Quest Diagnostics Care360™ Named Top e-Prescribing Platform by Black Book Rankings

MADISON, N.J., Dec. 9, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Quest Diagnostics Incorporated (NYSE: DGX), the world's leading provider of diagnostic testing, information and services, announced that Care360™, the company's electronic health platform, has been named the leading stand-alone e-Prescribing software system by Black Book Rankings, a leading source for accurate, impartial customer satisfaction surveys in the services and software industries.

Black Book Rankings surveyed over 70,000 healthcare IT and records professionals, physician practice administrators and hospital leaders over a four month period to provide prospective buyers of e-Prescribing software with a comprehensive comparison of the industry's top performing vendors.

According to the report, e-Prescribing technology is defined as "a prescriber's ability to electronically send an accurate, error free and understandable prescription directly to a pharmacy from the point of patient care."   Electronic prescriptions have been widely recognized as playing a key role in reducing medical errors and improving the quality of patient care.

According to Black Book Rankings, Quest Diagnostics Care360™ ranked first in eleven of eighteen key performance categories for e-Prescribing, including Client Satisfaction, Overall Vendor Preference and First Line User Recommendations, Percentage of Users on Track to Meet Meaningful Use, Reliability, Support and Customer Care, and Best of Breed Technology, among others.

For detailed rankings and results, please visit http://www.blackbookrankings.com.

Approximately 1.8 million electronic prescriptions are transmitted by nearly 12,000 physicians using Care360™ each month and more than 5 million each quarter, based on third quarter 2011 Quest Diagnostics data.

"Electronic prescribing is a key component of our Intelligent Ambulatory Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) platform, which provides physicians with critical insights at the time of ordering," said Richard Mahoney, President of MedPlus, the Healthcare IT subsidiary of Quest Diagnostics.  "The results of this comprehensive survey of e-Prescribing clients show that Care360 offers the outstanding performance and value that health care providers require in an e-Prescribing platform.  In addition, physicians can easily transition from e-Prescribing to the full capabilities of our certified electronic health solution, Care360EHR."

About Black Book Rankings

Black Book Rankings, a division of Brown-Wilson Group Inc., is one of the largest full-service technology and services market research and opinion research companies. Founded in 2002, the company serves a wide variety of prominent publicly traded, private and start-up clients, venture capital firms, bankers, vendors, manufacturers and buyers alike. The company enjoys a reputation of conducting high quality research as evidenced through our long-standing relationships with our customers.

About Care360 EHR

Care360 EHR is a web-based, modular architecture that allows physicians to transition key activities from paper to electronic management in a step-wise approach. Care360 EHR has a wide range of capabilities including electronic lab order management, clinical messaging, e-Prescribing, clinical documentation tools, document management and multi-system interoperability – providing what physicians need at the point-of-care. For more information, visit www.Care360.com/EHR.

About Quest Diagnostics

Quest Diagnostics is the world's leading provider of diagnostic testing, information and services that patients and doctors need to make better healthcare decisions. The company offers the broadest access to diagnostic testing services through its network of laboratories and patient service centers, and provides interpretive consultation through its extensive medical and scientific staff.  Quest Diagnostics is a pioneer in developing innovative diagnostic tests and advanced healthcare information technology solutions that help improve patient care. Additional company information is available at www.QuestDiagnostics.com or follow us at Facebook.com/QuestDiagnostics and Twitter.com/QuestDX.

For Quest Diagnostics: Kathleen Valentine (Investors), +1-973-520-2900, or Barb Short (Media), +1-973-520-2800

SOURCE Quest Diagnostics Incorporated