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MERCY HEALTH CENTER IMPROVES THE HEALTH STATUS OF UNDERSERVED BORDER RESIDENTS THROUGH THE USE OF HEALTH HERO’S TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM
Mercy to present significant clinical and financial outcomes at the Third Annual Disease Management Leadership Forum (DMAA)

Laredo, TX and Mountain View, Calif. - October 11, 2001 - Mercy Health Center and Health Hero Network, Inc., the leading internet-based platform that enables patient communication for disease management, today announced that Mercy Health Center’s Telemedicine Disease Management Program in Laredo, Texas showed significant health care savings with the Health Hero® Health Buddy® and the iCare Desktop™ while improving the health status of underserved, indigent border residents. Mercy’s program achieved all of its goals by reducing hospital-based utilization, improving quality of life, and ultimately reducing cost of care to the healthcare providers while showing high patient satisfaction. A yearlong analysis of clinical and financial outcomes will be presented by Mercy representatives at the Disease Management Association of America’s annual Leadership Forum conference in New Orleans, Louisiana this week.

Mercy Health Center, in collaboration with The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio was awarded a grant from the Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund Board of the State of Texas in 1999 for this study. Mercy Health Center implemented the Health Hero technology platform as part of its telemedicine disease management program to determine the impact of low cost, web-based care management technology. Mercy’s utilization measures included inpatient, outpatient, ER, post-discharge care encounters and charges. The data analysis compared 1999 hospital-based utilization data, during which time patients were receiving standard care (care before enrollment in the disease management program), with 2000 utilization data, during which time the patients were enrolled in the telemedicine program powered by Health Hero. Patients in the program showed reduced overall charges of $13,159 per patient per year (PPPY) for CHF and $747 PPPY for diabetes. Inpatient admissions were reduced by 41% for CHF and 32% for Diabetes and improvements in quality of life as measured by the SF 12 improved as well. Diabetes patients improved in the mental component of SF-12 after 6 months in the program was 3.61 from 45.00 to 48.61,and CHF patients improved by 12.06 points. In addition patient satisfaction results for both programs showed that patients found the Health Buddy very easy to use on an ongoing basis and reported high levels of perceived value from participating in the program.

Changing the self-management behavior of patients with chronic disease is fundamental to long-term success with any disease management program. The technology used in tandem with traditional case management allows for care to be delivered in the most appropriate setting. The flexibility of the Health Buddy to be used in a bi-lingual population and the overall efficiency of the technology has encouraged Mercy to increase the disease management services offered. Today, Mercy has expanded their services to include additional disease states and provides daily care contact to over 300 patients, without increasing their care management staff.

“The use of technology not only supports the ability of the patient to become more proactively involved in their disease management; it also enables the care manager to target patients most at risk for an impending crisis”, said Tracey Moffatt, Vice President of Mercy Health Center.

“Mercy has done an outstanding job for their community by offering this disease management service to the underserved and we are proud to be working with such a socially conscious program”, said John Ariatti, President of Health Hero Network. “Mercy’s outcomes reconfirms that the Health Hero’s technology when used as a disease management platform enables health care professional’s to provide the most efficient method of disease management and acknowledges the Health Buddy as a simple easy-to-use patient communication appliance.”

About Mercy Health System
Mercy Health Center (MHC) a member of the Sisters of Mercy Health System - St. Louis Region, is located in Laredo, Texas along the U.S. - Mexico Border. MHC serves Web County, where one in every three families lives at or below poverty level. There are 40-60 colonias, unincorporated areas with grossly sub-standard housing, in the Laredo area with an estimated 12,000 residents. Many residents speak only Spanish. The National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC) ranked Webb County as 7th in the nation as a “double jeopardy” county, which is chronically disadvantaged in both the overall health of its residents and in the extreme shortage of primary are physicians. Approximately 50% of Laredo’s area residents are uninsured. MHC is the safety net for Laredo area residents in need of healthcare, providing millions of dollars of charity care annually. Given Laredo’s proximity to the border and its poverty rate, MHC is actively exploring ways to improve quality of life while reducing its risk as the primary provider to indigent residents.

About Health Hero Network
Health Hero Network, Inc., based in Mountain View, California, develops and markets the industry leading technology platform for remote patient communications, monitoring, and care management. The Health Hero platform includes a technology platform for remote patient monitoring and Internet-based care management and research application services. The Health Hero® solution consists of web-based tools for caregivers and the Health Buddy® appliance, iCare Desktop™, a web based patient management application for health care professionals, patient interfaces such as the Health Buddy appliance, a secure data center acting as the repository for application services and collected data, and content for over a dozen major chronic diseases. Health Hero Network licenses its platform to medical technology and services companies seeking a technology blueprint proven to enable better chronic care with lower costs to the healthcare system. Health Hero Network technology is protected by over 40 issued U.S. patents. For more information about Health Hero, visit www.healthhero.com.