SAN FRANCISCO, CA, June 14, 2004--McKesson Corporation (NYSE:MCK) today announced the two most recent community hospital implementations of Horizon Expert Orders(TM), its industry-leading clinical decision support and computerized physician order entry (CDS/CPOE) system. Horizon Expert Orders, designed to improve quality and safety while reducing variability, recently became operational at St. Vincent's Hospital in Birmingham, Ala., and Memorial Health University Medical Center in Savannah, Ga.

The announcement comes on the heels of President Bush's recent visit to Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). In a May 27 town hall meeting to promote his healthcare platform, Bush told an audience of 900 people that "the reason we're here is because this hospital knows how to use information technology for the benefit of patients and docs... You're ahead of the country in using technology to your advantage." Vanderbilt University, a nationally recognized innovator in healthcare informatics, is McKesson's development partner for Horizon Expert Orders.

During the meeting, VUMC's assistant chief medical officer Jim Jirjis, M.D., told the President and attendees that 100 percent of VUMC prescriptions are done in the computer. "If you try to order the wrong thing, even if it's 1 a.m., a little 'beep' comes up and says, 'you're going to hurt this patient,'" said Jirjis.

"We've been working closely with Vanderbilt for the past three years, and their sophisticated use of technology has enabled us to create a market-leading clinical decision support and CPOE solution that's designed to dramatically improve the safety and effectiveness of healthcare," said John Hammergren, McKesson chairman and chief executive officer. "Vanderbilt is certainly the logical place for the President to advocate the use of electronic health records within the next 10 years. I believe his call to action will be supported by a dramatic acceleration in the adoption of IT and bar-code technologies in healthcare. All of these solutions are proven to save lives and reduce costs."

VUMC spent years developing the clinical decision support/CPOE system using an iterative design process that incorporated physician input at every step. The result is a broadly adopted system in which all orders are placed online with more than 70 percent of orders placed directly by physicians. That success set the stage for McKesson to commercialize the system as Horizon Expert Orders, broadening its applicability for a variety of healthcare organizations, including other academic medical centers as well as community hospitals.

To ensure successful implementation and clinician acceptance, the latest McKesson sites to begin their clinician deployment -- St. Vincent's and Memorial Health -- have taken different approaches based on their respective goals and priorities. St. Vincent's, the "flagship digital hospital" for parent health system Ascension Healthcare, is deploying Horizon Expert Orders incrementally to physicians one specialty at a time. The use of CDS/CPOE caps a decade-long pursuit of creating a digital environment that includes the use of bar-coded medication administration, electronic patient charting at the point of care, Web-based access to patient information and other solutions designed to enhance safety by automating healthcare processes.

"Our CPOE deployment is focused initially on our 'hospitalists,' who are physicians that practice exclusively in the hospital setting," said Tim Stettheimer, chief information officer for St. Vincent's. "They are here all the time and very much in tune with our internal processes, which has made training easier."

Memorial Health has taken a different approach, taking Horizon Expert Orders "live" all at once throughout the hospital and training and rolling out to nurses first. "Our objective is to have nurses become completely familiar with the system and then act as 'super-users' as we train physicians," said Frank Davis, M.D., Chair, Physician Advisory Group for Information Services. "In this way, every doctor will have a mentor at their elbow when they begin using the system. And we believe that this will enhance the collegial relationship between our physicians and nurses."

The latest Horizon Expert Order go-lives are part of broader technology initiatives such as bar-coded medication administration, Web-based access to patient information, medical and document imaging, and the use of electronic health records to improve quality, safety and efficiency.

"This is an exciting time for our industry, and McKesson is well positioned to lead the technology change that is so essential to the cost-effective delivery of quality healthcare in this country," said Pamela Pure, president of McKesson Provider Technologies. "We are working closely with our customers as well as national leaders like Vanderbilt to accelerate the use of automation and IT solutions that help to streamline processes and reduce the errors inherent in manual processes. We're committed to 'digitizing healthcare...one step at a time' in concert with our customers based on their strategic objectives, and in doing so, we will make healthcare safer."

About McKesson

McKesson Corporation is a Fortune 16 healthcare services and information technology company dedicated to helping its customers deliver high-quality healthcare by reducing costs, streamlining processes and improving the quality and safety of patient care. Over the course of its 170-year history, McKesson has grown to provide pharmaceutical and medical-surgical supply management across the spectrum of care; healthcare information technology for hospitals, physicians, homecare and payors; hospital and retail pharmacy automation; and services for manufacturers and payors designed to improve outcomes for patients. For more information, visit us at www.mckesson.com.

James Larkin, 415-983-8736