Prime Healthcare Services

April 12, 2012

Phillipsburg, NJ – Prime Healthcare Services (PHS), a progressive and rapidly expanding hospital management company based in Ontario, CA, currently owns and operates sixteen acute-care hospitals. In February 2012, PHS signed a master agreement with INFINITT North America to replace PACS and Cardiology PACS at several of its California hospitals.

Prime Healthcare Services (PHS) has been ranked by Thomson Reuters as one of the 15 Top Health Systems in the nation (January, 2012) based on quality of care, efficiency and patient satisfaction. The mission of PHS is to provide comprehensive, quality healthcare on a model that emphasizes timely and cost-efficient emergency care.

Centinela Hospital Medical Center (CHMC), a 369-bed PHS hospital, implemented the INFINITT PACS five years ago to support the full spectrum of diagnostic services and almost 60,000 ED visits annually. The PACS increased reading efficiency and reduced report turnaround times, metrics directly related to Emergency Department throughput and quality of care.

“The INFINITT PACS helped us to deliver services in a more timely and efficient manner,” said Shawna Tanaka, CHMC’s Radiology Director. “We also like INFINITT’s ED Notes feature; we encourage all our ED physicians to jot down their impressions to give the radiologists a better overall picture of the patient’s condition.”

INFINITT PACS has also been implemented at Encino Hospital Medical Center (151 beds) in Encino, CA and Desert Valley Hospital in Victorville, CA (83 beds). Additional implementations are planned for Chino Valley Medical Center in Chino, CA; Sherman Oaks Hospital in Sherman Oaks, CA; Alvarado Hospital (Cardiology PACS) and newly acquired Harlingen Medical Center in Texas (Radiology and Cardiology PACS).

INFINITT PACS is a category leader in KLAS, having achieved No. 1 rankings in the Best in KLAS Awards: Software and Services for Community PACS for three years in a row (2009, 2010 and 2011).* KLAS is an independent research firm specializing in monitoring and reporting on vendors’ performance in the healthcare market. For more information, visit www.KLASresearch.com.

About INFINITT North America

INFINITT North America, located in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of INFINITT Healthcare, a global company with more than 2500 PACS installations worldwide. Infinitt’s web-based image and information management solutions include RIS, PACS, Cardiology PACS, Mammo PACS, Orthopedic PACS, Dental PACS and 3D/Advanced Visualization software, all operating on a single database. This architecture simplifies workflow, increases system reliability, and reduces cost and support requirements. For more information, visit Infinitt at www.infinittna.com or contact marketing@infinittna.com.

Dr. Armen Hovhannisyan is a busy man. As an internal medicine specialist on staff at Centinela Hospital Medical Center, his office waiting room is always full with patients. He also shuttles between his office and Centinela Hospital to see his hospitalized patients. However, in late August 2011 the 39 year old Dr. Hovhannisyan abruptly went from being a health care provider at Centinela Hospital to becoming a patient at the very same hospital that he treats so many patients. His intimate experience as a patient began as he was getting into his car in the doctor’s parking lot of the hospital. Thinking that he had been only suffering from a cold for the last several days, Dr. Hovhannisyan was, unbeknownst to him, feeling the ill effects of a much more dangerous illness – acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).

ARDS is a life-threatening lung condition that prevents enough oxygen from getting into the blood. It leads to a buildup of fluid in the air sacs which prevents enough oxygen from passing into the bloodstream. The fluid buildup also makes the lungs heavy and stiff, and decreases the lungs’ ability to expand.

Unable to breath, Dr. Hovhannisyan lost consciousness in his parked vehicle and soon went into cardiac arrest. Luckily for him, two of his colleagues, John Anderson, M.D. and Paymon Banafshe, D.O. noticed him slumped over the wheel of his car and managed to reach through an open window to open the driver’s door and pull him out. Immediately realizing the grave nature of his condition, they began CPR in the parking lot and soon had him rushed to the nearby Centinela Hospital ER where he had a breathing tube inserted and his heart re-started through cardiac defibrillation.

Once his condition was stabilized, Dr. Hovhannisyan was transferred to the hospital’s cardiac intensive care unit where he remained unconscious for the next ten days receiving treatment to fight his infection. During this time, the Centinela Hospital staff rallied around his care. He was seen by numerous colleagues to assess his condition. Physician specialists in anesthesiology, cardiology, nephrology, pulmonology, critical care medicine and internal medicine all had a hand in his recovery.

When he finally awoke, Dr. Hovhannisyan says, “I didn’t remember how I became a patient at Centinela Hospital, but I do remember that there must have been at least 20 of my fellow doctors and hospital staff in my room praying for my recovery.” Under a comprehensive treatment plan, Dr. Hovhannisyan’s health quickly improved and he was soon discharged from the hospital. He continues, “I can’t thank the physicians and staff of Centinela Hospital enough for everything they did for me while I was in the hospital. Without their care, I wouldn’t be here right now. There are so many people there that I would like to thank including my colleagues, nurses and hospital staff.”

Now back to full health and back at work, it is hard to believe that just a few short months ago he was hovering near death, but Dr. Hovhannisyan firmly believes someone was watching over him that day. He says, “From the time I was rolled into the ER until my discharge I couldn’t have been placed in better hands. I will always remember the amazing level of care that I received while as a patient of the hospital. I literally owe them my life.”

“Charting a new course in healthcare management”. So reads the copy on Prime Healthcare Services website and with good reason. The Ontario, CA, based healthcare system continues to expand its growing network of 14 acute care hospitals throughout the State.

Over the past decade, Prime has steadfastly adhered to a strategy based on sound business principles without ever compromising the quality of patient care. While many hospitals failed to keep up with the increasing costs of providing care to patients in the face of dramatically declining reimbursement rates, Prime saw an opportunity to revive ailing hospitals.

The word ‘profit’ has traditionally been taboo in the world of healthcare but the reality is that financial success can go hand in hand with quality medical care and Prime has proven it time and again. By employing a progressive and innovative management model, Prime is now recognized as the top performing healthcare network on the West Coast.

Community hospitals have to operate for the long run and in order for this to happen, medical care and financial success have to go hand in hand. Prime are gradually changing the mentality that health care is not supposed to be profitable. Ensuring that a hospital can support itself financially may seem a novel concept for some, but for Prime, a hospital must be operated in a way that will allow it to sustain itself even the toughest economic times.

Prime identifies community-based hospitals that are deep in the red and on the brink of closure. Following a successful acquisition Prime steps in and turns the hospital into a profitable and quality functioning operation. Sometimes it can involve tough decisions about redeploying staff and resources but every effort is made to minimize the impact on the community.

Hospitals are now seeing a larger percentage of acutely ill patients who need a higher level of care as insurance companies are sending more patients for elective cases to diagnostic centers. In today’s tough economic climate emergency rooms are being flooded with patients with no money and no insurance. Recent data shows that 35 to 40 percent of emergency room patients are without means to pay for their medical bills. In addition, patients are waiting until the eleventh hour to come to hospital emergency rooms and often have multiple medical issues that consume a lot more resources than the cost of providing preventative health care.

Following an acquisition, Prime invests millions of dollars into the infrastructure, including technological investments such as paperless records systems, new medical equipment, and digitalized radiology and information systems to provide up to the minute clinical and financial data. Prime then looks at the operational side focusing on five core measures to successfully run its hospitals: clinical quality efficiency, morality, medical complications, patience safety and average length of stay conforming to clinical standards of care.

The flow of patients is critical and Prime has established an impressive performance record in its ERs. Prime expects patients to be seen by a physician within 30 minutes of entering the emergency room.

Prime is viewed as something of an anomaly in the healthcare industry but continually defies the skeptics who are resigned to the notion that small hospitals can not survive. In the meantime, the accolades, awards and recognitions keep pouring in. Thomson Reuters Research identified Prime Healthcare Services, Inc. as one of the Top 10 United States Health Systems based on clinical performance. Of the 252 health care systems that participated in the polling of the clinical data, Prime was the only health care system chosen west of the Mississippi. The study relied on public data from the 2006 and 2007 Medicare Provider Analysis and Review data and the CMS Hospital Compare data sets.

Prime’s Desert Valley Hospital and West Anaheim Medical Center were named two of the top four California medical facilities on the Modern Healthcare Top 100 list. Three of Prime’s hospitals (West Anaheim, Centinela Hospital Medical Center and La Palma Intercommunity Hospital) were named on US News and World Report’s 2009 Best Hospitals’ List.