For Immediate Release

NEWS RELEASE

Contact: Joan Civile                                                                           
U.S. Living Will Registry
Phone: (908) 654-1441 Fax: (908) 654-1919
joan@uslivingwillregistry.com

Catholic Health care Partners and U.S. Living Will Registry Sign Agreement to Help Hospitals Manage Advance Directives

Westfield, New Jersey -- (May 10, 2004) -- The U.S. Living Will Registry today announced its agreement with Catholic Health care Partners to provide advance directive management services to the Cincinnati based health system. The arrangement will allow all of Catholic Health care Partners’ hospitals and associated facilities to manage and share advance directives easily and quickly. By storing advance directives in the Registry’s central database, all facilities in the five state health system can gain access to documents securely via a connection between Catholic Health care Partners intranet and the Registry.

Commonly known as living wills or health care proxies, advance directives allow patients to maintain control over health care decisions when they are incapacitated. Federal and state regulations place the burden of managing these documents on health care providers, but storing, retrieving and sharing documents among multiple hospitals in a health system has been problematic. The U.S. Living Will Registry electronically stores advance directives, organ donor and emergency contact information, and makes them available to health care providers via secure Internet site or an automated telephone/facsimile system. This eliminates the need for on-site storage by hospitals, and allows any of Catholic Health care Partners’ hospitals or other affiliated health care providers instant access to these important documents. The Registry’s computer design allows documents registered through one facility to be accessed by all other facilities in a health system.

By utilizing the Registry’s system, Catholic Health care Partners will be able to efficiently manage advance directives across five states and 30 hospitals, while at the same time offering a valuable service to the communities it serves. Michael D. Connelly, president & CEO, Catholic Health care Partners, noted “our current strategic plan calls us to enhance our capacity to provide quality, compassionate palliative care to patients and residents who have entered the dying process. Timely access to advance directives and durable powers of attorney for health care created by patients and residents is an important step that ensures that we can provide the level and scope of health care services they desire. We look to the U.S. Living Will Registry as an important means of ensuring such timely access to each of our facilities.”

 “Our system is ideally suited to help Catholic Health care Partners manage these important documents, and to quickly and easily share them among their many hospitals in different states,” said Dr. Joseph T. Barmakian, who founded the Registry in 1996. “The Registry provides comprehensive management of advance directives, helps hospitals comply with government regulations, while at the same time providing a valuable service to the community,” continued Barmakian.

Catholic Health care Partners is one of the largest not-for-profit health systems in the country, serving Indiana , Kentucky , Ohio , Pennsylvania and Tennessee . The system includes 29 hospitals, 14 long term care facilities, 11 hospices and 10 home health agencies. For more information, visit www.health-partners.org.

The U.S. Living Will Registry is the leading provider of advance directive management services in the country. The Registry provides services to health systems, individual hospitals and health organizations, and is the preferred supplier of on-line living will preservation services to the New Jersey Hospital Association. For more information, visit www.uslivingwillregistry.com.