CHICAGO – Merge Healthcare (NASDAQ: MRGE), a leading provider of enterprise imaging and interoperability solutions, today announced that HealthPartners, the largest consumer-governed, nonprofit health care organization in the nation, has selected its iConnect vendor neutral archive to create a true enterprise-wide imaging strategy across all of its hospitals and clinics.

With iConnect VNA, HealthPartners can now consolidate medical images from all of their care delivery locations and archives into one system and image enable their EHRs. This will provide physicians a full and complete view of a patient’s medical history without having to access multiple systems, thereby speeding time to treatment and improving the delivery of care.

In addition, 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 reduce the complexities 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 & CIO of HealthPartners’ flagship hospital, Regions Hospital. “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.

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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About HealthPartners

Founded in 1957, the HealthPartners (www.healthpartners.com) family of health care 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. HealthPartners is the top-ranked commercial health plan in Minnesota and is also ranked 19th in the nation according to NCQA's Health Insurance Plan Rankings 2010-11 - private.

About Regions Hospital

Regions Hospital is a Level I Trauma Center and teaching hospital serving Minnesota and western Wisconsin for more than 130 years. Regions Hospital is a private, non-profit hospital providing outstanding care in women’s health, heart, cancer, surgery, orthopaedics, neuroscience, burn, emergency care and more. Regions Hospital is part of the HealthPartners family of care. Additional information is available at regionshospital.com.