Cerner Corp. and
eClinicalWorks
Inc. have signed
major contracts
with professional
sports leagues
to support
electronic health
records systems
for the teams.
Cerner will
provide standard
recordkeeping
for all 30 teams
in the National
Basketball Association, which
includes reporting features
to identify and
address medical trends. The
EHR platform
also includes
PHR software.
The National
Football League
will implement
eClinicalWorks’
EHR across all
teams. The NFL
has been relying
on paper-based
records systems.
Details on the
multi-million dollar deal were not
disclosed.
Cerner,
eClinicalWorks Make
the Big
Leagues
Merge Aims to Close the
Loop with Imaging Platform
VENDOR NEWS
Just as Google has become a common and well-known verb as well as a noun in Inter- net search, Merge Healthcare hopes its new platform will
become a similar phrase in electronic re-
cords, as in “Merge your records.”
The Chicago-based imaging software
vendor platform, merge.com, is intended to
close the loop bet ween referring physicians,
radiology centers and specialists—and con-
sumers—allowing them access to the perti-
nent images and records any time, from any
device. The platform will feature a mobile application for re-
ferring physicians to send patients to recommended imag-
ing centers; a Web site for consumers to complete pre-work
and schedule appointments; a cloud-based portal for imag-
ing centers to share results with referring physicians and pa-
tients; and analytics for practices to maximize throughput.
As the mandates of meaningful use Stage 2 collide with
the era of higher deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses for
consumers, giving potential customers a convenient way to
discover the services an imaging center provides, as well as
a way to take the paper out of the paperwork, will be a key
player in achieving customer satisfaction, says Steven Tolle,
senior vice president of solutions management at Merge.
“Consumers want more of a partnership feel to trans-
actions,” Tolle says. “As their out-of-pocket and deductible
costs rise, they want to be more involved.”
The first phase, set to launch early this year, will enable
online scheduling and referrals, followed by pre-certifica-
tion capability, scheduled for launch sometime in the sum-
mer.
A third phase, which will enable automatic instructions
such as recommended dosages to scanning machines, is
still under development and slated to launch in 2014.
Debi Kuykendall, support systems
manager at Southwest Diagnostic Imaging
in Dallas, which piloted the platform, says
the “any user, any device, any time” model
should pay big dividends for everybody in
the loop.
“The beauty of this new platform is, it
will give the physicians the ability to use
any device with any operating system,”
Tolle says the platform’s flexibility will help centers cut
down on manual paperwork, will encourage patients to
schedule appointments in a way that will empower them
and thereby reduce no-shows, and also help participating
providers to meet MU Stage 2 requirements.
Kuykendall says giving patients the ability to not only
schedule appointments, complete routine pre-appoint-
ment paperwork, and verify benefits online will be valuable,
but so, too, will be giving them information about “soft” fac-
tors such as the availability of child care, Wi-Fi access, and
transportation and parking options.
“It will allow customers to rate you—you’re really put-
ting yourself out there,” Kuykendall says. “The market will be
able to go out and see patient comments. They’ll be able to
see your satisfaction ratings and be able to compare them.”
Ideally, Tolle says, the platform will engender patient
loyalty by providing such features as image archives so that,
for example, a woman and her physician will be able to eas-
ily access images of successive annual mammograms to
better check for changes that may have occurred over time.
JEFF TOOLE
