Merge Healthcare Drives Meaningful Use Adoption Among Radiologists

Ten Additional Practices Select Merge RIS to Achieve Meaningful Use

CHICAGO, Feb. 1, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Merge Healthcare (Nasdaq:MRGE), a leading provider of enterprise imaging and interoperability solutions, today announced the addition of ten radiology practices that have selected Merge RIS to achieve Meaningful Use (MU). Almost 30 radiology practices now utilize Merge RIS as their complete and fully-certified EHR.

“Meaningful Use had a major impact on the radiology industry,” said Jeff Surges, CEO of Merge Healthcare. “In just one short year, we’ve witnessed a widespread acceptance of Meaningful Use and its ability to help radiologists achieve health and efficiency goals. With almost 28,000 radiologists, the MU incentive opportunity represents more than 1 billion dollars in incentive payments. We’re proud to have led the charge by delivering one of the industry’s only radiology-specific solutions with complete ambulatory certification, and for helping our clients build a foundation for growth and improved patient care.”

Merge RIS v7.0 provides a radiology-specific EHR with complete certification that enables radiologists to capture and report on the metrics required to demonstrate Meaningful Use of electronic health records, without disrupting their traditional workflow. With Merge RIS v7.0, radiologists can qualify to receive up to $44,000 in stimulus incentives, per eligible provider, and more importantly, avoid future penalties that will come from not meeting Meaningful Use.

“As radiologists face mounting regulation and restrictions in terms of what will and won’t be reimbursed, it was quite apparent that our community needed a radiology-specific solution tool that would help us meet these challenges in a cost-effective manner,” said Dr. Mark Stein, West Coast Radiology. “With Merge RIS, we can now address these challenges head on. And not only will Merge RIS enable us to meet Meaningful Use criteria and avoid future penalties, but it will also streamline our workflow, which in turn will help us provide better patient care.”

“In addition to improving workflow and meeting MU criteria, we see Merge RIS as a tool that will help increase our marketability,” said Alicia Vasquez, President, Arcadia Radiology Medical Group and Immediate Past-President of the Radiology Business Management Association (RBMA). “Because we’ve invested in Merge RIS, we are able to use it as a recruitment vehicle and say to radiologists that we can help you get your MU dollars.”

Merge RIS v7.0 functionality includes ePrescribing, enhanced reporting that enables physicians to automatically trend clinical data and report on Meaningful Use measures, new clinical decision support, the clinical exchange of health information through industry standard formats, and a patient portal that empowers patients to access their records at their convenience. This new functionality was built natively within the intuitive, web-based Merge RIS so that any radiology practice can achieve Meaningful Use attestation in a manner that works for their specialty.

About Merge Healthcare

Merge Healthcare is a leading provider of enterprise imaging and interoperability solutions, with a client base consisting of more than 1,500 hospitals and 6,000 clinics across the country. Merge solutions facilitate the sharing of images to create a more effective and efficient electronic healthcare experience for patients and physicians. Merge provides enterprise imaging solutions for radiology, cardiology, orthopaedics and eye care; a suite of products for clinical trials; software for financial and pre-surgical management, and applications that fuel the largest modality vendors in the world. Merge’s products have been used by healthcare providers, vendors and researchers worldwide to improve patient care for more than 20 years. Additional information can be found at www.merge.com.

   

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