The Good Samaritan Hospital Picks Compliance 360 for Enterprise Policy Management

ATLANTA - November 8, 2004 - Compliance 360, the most widely used enterprise compliance management application, today announced its enterprise solution has been deployed at The Good Samaritan Hospital (GSH) in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

The hospital, which is one of the more established community hospitals in the country and dates back to 1889, has approximately 260 administrative policies that cross more than one department and thereby function as organizational-level policies. Each department also has its own set of policies and procedures that guides the department’s operations. According to The Good Samaritan Hospital’s Assistant to the President Lisa Dreibelbis, "The initial challenge for The Good Samaritan Hospital was to institute a process to ensure the appropriate development of a policy, to manage the timely review or revision of the policy and to establish a mechanism whereby the administrative policies could be maintained in a less cumbersome manner."

Management at the hospital was also concerned that in addition to meeting the needs of the organization, each policy must meet the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) standards as well as state regulatory and other regulatory requirements. The overarching goal at The Good Samaritan Hospital was to create a methodology for the hospital’s policy and procedure review that could be accomplished in an automated manner that was timely and more efficient.

Another key challenge for The Good Samaritan Hospital was to standardize a multi-disciplinary review of policies and procedures.. In order to overcome this challenge, the GSH established a workflow for getting policies reviewed by determining timeframes for how long a policy review should take and who should be involved in the review process. The hospital also evaluated automation solutions such as a comprehensive database for policy management.

Getting the right people to review the policy was one thing that needed to be addressed. Another was to ensure that an automated system could facilitate both timely as well as routine review. Because state department of health regulations require policy review annually, management at The Good Samaritan Hospital wanted a system that would ensure that each policy was reviewed at least on a yearly basis, even if the policy did not require revision. Compliance 360’s solution gives the GSH the ability to set-up reminders to the right reviewers within the hospital so that the whole review process is managed automatically.

"Management at The Good Samaritan Hospital took the hospital through a business process reengineering exercise to get the right processes in place before our software was evaluated," said Steve McGraw, president and CEO, Compliance 360. "It was at that point that they wanted to apply information technology to support those processes."

The system has enabled The Good Samaritan Hospital to embrace the multi-disciplinary review process that they needed and Compliance 360 technology enables the hospital to decentralize this process among collaboration teams and approval groups - putting the responsibility for policy review at the level of the responsible party. Another key to the hospital’s decision to go with Compliance 360 had to do with the fact that the system has links to all relevant JCAHO regulations and enables users to add state regulations as well. The Hospital’s policies are tied to state and federal regulations through hyperlinks so anyone accessing the system may see at-a-glance how their policies meet state and federal regulations.

"Compliance 360 software fit the bill perfectly for what The Good Samaritan Hospital was trying to accomplish through a system for policies and procedures management," concluded Dreibelbis.

About The Good Samaritan Hospital

Since 1889, The Good Samaritan Hospital has continued to meet the healthcare needs of the Lebanon, Pennsylvania community. The GSH is a non-sectarian, not-for-profit community hospital whose purpose is to provide high quality acute, rehabilitative and preventive health services for the entire community. For more information, please visit http://www.gshleb.org.

About Compliance 360, Inc.

Compliance 360 is a leading provider of software that helps companies in regulated industries manage their corporate governance and compliance processes through a single enterprise-wide application. Over 200 companies use Compliance 360 products to control the costs associated with enterprise compliance management, while significantly reducing the complexities associated with monitoring and managing local, state and federal regulations.

By enabling companies to address the most important facets of a comprehensive governance program, Compliance 360 assists its customers in reducing costs and mitigating regulatory and compliance risk. Compliance 360 is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information, visit http://www.compliance360.com.

Contact:
Stuart Smith
Red Nine PR
404.261.0707
ssmith@redninePR.com

www.redninePR.com