Boston, MA - December 5, 2005 - VFA^®, Inc., the leading provider of software and services for facilities management and capital planning, today announced that its solutions are being used in more than 200 million square feet of healthcare facilities in the U.S. and Canada.  Hospitals such as Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, New York Presbyterian and The Ottawa Hospital, and government health organizations such as the National Institutes of Health and the British Columbia Interior Health Authority are employing VFA solutions to most effectively leverage facility investments and to ensure they can continue to deliver the highest standard of patient care.

Many hospitals today are faced with increasing demand for bed capacity and the need for technology upgrades.  In the U.S., 75 percent of hospitals expect to increase capital spending by an average of 14% annually through 2010 to meet these needs.  In order to make informed decisions about those capital investments, they require accurate information about the facilities across their real estate portfolio and analytical tools to support the capital planning process.  VFA’s Capital Planning and Management Solution (CPMS™) enables healthcare providers to collect information about facility assets in a central database and calculate costs associated with both ongoing maintenance and new construction.  They can also see the impact of different funding scenarios and create optimal long-term capital plans.

“Healthcare organizations often have large and diverse portfolios, in many cases built through mergers or consolidation,” said Chuck Hodian, Business Director for Healthcare at VFA.  “VFA helps these organizations create a central view of all the real estate assets they have – whether they are for inpatient or outpatient services, clinical research, administrative or other functions – and make informed decisions about maintenance, renewal, and repurposing to deliver the best care possible.”

The Ottawa Hospital comprises nearly four million square feet of property across three campuses.  Using VFA’s solution, it is able to develop benchmarks for accurate budget allocation, establish proactive building repair and deferred maintenance plans, and create multi-year capital plans to optimally allocate limited resources.

“VFA has provided The Ottawa Hospital with a comprehensive capital infrastructure assessment report that enables us to outline our investment priorities for the next ten years,” said Cameron Love, Vice President of Facilities, Planning and Support Services for The Ottawa Hospital.  “Working with VFA, we are better able to manage and prioritize investments, and estimate the impact of those investments in terms of facility condition assessment and building lifecycle.”

VFA has published a new whitepaper, titled “Healthcare 2010: A Renewed Focus on Facilities,” that outlines how healthcare organizations can effectively plan and prioritize capital improvements, improve asset utilization, and obtain needed funding. The paper can be downloaded free of charge at http://www.vfa.com/healthcare2010.htm.

About VFA

Headquartered in Boston, VFA, Inc. is the leading provider of software and services for facilities management and capital planning. VFA provides powerful Web-based software and consulting services to over 275 organizations to strategically manage more than one billion square feet of real estate. VFA’s Capital Planning and Management Solution (CPMS™) uniquely combines condition assessment services, Web-based decision support software and business consulting services to enable clients to achieve their missions by optimizing investments in facilities and infrastructure. VFA has a strong customer base in education, federal, state and local government, healthcare and corporate markets. For more information, please call 800-693-3132 or visit: http://www.vfa.com