John Muir Health and MuirLab Select AT&T Healthcare Community Online to Improve Clinical Healthcare Information Exchange

WALNUT CREEK, Calif., Feb. 16, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, AT&T* announced that John Muir Health and MuirLab have contracted with AT&T to deploy AT&T Healthcare Community Online, AT&T's flagship Health Information Exchange (HIE) solution.

AT&T Healthcare Community Online will enable the Lab Information System of MuirLab and its client hospitals to easily exchange information and share applications in a highly secure manner to improve communications and information access and facilitate better quality of care.

MuirLab is the laboratory service and diagnostic center for John Muir Health, which includes two medical centers and several outpatient facilities. MuirLab also supports 30 outpatient lab draw sites in the greater East Bay region as well as Sacramento, and services over 300 Skilled Nursing Facilities throughout 18 counties of Northern California. It is a full-service lab facility offering comprehensive clinical and anatomic pathology testing. MuirLab's 56,000 square foot, state-of-the-art testing facility in Concord, California features the most current innovations in total lab automation and clinical lab equipment.

"AT&T Healthcare Community Online fits the needs of MuirLab perfectly and is designed to scale as our needs expand," said Eric Saff, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, John Muir Health. "It's a value-added service that will improve laboratory services to patients and help us broaden our business model to meet the needs of even more medical communities."

AT&T Healthcare Community Online is an industry leading cloud-based service designed to facilitate MuirLab's ongoing improvements in specimen handling accuracy and to enhance turn-around time for test results -- ultimately reducing costs and delivering better patient care. Additionally, by utilizing AT&T Healthcare Community Online's provider dashboard, John Muir Health will improve the process for requesting and retrieving diagnostic results and maximize the capacity and efficiency of MuirLab.

Under this contract, AT&T will configure, deploy, and manage the connectivity interfaces for bidirectional clinical messaging between MuirLab and its constituents. Additionally, MuirLab will have a customizable User Interface (UI) with the ability to modify aspects of AT&T Healthcare Community Online.

Since hospitals and physician practices vary greatly in how they operate and in their level of technology adoption, AT&T Healthcare Community Online will allow message delivery regardless of the preferred communication method. The platform provides MuirLab with a flexible and highly secure clinical messaging and interface capability to and from any available data source and supports multiple delivery mechanisms such as messaging to a hospital, to a message center portal, to fax or combined delivery to all three.

AT&T will demonstrate AT&T Healthcare Community Online and other healthcare solutions at the HIMSS11 conference Feb. 20-24 in Orlando at booth #4862.

Learn more information about AT&T ForHealth.

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

About John Muir Health

John Muir Health is a community-based, not-for-profit organization that includes two of the largest medical centers in Contra Costa County: John Muir Medical Center - Walnut Creek Campus, a 330-bed acute care medical center that serves as Contra Costa County's only designated trauma center; and John Muir Medical Center - Concord Campus, a 254-bed acute care medical center in Concord. Together, they are recognized as preeminent centers for neurosciences, orthopedics, cancer care, cardiovascular care and high-risk obstetrics. Other areas of specialty include general surgery, robotic surgery, weight-loss surgery, rehabilitation and critical care. The John Muir Behavioral Health Center offers psychiatric treatment for adults, children and adolescents who are experiencing emotional or behavioral problems. All three hospitals, including the John Muir Behavioral Health Center, are accredited by The Joint Commission, a national surveyor of quality patient care. In addition, John Muir Health provides a number of primary care and outpatient services throughout the community and urgent care centers in Brentwood, Concord, San Ramon and Walnut Creek.

About AT&T

AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) is a premier communications holding company. Its subsidiaries and affiliates – AT&T operating companies – are the providers of AT&T services in the United States and around the world. With a powerful array of network resources that includes the nation's fastest mobile broadband network, AT&T is a leading provider of wireless, Wi-Fi, high speed Internet and voice services. A leader in mobile broadband, AT&T also offers the best wireless coverage worldwide, offering the most wireless phones that work in the most countries.  It also offers advanced TV services under the AT&T U-verse® and AT&T | DIRECTV brands. The company's suite of IP-based business communications services is one of the most advanced in the world. In domestic markets, AT&T Advertising Solutions and AT&T Interactive are known for their leadership in local search and advertising. In 2010, AT&T again ranked among the 50 Most Admired Companies by FORTUNE® magazine. 

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SOURCE AT&T Inc.