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CDW Healthcare's IT Checkup Self-Assessment Tool Enables Direct Comparison Against a National Sample of Healthcare IT Professionals

Web-based Tool Equips Healthcare IT Professionals with a National Benchmark on Clinical Application and IT Infrastructure Investment

VERNON HILLS, Ill. - June 2, 2009 - CDW Healthcare, part of the public sector subsidiary of CDW Corporation and a leading provider of technology products and services to healthcare organizations, today announced the release of the IT Checkup Self-Assessment Tool, a Web-based program which enables hospital IT managers to evaluate their clinical application and IT infrastructure investment and receive an instant score indicating how their healthcare organization compares to averages from across the U.S. The tool is based upon the results of the CDW Healthcare IT Checkup, a national survey of healthcare IT professionals, which CDW Healthcare reported in March.

Using the self-assessment tool, hospital IT managers, CIOs and senior leadership answer 19 questions about the sophistication and capacity of their clinical applications and IT infrastructure. The questions highlight indicators of relative strength or weakness in both areas and provide results that are meant to guide discussions between IT managers and senior leadership about the importance of pursuing a balanced approach to clinical IT implementations. No findings based upon individual usage of the Self-Assessment Tool will be made publicly available. The CDW Healthcare IT Checkup Self-Assessment Tool is online at http://www.healthitcheckup.com.

The Self-Assessment Tool scores hospitals on several indicators of strength and contra-indicators of weakness:

Clinical Application Indicators

E-prescribing

Positive application performance

Extensive application deployment

Infrastructure Indicators

Disaster Recovery

Storage Management

Network Management

Virtualization

Clinical Application Contra-indicators

Limited application deployment

Poor application performance

Infrastructure Contra-indicators

Limited infrastructure solutions

Low percent of budget allocation


"As operating budgets grow tighter and the pressure to achieve improvements in clinical outcomes becomes paramount, healthcare providers need to ensure that they are balancing their investments to get the greatest payoff for each invested dollar," said Bob Rossi, vice president of CDW Healthcare. "By continuing the expansion of clinical applications as well as strengthening the supporting infrastructure and client technologies, IT leaders will enable those programs to operate reliably and effectively - and ultimately drive the greatest patient care improvements."

CDW Healthcare surveyed 500 clinical and IT professionals working in a hospital setting to determine national average scores for clinical application and infrastructure strength, which were included in the IT Checkup report released in March. For more information on the IT Checkup and to download the complete study, please visit www.cdwg.com/itcheckup.

Key survey findings include:
  • By both objective and subjective measurements, hospitals view clinical applications as having a greater impact on patient care than IT infrastructure investments

  • Those providers making sizable infrastructure investments (40 percent of IT budgets or more) are experiencing significantly better performance from their clinical applications

  • When implementing clinical applications, hospitals prioritize product features such as cost over caregiver adoption and interoperability


About CDW Healthcare
CDW Healthcare is a leading provider of technology solutions focused exclusively on serving the healthcare marketplace. Working closely with more than 15,000 healthcare organizations nationwide, its customers range from small rural providers to large integrated delivery networks. The dedicated healthcare team leverages the expertise of CDW technology specialists and engineers to deliver best-in-class solutions from data center infrastructure through to point of patient care. The company's technology specialists and engineers offer expertise in designing customized solutions, while its advanced technology engineers can assist customers with the implementation and long-term management of those solutions. Areas of focus include notebooks, desktops, printers, servers and storage, unified communications, security, wireless, power and cooling, networking, software licensing and mobility solutions.

CDW is ranked No. 34 on Forbes' list of America's Largest Private Companies.