New CIO Has Been Appointed

Cincinnati, OH - Rick Hinds, Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer of the Health Alliance, announced today the promotion of Jay Brown to Chief Information Officer of the Health Alliance. In this senior leadership role, Brown will have executive oversight of the Health Alliance's IT, Telecommunications and Corporate Transcription functions. Said Hinds:

Jay has been providing leadership in these critical areas for the past several months. His promotion, which is effective immediately, formalizes his leadership position and recognizes his significant contributions and commitment to the Health Alliance.

Brown joined the Health Alliance in October of 2001 as Vice President of IS&T. During his tenure with the Health Alliance, he provided critical leadership for several key hospital-specific and system-wide projects: he led the planning, development and deployment of the IT infrastructure at Fort Hamilton Hospital, the Drake Center and West Chester Medical Center; he developed an enterprise-wide solution around bar code medication administration; he deployed enterprise clinical and financial applications for our hospitals; and he provided technology solutions to over 15,000 end users via a suite of 40 core enterprise applications.

Brown is a graduate of Purdue University with a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering. Before coming to the Health Alliance, he worked for Ernst and Young, where he served as a Senior Manager.

Brown also held positions at Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hospital in Milwaukee, where he served as both a project manager and systems analyst; Miller Brewing Company, where he was a corporate industrial engineer; and Anderson Consulting, where he worked as a staff consultant. Brown is very active in a variety of IT-related professional organizations: he is a board member of HealthBridge; he serves on the Management Information System Curriculum Advisory Board at the University of Dayton; and he has memberships in Health Level Seven (HL7) and the Health Information Management Systems Society.

About the Health Alliance

The Health Alliance, a partnership of Cincinnati's leading hospitals, includes University Hospital, Cincinnati's only academic medical center; The Jewish Hospital, the first Jewish hospital in the United States; Fort Hamilton Hospital, the City of Hamilton's only hospital and largest employer; Drake Center, Ohio's largest specialized medical and rehabilitative care hospital; West Chester Medical Center, Cincinnati's newest hospital; and Alliance Primary Care, the region's largest network of primary care physicians. The hospitals and clinical programs of the Health Alliance have consistently received national recognition by several health care rating organizations and publications, including HealthGrades and U.S. News & World Report.