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Laboratories (CPL). In addition to being a leading provider of pathology services in San Antonio and South Texas, CPL is the leading laboratory provider in the Austin/ Central Texas market. CPL has been deeply involved in the Central Texas Cooperative since its inception. All of its pathologists are Cooperative members, and CPL's laboratory reporting is fully integrated into the regional Community Health Record. Additionally, CPL has been a reliable financial underwriter for the development of the Central Texas program. "CPL has been providing high-quality clinical and anatomic lab services to physicians for more than 50 years," says Mike Murphy, Regional Manager at Clinical Pathology Laboratories. "We are a service-focused lab with average patient wait times in our draw centers of less than 15 minutes, stat turnaround times of under two hours and a customer service department where you can talk to real people rather than navigating through an automated phone maze. CPL is a contracted in-network provider for almost all insurance plans, and has full electronic interface capability with EMRs. We see our partnership with CriticalConnection as they are introduced into the San Antonio area as yet another way we can help our clients provide faster and more efficient quality care to their patients." Nationally, efforts to share medical information at the community level have been hampered by the lack of a reliable, sustainable financing model. To limit reliance on annual grant funding or membership fees, the Cooperative will harness the collective purchasing power of physician offices as the primary avenue for sustainable financing. In fact, the Cooperative's annual membership fee is only $250 per participating physician. Group Purchasing Program The collective purchasing power of participating clinics allows the group purchasing program to generate contracted savings and rebates on services and products commonly used within physician practices. The savings generated through the use of approved vendors go straight to the physician practice's bottom line, while the rebates that the Cooperative receives from vendors are used to fund operations and the Community Health Record. The buying power and purchase volume of the group purchasing program increases at a faster rate than Cooperative membership since an entire clinic can utilize the program even if only one clinic physician is a member of the Cooperative. The group purchasing program cur- rently includes nine approved vendors: + Time Warner Cable Business Class provides clinics and other health care providers with secure Internet and telephone services. In addition to supporting the Cooperative within its own geographic service areas, Time Warner has created a team to provide solutions to members when they need services outside of a Time Warner service area. The agreement with Time Warner Cable Business Class is a national master agreement. Cooperative members are participants in that agreement and are not required to sign long-term individual agree- ments to participate. + Office Depot is the preferred supplier of office products and printing services. The national agreement enables mem- ber offices to purchase from a core products package. A one-physician office purchases at the same rate as a large, multistate member. There are no minimum purchase requirements and no long-term agreements to sign. Retail cards are provided to capture the same low pricing when purchasing from a local retail outlet. + Verbatim is a recognized quality provider of U.S.-based transcription services for physician practices. Verbatim provides traditional tran- scription services and can also deliver transcribed notes directly into an EMR. There are two levels of pricing — one is a major reduction for traditional text, and the other is a much lower rate when templates (or macros) are involved. The average cost per line is 10 cents to 11 cents, compared to the normal 16 cents per line. + MedSharps and Marshall Shredding provide medical waste disposal and document-shredding services. They provide services equal to those of any other national organizations at a fraction of the cost. MDNEWS.COM ■ MD NEWS San Antonio | 7