Courion Helps Reduce Costs at Nation's Largest Operator of Senior Living Communities

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. (Map) -

Brookdale Senior Living Improves Service and Efficiency by Automating Access Management for 8,000 Users

FRAMINGHAM, Mass., Dec. 2 /PRNewswire/ -- Courion(R) Corporation, leaders in access management and compliance, today announced that Brookdale Senior Living, the nation's largest owner and operator of senior living communities, has deployed Courion's Enterprise Provisioning Suite to deliver and manage secure access to enterprise applications and other IT resources for 8,000 end users. Brookdale's enhanced identity and access management (IAM) framework has helped the company improve the quality of service to employees while simplifying compliance and maximizing the effectiveness and efficiency of its technology and administrative staff.

"Courion helped us address our need for more efficient processes that not only save time and money, but also increase our service satisfaction levels," said Scott Ranson, CIO, Brookdale Senior Living. "Although we're primarily an Oracle shop, we chose Courion's solution based on their capability to streamline operational and business processes, as well as their expertise in the healthcare market."

Brookdale operates 550 senior living and retirement communities serving over 52,000 residents in a variety of settings. With its growth and normal employee turnover, the company was looking for a solution that would automate the administration-intensive tasks of creating, modifying, and disabling access for employees, which was previously done manually by as many as five full-time IT personnel.

The company's IT department received an average of 65 requests for new employee accounts on a daily basis, which typically required updating hundreds of applications and security points. Using Courion, Brookdale is able to automatically provision these requests. As a result, the company has reduced its overall IT costs and decreased the number of staff handling access requests.

Courion's access assurance solutions provide Brookdale with fully automated provisioning and de-provisioning workflows as the foundation for managing two dozen enterprise applications. Brookdale can now leverage a variety of business, technical and clinical roles generated by Courion's RoleCourier product to determine who gets access to what. Ultimately, Brookdale expects to shift access policy management to business owners rather than security administrators, which will improve business effectiveness and free up additional IT resources.

"Courion has enabled Brookdale to strengthen its overall security and access compliance infrastructure," said Chris Sullivan, vice president of customer solutions at Courion. "Brookdale will continue to realize time and cost savings while being able to more efficiently deploy IT resources and provide high quality IT services to its distributed workforce."

About Brookdale Senior Living

Brookdale Senior Living Inc. is a leading owner and operator of senior living communities throughout the United States. Currently the company owns and operates more than 550 independent living, assisted living, Alzheimer's and dementia-care facilities, rehabilitation and skilled nursing centers and continuing care retirement centers in more than 35 states. Brookdale communities serve more than 52,000 residents each day. The Company is committed to providing an exceptional living experience through communities that are designed, purpose-built and operated to provide the highest-quality service, care and living accommodations for residents. Brookdale is a publicly-traded company (NYSE: BKD).

About Courion

Courion is the Enterprise Provisioning and Access Compliance Expert for results-driven organizations. Built on market-proven technology, Courion's software solutions streamline operations and automate business processes to simultaneously achieve cost, security and service quality results. Courion's innovative approach eliminates the complexity and barriers to provisioning and compliance adoption, resulting in an unparalleled track record of customer success. Courion recently achieved a perfect score in SC Magazine's 2008 Identity Management Group Test and was recognized as a Network Products Guide 2008 "Hot Company." For more information, please visit our website at www.courion.com.

Courion and the Courion logo are registered trademarks of Courion Corp. Enterprise Provisioning Suite is a trademark of Courion Corporation. All other products and companies mentioned in this document may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Robert Craig Nathan Bordegaray Courion Corporation Davies Murphy Group +1-508-661-0412 +1-781-418-2419 courion@daviesmurphy.com