PeraHealth names performance improvement leader Stephanie Alexander as CEO

CHARLOTTE, N.C. --(Business Wire)--

PeraHealth Inc., formerly known as Rothman Healthcare Corp., has named a new leadership team headed by healthcare performance improvement pioneer Stephanie Alexander as the company expands beyond acute-care hospitals into new markets with leading-edge software that leverages Electronic Health Records to illuminate often-undetected trends in patients' health.

Ms. Alexander, a 27-year veteran in the healthcare industry, served as Executive Sponsor of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Hospital Quality Improvement Demonstration (HQID) project and built the Premier Inc. healthcare alliance's healthcare informatics business. As chief executive officer, Ms. Alexander and her team are collaborating with PeraHealth's customers to develop applications for pediatric, assisted-living, home health and other patient populations.

The software extracts, synthesizes and visualizes data buried in Electronic Health Records to create a score that captures gradual but important trends in patients' condition in easy-to-read, color-coded graphs. The effectiveness of the software has been validated through analysis of 250,000 patient visits since its introduction in 2005. It has helped reduce hospital readmissions, improve continuity of care and patient flow, enhance rapid-response team performance and achieve financial savings.

"It has been reported that in an averagefour-day hospital stay, there are 24 handoffs. We have focused our research on developing a tool to help doctors and nurses detect subtle changes that can be missed as a patient is handed off from one provider to the next. As we integrate vital signs, lab results and particularly nursing assessments, which are often underused, into a single score, we can see subtle trends in patient condition," said company co-founder Michael Rothman. "Now with Stephanie's proven leadership, in partnership with our customers, we are ready to help all healthcare providers and patients' family members more effectively monitor patients' health."

Michael Rothman and his brother Steven, both experts in data analysis, developed the Rothman Index after their mother, Florence Rothman, died in 2003 when a deteriorating trend went undetected following a relatively low-risk surgical procedure. Since then, a dozen hospitals have introduced the index in partnerships to improve patient quality outcomes.

"As one of the original users of PeraHealth's product, we are excited to extend our strategic partnership to improve clinical quality," said Thomas J. Balcezak, M.D., Senior Vice President, Patient Safety and Quality and Associate Chief of Staff for Yale-New Haven Hospital, a nationally recognized, 1,541-bed, not-for-profit hospital that serves as the primary teaching hospital for the Yale School of Medicine. "We are proud to have contributed significantly to the validation of an index to improve the safety and experience of patients and their families as well as increase our hospitals' operational efficiency and cost effectiveness."

"In addition to Yale New Haven Health System, PeraHealth's solutions have been implemented in a broad range of facilities from the nation's top health systems and leading community hospitals to skilled-nursing, assisted-living and independent-living settings, reflecting our vision of providing service across the continuum of care," said Ms. Alexander. Among other current clients: Shands HealthCare at the University of Florida; Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, part of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center; Blessing Health System of Quincy, Ill.; Shannon Health of San Angelo, Texas; and Plymouth Harbor, a continuing care retirement community in Sarasota, Fla.

PeraHealth's leadership team will be in Booth 1456 at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's National Forum in Orlando Dec. 9-12.