Merge Healthcare Receives Complete EHR Certification for Meaningful Use for Radiology

Merge Healthcare, a provider of enterprise imaging and interoperability software, recently announced its Merge RIS v7.0 product has received the federal government’s “Meaningful Use” stamp of approval, thus becoming one of the industry’s first radiology information system (RIS) with complete electronic health record ambulatory certification.

In 2009, Congress enacted the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which provided for $20 billion in funding for healthcare technology (referred to as the HITECH Act). Within that, more than $1.5 billion is estimated to be available to radiologists who use certified electronic health record technology in a meaningful way.

With Merge RIS v7.0, radiology providers can utilize a single product for radiology-specific workflow to qualify for up to $44,000 in funding under the HITECH Act. Merge RIS v 7.0 integrates core Meaningful Use functionality and can capture necessary and relevant patient information to meet the guidelines of Meaningful Use, without disrupting the traditional radiology workflow.

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.