ST. PAUL, MN – “Meaningful use” just got a whole lot more meaningful at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, where clinicians working with the hospital’s electronic health record now have quick and easy access to a radiology picture archiving and communications system (PACS).

The integration marks the successful completion of a project coordinated by Minneapolis-based HealthPartners, the nation’s largest consumer-governed, non-profit health organization, and Merge Healthcare, a Milwaukee-based developer of medical imaging solutions. The two worked together to link Merge’s Fusion PACS with an EHR system from Epic.

“Since going filmless with hospital imaging in 2003 and launching our EHR in 2005, we identified an opportunity to enhance workflow by bringing Merge and Epic together,” said Carrie Boren, director of enterprise radiology services for HealthPartners and Regions Hospital. “The separate applications did not provide a robust environment to optimize radiology workflow. Our radiologists were excited about the Epic/Merge integration because they knew it would bring new efficiencies.”

“This integration is already showing its value in improving operational efficiencies, enhancing patient care and increasing satisfaction among patients and clinicians,” she added. “Radiologists no longer wait for manual delivery of information from some departments or use extra keystrokes to toggle between two systems, and we’ve significantly reduced report turnaround time to referring doctors. In most cases, a final report is in the EHR within two hours of the imaging exam being performed.”

Aside from integrating the PACS and EHR systems at Regions, HealthPartners also pushed the paperless transition to 18 outpatient clinics and medical offices, all of which now use the Merge-Epic platform. According to Boren, health system officials will now look to integrate the systems in their critical access hospitals in smaller cities in western Wisconsin.

“Clinical efficiency is a dominant theme in the delivery of healthcare today, as evidenced in the recent legislation and ongoing policy discussions,” said Merge Fusion President Nancy Koenig. “Efficiency can only be increased when the medical record contains all of the information needed to make effective decisions. Radiology is a critical component of the patient’s medical history that should not be overlooked when deploying a meaningful EHR solution.”