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Merge Healthcare Incorporated, a leading healthcare IT solutions provider, has added two new customers to its user group of perioperative solutions.

Exempla Saint Joseph Hospital, one of the largest non-profit hospitals in the Denver metropolitan area, and Kalispell Regional Medical Center and The Surgery Center of Northwest Healthcare in Kalispell, MT, have selected Merge Healthcare ’s Anesthesia Information Management System (AIMS).

“We are eagerly looking forward to the implementation of the Merge Anesthesia Information Management System here in Kalispell,” said Dr. Carl Tinlin, head of the anesthesia group and Chief of Staff at Kalispell Regional Medical Center. “Our group of anesthesiologists believes that the care that we render to our patients will be significantly improved by the use of this tool. We are particularly excited about the patient safety aspects of this system, including medication bar coding to reduce the risk of medication errors at the point of care, the integrated decision support, as well as the ability to track national patient safety measures system wide. We believe that having the automated record keeping will allow our physicians to spend more of their time and attention on monitoring and managing patients’ vital functions during surgery.”

Merge AIMS™ is equipped with advanced decision support for the expert documentation of anesthesia care and reporting on national quality measures. It also includes an anesthesia drug management system that supports barcode scanning for enhanced safety at the point-of-care; as well as a system of narcotic storage and tracking that eliminates the need for duplicate documentation, and saves time for both the anesthesia provider and the pharmacist. In addition, the solution contains an advanced presurgical screening and risk management solution to streamline the surgical preparation process.

"Closing the loop regarding medication management in the perioperative arena was the primary goal of our search,” says Don Tillman, Director of Pharmacy at Exempla Saint Joseph Hospital. “We found that many systems exist that address the components associated with patient safety, documentation, quality and charge capture, but it was difficult to find one that brings them all together into one system. We decided on Merge because of its ability to help us effectively measure and manage all aspects associated with the administration of drugs and anesthesia during surgery."

“Hospitals today face challenges in creating electronic records of every patient experience, and the operating room is a particular challenge,” notes Justin Dearborn, Merge CEO. “ Anesthesiology must properly record and account for every item used during a procedure, while also keeping the patient stable throughout. Automating this process with a solution like Merge Healthcare ’s AIMS can bring dramatic improvement in quality documentation, revenue capture and cost control.”

Source: Merge Healthcare