OhioHealth Deploys Courion's Enterprise Provisioning Suite; Healthcare Provider Automates Its Identity Management Operations and Achieves Consistent Provisioning of Users Across Organization to Meet Stringent Audit Requirements

Business Wire, Feb 6, 2006

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. -- Courion(R) Corporation, the provisioning specialist, today announced that OhioHealth, a nationally recognized, not-for-profit, organization providing healthcare services in 46 counties, has selected Courion's Enterprise Provisioning Suite(TM) to automate its identity management operations. Courion will provide secure access to systems for its diverse user population while protecting critical patient information and complying with HIPAA regulations. With more than 18,000 physicians, nurses and students accessing patient data, OhioHealth can now be assured that the right people have the right level of access at the right time, so that the medical staff can better focus on patient care.

Based in Columbus, Ohio, OhioHealth is a family of 15 hospitals, 15 health and surgery centers, home-health providers, medical equipment and health services servicing more than half the state. While evaluating leading provisioning solutions, OhioHealth required all vendors to provide proof of their ability to integrate with the organization's clinical applications. Courion was the only vendor able to demonstrate its provisioning integration support through its implementations with other healthcare organizations.

"Not only did Courion prove to us that they could integrate with our McKesson applications and the diverse, complex nature of our environment, they exceeded our high expectations of what it would take to succeed with our heterogeneous infrastructure," said Mary Jo McElroy, senior vice president of IS, OhioHealth. "More importantly, by provisioning users effectively across the entire organization, we'll be able to focus on automating our business and auditing processes to instill best practices around access and identity management."

The fluid nature of the healthcare industry makes access management an extreme challenge due to the frequency with which employees' roles change, the constant turnover of contractors, staff, doctors and interns and the necessity to often allow data access to satellite offices, vendors or out of network providers. Courion's Enterprise Provisioning Suite - an integrated family of products that support account provisioning, compliance management, password reset and synchronization, and profile management - helps organizations keep pace with their changing landscapes while demonstrating compliance, reducing costs, improving patient service levels and security.

"Because of our deep experience working with healthcare providers, we understand the pressure they're under to provide patient confidentiality, protect data, and demonstrate adherence to the strict codes outlined in HIPAA, SOX and other regulatory initiatives," said Deb Pappas, vice president of market strategy for Courion. "We help customers like OhioHealth address these challenges by ensuring that users are granted only the IT access that is necessary for them to perform their jobs while ensuring the integrity and security of confidential information."

Many leading healthcare organizations use Courion's Enterprise Provisioning Solutions including Blue Cross Blue Shield Alabama, Capital District Physician's Health Plan, Children's Hospital Boston, Cincinnati Children's Hospital, Catholic Healthcare West, Evanston Northwestern Healthcare, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, The Health Alliance, HEALTHSOUTH, Highmark, Inc., Indiana University Medical Group, Kaiser Permanente, Tandem Health Care, and VCU Health Systems.

About OhioHealth

OhioHealth is a nationally recognized, not-for-profit, charitable organization serving and supported by the community. Based in Columbus, Ohio, it is a family of 15 hospitals, 15 health and surgery centers, home-health providers, medical equipment and health service suppliers throughout a 46-county area. OhioHealth hospitals in central Ohio are Riverside Methodist Hospital, Grant Medical Center, Doctors Hospital, Grady Memorial Hospital and Dublin Methodist Hospital (to open in late 2007). For more information, please visit our Web site at www.ohiohealth.com.

About Courion

Courion's technology innovation simplifies the complexities of provisioning to immediately impact its customers' business and provide lasting results. Unlike competitive technologies that concentrate on infrastructure-centric solutions at the expense of business operations, Courion takes a holistic approach to provisioning by securely connecting people to critical enterprise resources. Working within an organization's existing IT environment to provide immediate pain point relief, Courion's identity management solutions securely automate routine, manual processes for user provisioning, password management, audit and regulatory compliance, and profile management.

Courion is a registered trademark and Enterprise Provisioning Suite is a trademark of Courion Corporation. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.