News Archive: 2002

Verinform Announces Ongoing License Deal with OHSU

November 18, 2002 - Portland, Oregon

Verinform Systems, Inc. today announced it had negotiated with Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) terms under which Verinform is to grant OHSU an ongoing license for its VerinformRM application. Verinform CEO and co-founder Dina Dickerson said, “we're delighted to extend our already excellent relationship with OHSU, covering the initial development cycle and first year of deployment of our VerinformRM application, with this agreement to provide OHSU with access to our technology on a long-term basis that's highly beneficial to both Verinform, Inc. and OHSU.”

Rolled out to all 60 of OHSU's individual residency programs, and powered by the company's proprietary Verinform Protocol Manager (VPM™) technology, Verinform RM is the only proven enterprise-ready solution in the Graduate Medical Education (GME) and Residency Management market today, Dickerson observed.

At OHSU, VerinformRM manages rotation and call schedules, evaluations, and profiles for house officers and attending physicians. Procedures are tracked, per individual program needs. Data is easily imported from ERAS and OnCall. Email notifications advise users whenever evaluation forms are waiting for completion online, and the fully HIPAA-compliant system ensures users see only information appropriate to their role. Resident procedure reports are emailed to supervising physicians, who can verify or challenge a procedure, commenting as necessary.

Yet VerinformRM's enterprise-wide scope doesn't force a “one size fits all” mold over the diverse needs of medical specialties. Each clinical program tailors evaluation forms, procedures and other elements for its specific needs. Data is aggregated - in real time - across all clinical training programs, fulfilling the tracking and reporting needs of GME and its satellite institutions. “Live” reporting keeps clinical training programs ready for Residency Review Committee audits, and GME is always current on billing and reimbursement data, with up-to-date, ready-for-submission Medicare Cost Reports.

Residency Program Gains
Residency Program administrators are highly enthusiastic. Dr. Thomas Cooney, Program Director for OHSU's Internal Medicine Residency Program and Professor of Medicine & Vice Chair for Education, said: “The Verinform system is a powerful tool for management of a large, complex residency program. First and foremost, it has greatly simplified our ability to track and obtain completed evaluations. In the first year, we achieved completion rates by faculty and housestaff in excess of 90%. We can quickly generate summary reports and closely monitor the performance of the housestaff, faculty and rotations." Dr. Cooney adds, “a feature unique to Verinform is the ability to define your own date elements and create your own electronic forms - instantly; no waiting for the developer to get around to your request!”

“Creating forms specific to particular rotations and to the learners and teachers has hugely simplified the process of documenting our compliance with the new ACGME competencies and generating the required end of year and end of training summaries,” he said, adding that “incorporating key questions into the rotation evaluations has allowed us to closely monitor our compliance with the RRC-IM requirements, which has proved to be a powerful tool in negotiations with our sponsoring and participating institutions.”

Institution-wide Benefits
From the GME perspective, the positive impact is equally clear. Sue Simmons, Administrative Director of OHSU's GME office, observes: “where once our residents and attending physicians were lucky to get a few sporadic anecdotal evaluations on individual pieces of paper - long after the fact - today, over 1,800 physicians at 11 institutions are plugged into a secure, web-based stream of consolidated, timely peer and mentor feedback - complete with email reminders, follow-up tools, and meaningful live summaries. And yet the system remains simple, powerful and efficient, both to use and to administer.”

Adds Simmons,“thanks to the enthusiastic and responsive team at Verinform, we're now far ahead of the ball on all the evaluation generation, capture and analysis chores that once overwhelmed our Residency Coordinators.”

The opportunity to advance the entire institution to the same heightened level of effectiveness drove OHSU's decision to license VerinformRM on an ongoing basis, said Simmons. “We anticipate happily using VerinformRM for many years to come,” she said, “and were pleased to reach an agreement with Verinform making that possible.”

Specific details of the agreement have not been disclosed.

About Verinform
Verinform Systems, Inc. provides enterprise-grade software solutions for academic hospitals, clinical environments and public health laboratories. Software applications are developed on the Verinform Protocol Manager (VPM™) platform, a set of browser-based database and workflow tools that allows for the rapid deployment of highly customized, extremely secure and regulation-compliant solutions. For more information on Verinform, please visit them on the web at www.verinform.com or call 503-231-8912.