to monitor and measure performance metrics before, during and after changes are implemented, resulting in a thorough understanding of how well efforts are going, highlighting opportunities and achievements as they occur.

“The first step to improvement is understanding an organisation’s relative and absolute performance, and then tracking and comparing their data to measure success. Dr Foster’s benchmarking data, both external and internal, is indispensible to understanding where there are problems in a healthcare institution,” said David Hale, General Manager, Performance Solutions, Europe & EAGM. “We look forward to working with Dr Foster to help hospitals address barriers to creating a self-sustaining culture of quality improvement that delivers tangible progress towards organisational objectives.”

Dr Foster and GE Healthcare Performance Solutions worked with the Ipswich Hospital NHS trust to help address performance improvement and cost savings in advance of the Foundation Trust application. Working across outpatient units and theatres, Ipswich Hospital was able to achieve several quality improvements, resulting in an estimated £1.8 million in overall savings. Results included a 20 percent reduction in 18 week breaches, reduction of Accident and Emergency wait times by half, and the reduction of wait times in clinics by 30 percent.

“The combination of data insight from Dr Foster and GE Healthcare’s process improvement expertise has helped us make real and sustainable improvements around quality and efficiency” said Andrew Reed, Chief Executive Officer, Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust. “Working in partnership has added value to both patients and the Trust.”

The partnership between Dr Foster and GE Healthcare Performance Solutions for iPI was announced today at the NHS Confederation Annual Conference and Exhibition 2011 in Manchester, and is currently available as an offering to hospitals across England.

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