Picis exhibited its entire CareSuite product line for emergency departments, operating rooms and intensive care units at HIMSS07 in New Orleans. American EDs are under a lot of pressure, said Mark Crockett, MD, president, Emergency Care Division and hospitals get anywhere from 20 to 60 percent of their inpatients through the ED. That means there is a real opportunity, he said. Hospitals that have implemented the Picis solution have been able to recover about $2 million in lost charges.

HIMSS attendees were interested in interoperability and usability, Crockett said. “They are realizing that [interoperability] can be achieved.” The Picis strategy is to complement hospitals’ IT choices. “Our record on interoperability stands for itself,” Crockett said. Picis has offered web-based products with a service-oriented architecture since 1997 and 220 hospitals serving seven million patients a year now use it. Crockett also said that Picis can provide an ROI that “lots of other systems can’t.”

The company’s stringent schedule of two releases per year, has allowed Picis “to solve some thorny problems.” In fact, 60 to 80 percent of product enhancements come from customers. The latest release offers tools for documentation, risk management, administration and interoperability. Risk management is a big draw, Crockett said, because of lawsuits and financial and regulatory concerns.