News Release April 26, 2005

Bonfils Blood Center and Platte Valley Medical Center Partner in Transfusion Services

For more information contact:
Julie Wedding 303.361.2873
Bonfils Blood Center

DENVER (April 26, 2005) - Beginning May 2, Bonfils Blood Center and Brighton, Colo.’s Platte Valley Medical Center will embark on an integrated partnership of centralized transfusion services (CTS) to optimize patient outcomes by managing blood products from donor to patient.

“Bonfils Blood Center is committed to strengthening relationships with our partners by providing mutually beneficial business solutions,” said William C. Dickey, M.D., president and CEO of Bonfils Blood Center. “The CTS initiative is a win-win partnership for both entities by way of improved communication, increased efficiency and proactive inventory management, all in the best interest of the patient.”

Centralized transfusion services is a shared product inventory and transfusion services patient program that connects Platte Valley Medical Center (PVMC) to Bonfils’ transfusion services and reference laboratory departments through the validated and 510K FDA approved patient database, SafeTrace Tx®. This system offers PVMC staff immediate and remote access to the blood center’s inventory, including the ability to search for antigen specific and rare blood products. It also allows access to critical patient information for PVMC and Bonfils staff to facilitate in cross-match testing which assists in selecting the best blood product for the patient, while maintaining HIPAA compliance.

Rochelle Tisdale, laboratory director and compliance officer for PVMC noted, “Our partnership with Bonfils on the CTS project offers our community many benefits. The partnership will give the PVMC laboratory the latest technology to provide safe blood products to our patients and will streamline operations; putting the laboratory in an excellent position for our upcoming move to our new campus,” she continued.

Bonfils will provide and maintain staff training and standard operating procedures for all SafeTrace Tx® computer functions, as well as application support and validations for PVMC which save the staff valuable time and money. Additionally, Bonfils’ subsidiary Hemo-Net houses the data in two off-site data centers, ensuring the medical center’s connectivity to the application. The collaboration also calls for product identification tag, operating procedure, training, validation and regulatory guideline commonalities which result in quality in patient outcomes.

About Platte Valley Medical Center
Platte Valley Medical Center is committed to the community's health, and for more than 45 years has been a progressive leader in providing personalized health care services to improve patients’ futures. Platte Valley Medical Center is an emerging community hospital with a Level IV Trauma Center located in Brighton, Colo. Honored as a national award winner for exceeding patient expectations by Avatar International, Inc., PVMC offers excellent nurse-to-patient ratios to enhance one-on-one care, while utilizing an advanced level of technology found in larger metropolitan hospitals. PVMC also recently broke ground on a $138 million new hospital and medical complex, expanding acute care beds by nearly 60 percent to 98 and adding significant state-of-the-art improvements in patient care facilities. The facility is expected to open in 2007.

About Bonfils Blood Center
For more than 60 years, Bonfils Blood Center has supported the community blood supply and has played an instrumental role in the lives of patients in need throughout Colorado and beyond. Bonfils Blood Center supplies blood to more than 115 healthcare facilities and needs to 4,350 people to donate blood each week to meet the needs of the community and to be prepared for any unexpected events. For more information about Bonfils Blood Center and its subsidiaries please visit www.bonfils.org or call (303) 366-2000.