Innovation is one of our system’s distinctive strengths. Our innovations address some of the most critical issues in health care today: reducing recovery times from surgeries, dealing with overcrowded emergency rooms, making deliveries safer for mother and child, and offering new ways to educate and train medical professionals.

� Robotic Surgery: At six of our hospitals, we offer patients the opportunity for minimally invasive surgery through the use of robotic surgery.

The robot’s long, spindly arms can more easily get into hard-to-reach areas and can make incisions the size of a dime. Even though they no longer stand directly over the patient during the procedure, surgeons feel that they have a better view of the operation because the robot’s high magnification camera beams images of the operation back to the surgical console. Surgeons say that robotic assistance allows them an extra level of precision.

• Door-to-Doc: Like all hospitals across the country, Banner’s emergency departments, which have more than 423,000 visits every year, face the challenge of being overCrowded. Banner Health responded with its Door-to-Doc program, which changed how people are triaged. Different tracks have been created to separate the less-sick patients from those who are acutely ill. This reduces bottlenecks and increases efficiencies. Door-to-Doc has resulted in a 65 percent improvement in patient access to care.

• IPROB: IPROB, or Intelligent Patient Record for Obstetrics, is now being used at every Banner Health facility to improve deliveries for the more than 30,000 babies born annually in the Banner Health system. IPROB acts as a complete obstetrics chart for physicians and nurses. It also offers computerized prompts and reminders for health careproviders based on thousands of best practices and protocols.

We believe the thoughtful adoption of technology is critical to providing excellent
patient care and improving patient safety.

• iCare ICU: Banner Health is the first health care provider in the Southwest to invest in eICU technology, which allows intensivecare physicians and nurses in a remote center to collaborate with their colleagues in ICUs throughout Banner Health to monitor patients hundreds of miles away. Although it’s no substitute for around-the-clock nursing care, the iCare ICU system allows an extra set of eyes to check in on critically ill patients. With the iCare system covering more than 200 ICU beds (and plans to have the system in nearly all of our hospitals by the first quarter of 2009), Banner facilities have mortality rates in our iCare ICUs that are 42 percent lower than their national counterparts without the technology. The system also decreases the time patients have to stay in the hospital.

• Telemedicine: Long recognized in Arizona and Colorado as a leader in telemedicine, Banner Health is the first to provide urban patients access to credentialed psychiatrists at Banner Behavioral Health Hospital– Scottsdale. This is one of the first instances of telemedicine being used to help provide care in a shortage of urban specialists such as psychiatrists. Traditionally, telemedicine has addressed access to primary care issues in rural areas. Through telephone, digital imaging and video conferencing, Banner Health maintains a strong, extensive telemedicine network that allows specialists to provide help for patients whose needs range from assessment for Parkinson’s disease to wound follow-up care.

One of our boldest and broadest initiatives to date, Care Transformation identifies the best medical practices and uses leading-edge computer systems to make sure those practices are considered and used in patient care.

As its cornerstone, Care Transformation uses an array of clinical computer systems to provide an electronic medical record as a central place for all patient records, charts, test results, medical images and physician orders. Having the patient records in one spot makes it easier for providers to spend more time with patients and less time filling out forms.

Care Transformation also improves patient safety by alerting caregivers to potential problems with medications or treatments and suggesting alternatives. Additional benefits include faster turnaround times for lab and test results and more efficient treatment decisions, which reduces the amount of time patients have to spend in the hospital.