Vendor-Neutral Archive System Image-Enables EHRs Within Healthcare Networks

A vendor-neutral archive (VNA) system enables images in electronic health records (EHRs) and consolidates medical images from healthcare delivery locations and archives into one system. This will provide physicians a full and complete view of a patient’s medical history without having to access multiple systems.

Merge Healthcare (Chicago, IL, USA), a provider of enterprise imaging and interoperability solutions, reported that HealthPartners (Bloomington, MN, USA), the largest consumer-governed, nonprofit healthcare organization in the United States, has selected its iConnect vendor-neutral archive to create a true enterprise-wide imaging strategy across all of its hospitals and clinics.

Moreover, HealthPartners can now automate the in-bound electronic processing of images for dozens of referring entities into Regions Hospital, which will improve clinical response time for trauma patients and decrease the complications and delays typically associated with handling CDs.

“HealthPartners understands how important it is to have an image-enabled EHR,” said Jeff Surges, CEO of Merge Healthcare. “With iConnect, their physicians will have access to medical images, regardless of their location or where that image originated. There’s no question that access to this type of information empowers physicians and provides a myriad of patient benefits, including a reduction in duplicative exams and unnecessary exposure to radiation.”

“When medical information and images are stored in disparate silos, it hampers the quality of care and drives up ongoing costs,” said Kim LaReau, vice president and CIO of HealthPartners’ flagship hospital, Regions Hospital (St. Paul, MN, USA). “With iConnect VNA, we have a consolidated solution that stores all of our images in one system, is helping to modernize our infrastructure, and enhance our disaster recovery initiatives by providing a zero downtime environment for medical imaging.”

In use at more than 300 sites, iConnect VNA is the most widely deployed vendor-neutral archive in the industry. iConnect VNA stores medical images from multiple sites and multiple specialties, providing a valuable patient-centric view of all diagnostic images, as well as workflow documents, and other key information from multiple specialties on demand.

In addition to iConnect VNA, HealthPartners utilizes iConnect Share and iConnect Access, which help them expand the referral network, enhance reimbursement, decrease costs, shorten time to treatment, and improve patient care.

Merge Healthcare is a leading provider of enterprise imaging and interoperability solutions. 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, orthopedics, and eye care; a range of products for clinical trials; software for financial and presurgical management, and applications that fuel the largest modality vendors in the world.

HealthPartners family of healthcare companies serves more than 1.36 million medical and dental health plan members nationwide. It is the largest consumer-governed, nonprofit health care organization in the nation providing care, coverage, research, and education to improve the health of members, patients and the community.

Regions Hospital is a level I trauma center and teaching hospital serving Minnesota and western Wisconsin for more than 130 years.

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