Merge Healthcare Selected by McLeod Regional Medical Center for Comprehensive Cardiology and Radiology IT Solution

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Merge Healthcare (NASDAQ: MRGE), a leading health IT solutions provider, today announced a new contract with McLeod Health (Florence, SC). This agreement integrates the Merge cardiology workflow solutions with McLeod’s existing Merge radiology solution, allowing McLeod to streamline workflow and improve quality data across their entire cardiovascular service line, while also providing a unified image management platform.

“The biggest problem our hospital needed to solve was having patient images stored in numerous, isolated information silos located throughout our facility”

McLeod Health, a 453-bed, locally owned, not-for-profit institution, is the region's tertiary healthcare provider, delivering the highest level of care for the most acutely ill patients in the region. The McLeod Health System includes a progressive medical staff of nearly 400 physicians, the 79-bed McLeod Medical Center Dillon, the 49-bed McLeod Medical Center Darlington, and a state-of-the art McLeod Health and Fitness Center.

“The biggest problem our hospital needed to solve was having patient images stored in numerous, isolated information silos located throughout our facility,” said Cletus Sawyer, director of the cardiac catheterization laboratory at McLeod Regional Medical Center. "This situation presented hurdles for our doctors who were trying to access this information, and for our staff who had to maintain multiple archives of patient data. Now both cardiologists and radiologists can access these solutions from their homes or other locations, which has a very positive impact on efficient patient care."

“VERICIS® and Hemodynamics from Merge are perfect complements to Merge ECM™ (Enterprise Content Manager) and RadSuite, which our facility has used for five years in the radiology department,” said David Martin, network analyst at McLeod Regional Medical Center. “The beauty of Merge’s comprehensive solution is its simplicity. Instead of having to manage various systems and archives associated with those systems, we have one common infrastructure in the ECM that stores both cardiology and radiology images.”

VERICIS is a single-point access to a patient’s integrated electronic cardiovascular record, as envisioned by the American College of Cardiology. A comprehensive knowledge tool for the cath lab, Hemodynamics integrates complete functionality for data collection, waveform analysis, inventory control, patient charges, image review, and procedural reporting into a single system. These solutions integrate with Merge’s ECM, which allow consolidation of images and image-related information in a proven vendor-neutral infrastructure across radiology, cardiology, and other image-intensive specialties from multiple backend systems.

“We are excited about extending our long-term partnership with McLeod Health,” said Justin Dearborn, Merge Healthcare CEO. “Instead of focusing on unique department solutions, McLeod took a strategic view of their information needs across multiple image-intensive specialties and chose to leverage their previous investment in our ECM. We firmly believe that this type of consolidation will lessen the number of interfaces and systems they manage, which will ultimately lead to a high return on investment while reducing the opportunity for data integrity issues.”

Merge Healthcare develops and integrates information technology to create a better electronic healthcare experience. Merge products, ranging from standards-based development toolkits to sophisticated clinical applications, have been used by healthcare providers, vendors and researchers worldwide for over 20 years. Additional information can be found at www.merge.com.

For more than 100 years, McLeod Health has consistently delivered compassionate, leading edge healthcare to the people of northeastern South Carolina. From national-recognized cardiac care to a new state-of-the-art Surgical Tower featuring the “Operating Room of Tomorrow”, McLeod continues to achieve new levels of medical excellence.

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