PITTSBURGH – October 6, 2003 – Pressley Ridge and Innervate – two Pittsburgh-based organizations, each with a unique perspective on improving the quality of care in the human services field – have joined forces to create a new for-profit company called Esteam. The company, dedicated to providing the best in administrative and managerial support in the human services industry, is developing and marketing products and services under the brand name TOTAL: Impact.

Esteam’s objective is to substantially improve quality, reduce costs and increase productivity for organizations in the human services community – one burdened with complex government reporting and documentation requirements, which take workers and clinicians away from their primary focus of serving clients. “The goal for Esteam is to streamline those many reporting processes so organizations can get back to the point of human services’ – which is helping people,” said George Pashel, executive vice president of Pressley Ridge with David Raney, M.D., vice president of Innervate, who jointly made the announcement about Esteam. There will also be an additional announcement soon about several strategic alliances Esteam has formed with other human services organizations to help further develop its offerings to the field.

Pressley Ridge, serving clients in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Delaware, West Virginia and Virginia as well as Portugal and Hungary, is a non-profit organization founded in 1832, and one of the nation’s oldest and most highly regarded innovators of best practices relating to human services delivery. Innervate, a for-profit technology company, offers consulting and software services to the fields of health and human services.

“The combination of technical knowledge and a deep understanding of the human services field allows Esteam to work with its customers to effectively address critical business and clinical service delivery issues,” said Raney. “It’s that understanding which allows Esteam to help human services organizations realize the maximize benefit from changing the way they process work.”

Esteam has developed a dual-faceted approach for TOTAL: Impact – which is comprised of TOTAL: Record and TOTAL: Redesign. The TOTAL: Redesign process helps organizations determine the best method for getting work done and for achieving greater time and process efficiencies. TOTAL: Record provides the technical tools to support changes recommended during the Total: Redesign process.

TOTAL: Redesign offers a comprehensive system of in-depth workflow analyses, followed by thorough process redesign recommendations. This systematic approach helps identify ways for organizations to not only “work smarter,” but also more effectively harness and use the volumes of information they already gather, leading to greater workplace productivity and efficiency across the board. TOTAL: Redesign targets a multitude of areas including global efficiency issues, as well as more specific concerns for improvements in intake, billing and clinical supervision, forms automation and a wide variety of recommendations to help managers be more effective in every aspect of their jobs.

With improved workflow methods identified, TOTAL: Record supports the maintenance of these new processes. TOTAL: Record is a user-friendly and highly adaptable information management system, focused on reimbursement and clinical management functions for human services providers. Esteam provides training to support these new procedures – with the goal of creating greater productivity for organizations, greater satisfaction for employees and more effective care for clients.

One simple improvement that will have significant impact on workflow in most human service organizations, for example, is a streamlined procedure, supported by a database management system, that reduces or eliminates multiple data entry. The goal is to input client information into the organization’s database once – as opposed to numerous times, as is often the case. This information can then be accessed by any number of employees, and presented and sorted in a manner useful to that employee. Same information – multiple functionality.

“As accountability relating to quality and productivity become the yardstick by which human services organizations are measured – peak efficiency becomes even more central to the future of these organizations,” said Pashel. “We believe TOTAL: Impact can help most organizations get to the next level and realize their greatest potential.”

For more information about Esteam or TOTAL: Impact, visit www.innervateinc.com.