SureScripts(R) Names National Healthcare IT Leaders to Board

Bruce Fried, Dr. Mark Frisse and John Glaser Offer Broad Expertise in Provision of Care

Independent Directors' Experience With Physicians, Hospitals, RHIOs, Government, Payers and Patients to Help Guide Continuous Improvement of Prescribing Process

SureScripts, the nation's largest network provider of electronic prescribing services, today announced that Bruce Fried, Esq., Mark Frisse, M.D., and John Glaser, Ph.D., were elected by SureScripts' charter members as the first independent directors to its board. Also announced today was the appointment of Kurt Proctor, Ph.D. and R.Ph., the chief operating officer of Community MTM Services, to the SureScripts board.

From a single pilot test in Rhode Island less than three years ago, the community pharmacy industry has since established SureScripts as the nation's largest electronic prescribing network. In the process of building that network and driving e-prescribing adoption, SureScripts also has learned a great deal about how physicians and pharmacists communicate with each other, how they exchange clinical information, and how they interact with their mutual patients. Moreover, this experience has revealed meaningful opportunities to improve physician and pharmacist workflow in the course of providing patient care.

Today's expansion of the board represents the next phase in how SureScripts plans to seize those opportunities. Improving the workflow and collaboration between care providers is a challenge to which Mr. Fried and Drs. Frisse and Glaser have dedicated their careers. As new board members, each will have the opportunity to leverage past success working with physicians, hospitals, government, RHIOs, payers and patients.

"SureScripts and community pharmacy are dedicated to improving the prescribing process -- making it more safe and efficient, and of a higher quality," said Kevin Hutchinson, president and chief executive officer of SureScripts. "Aided by the wisdom and expertise of our new board members, we will continue to create and build demand for new services that dramatically improve the many workflows that make up the prescribing process. Whether providing medication history to hospitals, formulary and eligibility information to physicians -- or launching pharmacy-based medication adherence and compliance programs -- these new services will make the most critical and timely information related to a patient's medication available at the point of care."

As the former chief medical officer of Express Scripts, Dr. Frisse will have the chance to help SureScripts build upon its rapidly expanding relationships with the physician and payer communities. As one of the nation's leading experts on workflow in both hospital and physician office settings, John Glaser will advise SureScripts on the development and distribution of new clinical services. SureScripts will also have the opportunity to leverage Bruce Fried's extensive experience in healthcare privacy as it develops strict methods for ensuring confidentiality and authentication related to consumers accessing their medication history via personal health record applications.

Lawyer, Physician and CIO Among Nation's Healthcare IT Leaders

The new board members join Kevin Hutchinson, Bruce Roberts, executive vice president and CEO of the National Community Pharmacists Association, and Bob Hannan, interim CEO of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, as acting board members effective immediately.

Bruce Fried

Mr. Fried is a health care law and policy expert who counsels and represents health plans, physician organizations, hospital groups, health care information technology and data companies, pharmaceutical and biotech companies and other health care organizations with regard to Medicare, Medicaid, HIPAA and other federal health care programs and policies, and privacy and technology applications in the health care sector.

Mr. Fried has more than 25 years of experience in health care law and policy, both in the public and private sectors. He served as the Health Care Financing Administration's (HCFA) director of the Center for Health Plans and Providers where he was responsible for policy and operations for the Medicare program. Prior to that, Mr. Fried was director of HCFA's Office of Managed Care where he managed the rapid growth of the Medicare managed care program.

Prior to joining the government, Mr. Fried was vice president of federal affairs at FHP International Corporation, then one of the nation's largest managed care organizations.

Mr. Fried served as chief coordinator of the 1992 Clinton/Gore Campaign's Health Care Advisory Group. After the election, he was a member of the President's Transition Health Policy Team.

From 1990 to 1994, Mr. Fried was executive vice president of The Wexler Group where he counseled and represented insurers, hospitals, HMOs, pharmaceutical companies, clinicians, consumer groups and philanthropies on legislative and regulatory matters. Prior to 1990, Mr. Fried was involved in health care public interest activities and practiced with national, regional and local legal aid organizations.

Mr. Fried serves as general counsel to the eHealth Initiative and the Health Technology Center. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of United Cerebral Palsy. He is counsel to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, and the California Association of Physician Groups.

Mr. Fried is a member of the National Advisory Committee of the Berman Bioethics Institute of Johns Hopkins University and is chair of the Advisory Committee for the Department of Health Policy at the George Washington University. He frequently speaks and writes on topics such as the evolution of the health care system, the Medicare and Medicaid programs, health care information technology and confidentiality, quality and performance measurement, and other health care-related issues.

Dr. Mark Frisse

Dr. Mark Frisse serves as director of regional informatics programs through the Vanderbilt Center for Better Health and as professor in the Vanderbilt Department of Biomedical Informatics. In his work at the Vanderbilt Center for Better Health, he is responsible for coordinating regional, state, and national projects aimed at the application of information technology to advance patient care. His primary focus is on developing a regional health information infrastructure in the Memphis area funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the State of Tennessee.

Prior to assuming his position at Vanderbilt, Dr. Frisse was vice president in First Consulting Group's Clinical Transformation Practice working to advance quality and safety through the application of technology, process redesign, evaluation techniques, and evidence-based practice. His experience includes quality and financial analysis, key metrics assessment, clinical visioning, strategy, vendor selection, pre-implementation planning, and clinical quality program alignment. In addition to participating in numerous short-term planning and evaluation engagements, Dr. Frisse served as an operational vice president overseeing two large-scale transformation and clinical systems implementation efforts.

Prior to joining First Consulting Group, Dr. Frisse was chief medical officer and vice president of clinical information services at Express Scripts, one of the nation's largest independent pharmaceutical benefits management concerns.

A board certified internist, Dr. Frisse was a professor of medicine and associate dean at Washington University School of Medicine and he served as academic director of the Health Services Executive MBA program at the John M. Olin School of Business. Dr. Frisse received his M.D. and MBA from Washington University and received a master's degree in medical computer science from Stanford University.

Active in medical informatics for 20 years, he is the author of approximately 50 scientific papers, reviews, and book chapters on medical informatics. He served as a consultant for numerous government agencies and health care concerns. He was a member of the National Research Council's Committee on Enhancing the Internet for Health Applications and more recently was an author of a national report on e-prescribing prepared by the eHealth Initiative. Dr. Frisse serves on the board of the eHealth Initiative and the American Medical Informatics Association.

John Glaser

John Glaser is vice president and chief information officer, Partners HealthCare System, Inc. Previously, he was vice president of information systems at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Prior to Brigham and Women's Hospital, Dr. Glaser managed the healthcare information systems consulting practice at Arthur D. Little.

Dr. Glaser was the founding chairman of College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) and is past president of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). He has been a member of the board of the American Medical Informatics Association. He is president of the eHealth Initiative.

He is a fellow of HIMSS, CHIME and the American College of Medical Informatics. He has been awarded the John Gall award for healthcare CIO of the year. CHIME has established a scholarship in Dr. Glaser's name. He was a recipient of CIO Magazine's 20/20 Vision Award. Partners HealthCare has received several industry awards for its effective and innovative use of information technology.

Dr. Glaser is on the editorial boards of CIO Magazine, Healthcare Informatics, Biotechnology Healthcare, Journal of Biomedical Informatics and Journal of Healthcare Information Management. He has published over 90 articles and two books on the strategic application of information technology in healthcare. He holds a Ph.D. in Healthcare Information Systems from the University of Minnesota.

Kurt Proctor

Kurt Proctor is chief operating officer of Community MTM Services, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA). Previously, he was senior vice president, pharmacy operations with the National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS) and president of the NACDS Foundation.

Community MTM Services' focal point is its web based, HIPAA compliant, secure messaging system that enables community pharmacists to educate patients by accessing sponsor provided, critical, patient-specific information coincidental with a face-to-face pharmacist-patient encounter.

Dr. Proctor led the NACDS initiative with NCPA to establish SureScripts and the guiding principles it continues to follow. He holds a B.S.-Pharmacy degree from Ferris State University and a Ph.D. in Pharmacy Administration from The University of Texas at Austin. He continues to serve on advisory boards for both of his alma maters.

About SureScripts

SureScripts®, the largest network provider of electronic prescribing services, is committed to building relationships within the health care community and working collaboratively with key industry stakeholders and organizations to improve the safety, efficiency and quality of health care by improving the overall prescribing process. At the core of this improvement effort is the SureScripts Electronic Prescribing Network(TM), a health care infrastructure which establishes electronic communications between pharmacists and physicians and enables the two-way electronic exchange of prescription information. Today, 90 percent of all pharmacies in the United States are certified on the SureScripts network. More information about SureScripts is available at www.surescripts.com.

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