MultiCare Health System to go fully digital with Emageon's cardiac PACS and hemodynamic reporting

BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Jan. 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Emageon, a leader in enterprise medical information technology systems for hospitals and health care networks, announced today that it has been awarded a five-year HeartSuite(TM) VERICIS(R) cardiology contract with MultiCare Health System, an integrated health organization made up of four hospitals in the Greater Tacoma, Washington area. This follows MultiCare's unveiling of the new Tacoma General Heart Hospital on November 15, 2008.

The agreement comes after an extensive RFP process which evaluated major as well as several smaller and newer cardiology information and imaging solutions. Emageon was awarded the final contract to supply its VERICIS digital PACS and HeartSuite hemodynamics solution for four cath labs, including one in which Emageon's Pediatric Echo IMS product will be installed. The HeartSuite VERICIS solution will enable MultiCare to now digitally process its cardiology PACS studies and cath/echo structured reporting for echocardiography.

In addition, MultiCare will also benefit from Emageon's bi-directional HIS interface. This will allow MultiCare's scheduled studies, results and reports - generated within VERICIS - when signed off to be automatically uploaded to its EMR (electronic medical record). This will make the patient information immediately available for physician review and/or consultation with surgeons as well as trigger the billing process for payment.

This will be the first hospital enterprise in the Tacoma area to consolidate vendor products to give physicians access to all aspects of cardiac imaging and procedures performed on the patient through the use of a true multimodality and multimedia Web-based workstation. This includes reports or any type of imaging study from cardiology to radiology.

MultiCare stated, 'Our team placed particular emphasis on customer references, paying close attention to their individual vendor experiences and proven successes with system installation, staff training, vendor follow-ups, system upgrades, prompt service, and competitive pricing.