Quantum and IBM Align to Drive Medical Home Solution

Despite the national focus on healthcare reform as accelerated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, physicians across the U.S. are asking for practical and affordable ways to integrate digitized healthcare technologies into their practices. PWeR(TM) (Personal Wellness electronic Record(TM)), the Quantum healthcare information technology platform, helps to answer those questions by providing the essential connectivity required to facilitate the IBM Medical Home solution Pc3, Patient Centered Collaborative Care.

Noel J. Guillama , Quantum President & CEO commented, "The Medical Home market is estimated to be a multi-billion dollar opportunity, not including but supported by the $19 billion federal Stimulus Package for healthcare reform. We believe, based on current projections, that we will have our first group of more than 400 physicians on PWeR in the third quarter of this year."

The PCMH solution is advocated by the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative (PCPCC) (www.pcpcc.net), a coalition of large employers, primary care societies, national health plans, patient groups, and others. Dr. Paul Grundy , Chairman of the PCPCC and IBM Director of Global Healthcare Transformation, commented, "The purpose of PCMH is to provide patients with a primary care team that will provide continuous and coordinated care. By engaging patients with their physicians, they can take real accountability for their health. This will create savvier consumers of care and ultimately better health outcomes. Technology will drive the connectivity required to facilitate this objective and we see PWeR as one of the tangible assets that can be used in these efforts. We believe that the development of PWeR is an ongoing process that will continue to evolve with the active engagement and involvement of primary care physicians."

"Industry reform will begin from the inside out," said Dan Pelino , IBM General Manager Global Healthcare Industry. "Change will begin by empowering the physician/patient relationship and it is companies like Quantum, those with business models driven by physician-centric services, that will drive this reform. Quantum's physician services coupled with the PWeR platform provide a tangible and immediate strategic deployment to market."

Ronald S. Smith , Quantum Senior Vice President added, "The integration of PWeR into the Pc3 solution will position primary care physicians to engage in the CMS Medical Home program and provide access to added financial revenues not before realized. Doctors can potentially earn from $27 - $100 per eligible member per month based on current estimates, in addition to traditional fee for service fees. We plan to work with the physicians to help navigate the application process. We anticipate that when the final regulations are released that our system will allow the physician to qualify for the Stimulus Package monies as the EMR application of PWeR is 2009 CCHIT certified and meets the current CMS Medical Home requirements.

PWeR is a next generation technology platform that bridges physicians to their patients, hospitals, clinics and related professionals through a Software as a Service (SaaS) and an IBM Hosted Cloud Computing model. Cloud Computing involves the use of scalable resources including virtualized storage and business recovery services that are provided as a service over the Internet. Users do not require knowledge of or expertise in the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them.

Cloud computing is a natural fit for physician offices as it eliminates the costs associated with in-house, sophisticated server hardware, simplifies records management and facilitates the communications among each patient's unique care team. This IBM hosted cloud computing approach provides the highest levels of security and privacy to health records.