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Fremont Area Medical Center Selects Lawson to Help Establish Health Information Exchange

Fremont Area Medical Center (FAMC) is a 202-bed healthcare facility in Nebraska serving Dodge County and surrounding areas. Chartered in 1940, the medical center is a non-profit healthcare facility owned by Dodge County. It provides a full spectrum of healthcare services through its own operations and finances without relying on county or taxpayer funds. FAMC focuses on achieving increasingly higher standards of clinical excellence to build a healthy future for the communities it serves.

FAMC is actively pursuing the development of its HIE to bring together comprehensive patient data from care settings throughout its medical community. This includes data from primary care physicians, specialists and hospital stays, which will help provide a more complete history of a patient's care as well as medications that have been prescribed by different providers. Lawson Enterprise Exchange will help transform how FAMC makes information available for consumption by physicians, providing ready access to information through one source. This HIE initiative will ultimately help FAMC deliver better care.

"Like all healthcare organizations, access to accurate and complete data is one of our most significant challenges, which is a key reason we are looking to establish our HIE program," said Dave Hanen, vice president and CFO for FAMC.

"Our ultimate goal is to have one patient-centric view of every patient interaction throughout our medical community," noted Dr. Ken Pitz, chief medical information officer for FAMC. "Today much of this is done through cumbersome, manual and fax-intensive processes. An HIE that will help make clinical care summaries readily accessible to our physicians and nurses will help our clinical staff make better, more informed decisions right at the point of care."

HIE and Meaningful Use
The HIE initiative at Fremont is also the cornerstone of the organization's meaningful use initiatives. Healthcare organizations seeking federal stimulus funding must be able to demonstrate what's termed as "meaningful use" of an electronic health record system. A Health Information Exchange is a key way for a hospital or health system to be able to demonstrate meaningful use of electronic health records. A primary goal of meaningful use is to improve coordination of care through the electronic exchange of clinical information across a local medical community. Such use of data can provide clinicians a better and more efficient view of a patient's history across all types of care. Lawson Enterprise Exchange will help FAMC deliver this capability to its community.

"Meaningful use is a crucial focal point of our overall health data management initiatives, and the Lawson system is an important part of how we'll achieve our objectives," said Richard Beran, director of Hospital Information Systems for FAMC. "Our Lawson-based HIE will help us create a central database to do community health reporting and help us handle the exchange of data as required under the federal regulations. We think this meets and exceeds the requirements of meaningful use."

FAMC also anticipates benefits when it comes to negotiating reimbursements for patient care. The Lawson system will help FAMC more clearly and accurately report on the services that have been provided while having better information to help reduce costs by reducing or eliminating duplicate services, procedures and re-admissions.

"Accurate and complete data is essentially the 'holy grail' for healthcare organizations as they strive to meet patient needs and manage highly complex business and financial challenges," said Jim Catalino, general manager, Lawson Healthcare. "But most healthcare organizations face a tremendous challenge in this area because data comes from disparate sources with varying levels of standards and accuracy. By moving to a modern HIE system, organizations like FAMC will be much better positioned to comply with regulatory standards, negotiate reimbursements from insurance companies and the government, and most importantly, deliver quality care."

Lawson Healthcare is the information technology partner that helps manage and connect the clinical, financial and operational information that allows providers to concentrate on their mission of delivering the best patient care possible. Lawson Healthcare has the combination of software, people and industry know-how to help improve the business of healthcare.

About Lawson Software
Lawson Software provides software and service solutions to customers in healthcare, public sector (United States), service industries, human capital management, equipment service management & rental, fashion, food & beverage, and manufacturing & distribution across 40 countries. Lawson is a global provider of enterprise software, services and support to customers primarily in three sectors: services, trade and manufacturing/distribution. Lawson solutions include Enterprise Performance Management, Human Capital Management, Enterprise Financial Management, Supply Chain Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, Manufacturing Resource Planning, Enterprise Asset Management and industry-tailored applications. Lawson solutions assist customers in simplifying their businesses or organizations by helping them streamline processes, reduce costs and enhance business or operational performance. Lawson is headquartered in St. Paul, Minn., and has offices around the world. Visit Lawson online at www.lawson.com. For Lawson's listing on the First North exchange in Sweden, Remium AB is acting as the Certified Adviser.

Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that contain risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements contain statements of intent, belief or current expectations of Lawson Software and its management. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future results and involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from the potential results discussed in the forward-looking statements. The company is not obligated to update forward-looking statements based on circumstances or events that occur in the future. Risks and uncertainties that may cause such differences include but are not limited to: uncertainties in the software industry; uncertainties as to when and whether the conditions for the recognition of deferred revenue will be satisfied; increased competition; general economic conditions; the impact of foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations; continuation of the global recession and credit crisis; Lawson's ability to integrate the Healthvision acquisition successfully; global military conflicts; terrorist attacks; pandemics, and any future events in response to these developments; changes in conditions in the company's targeted industries and other risk factors listed in the company's most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q and Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Lawson assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking information contained in this press release.

Lawson Software
Joe Thornton, 651-767-6154
joe.thornton@us.lawson.com
or
FD International
Diana Swanson, 312-553-6703
diana.swanson@fd.com