Our Mission

To foster the sharing of knowledge and experience among the User Community; and act as a conduit for the User Community to provide operational feedback for the improvement of Merge Healthcare products and services by working proactively with Merge Healthcare on the planning, strategy and development prioritization of product enhancements and futures.

Merge Live 2012 August 26-29

The Merge Live Conference will be held August 26-29th in Chicago this year. I expect that there will be a great deal of good information for all of our members at the meeting. Merge has requested some help in setting up the agenda for the meeting. You can take a short survey to let them know what you would like to see. The following link will take you to the survey. Survey

It is my hope that during the meeting we can gather together people interested in making MUGONA an active community.

Mugona Site back up

For anyone who may have noticed, the Mugona web site was down for most of the first quarter of 2012. This was caused by a change in Internet providers. The site is obviously now back up. Although there has been no new information posted since late in 2009. I would really like to hear from people on topics that should be posted on the site. Please use the contact form to let me know if you have information that should get out to our members.

Recognizing the Importance of Medial Imaging to the US HIT Policy

There was a lot of discussion concering the US Health IT Policy at the 2009 User's Group meeting. During those discusstion Nancy Koenig, President of Merge Fusion, stated that she would provide information to help our members get involved with this initiative. True to her word Nancy has passed on the following documents:
CCHIT Ambulatory EMR Criteria and RIS-PACS (Powerpoint)
Radiology HIT - US Penetration and Technology Overview (MS Word)
IEOC ACR Reccomendations (Excel)
Imaging e-Ordering Coalition Written Testimony (MS Word)
MUGONA Stimulus v4.0 (Powerpoint)
ONC Meaningful Use Matrix 07/09 (pdf)

Thank you Nancy for you work in compiling this information for us.

A Note From Our President

To all MUGONA members that were able to attend the MUGONA annual user meeting in Cleveland Ohio October 25th thru 27th it was good to see you there. We had a great meeting

To those that were unable to attend we MISSED you!

What a great venue, with accommodations at the Hyatt Regency and the meeting held at The House of Blues. The meeting provided for a good exchange of information and ideas for the present and future were discussed.

Officers were elected and will soon be posted to the MUGONA website www.MUGONA.com. In addition the site will soon be updated to include links for feedback and comments or suggestions that can be submitted to Merge by the user group. Please check the site frequently for meaningful updates.

One update that needs our immediate attention is the proposed health care reform. It is vitally important that we individually become an active voice in this process. Information will be posted on the MUGONA site regarding this, with outlines that can be followed containing information we can share with our representatives in congress.

I also want to thank Merge corporate for working closely with us on the event this year to make it the success it was. If you have not been in contact with them recently, I encourage you to check out the new products and upgrades that are available.

If you are not a member of the user group, I extend an open invitation to you to become a part of the user group. There are no dues and the benefits to be gained for your practice by becoming connected to other Merge product users are tremendous. Not only do we share product experiences, we share thoughts and methods that we have employed to deal with the challenges that face all of us in our practices.

Please feel free to e-mail me at pres@mugona.com with any suggestions that you may have regarding the user group.

Best Regards

Tim Jones President MUGONA

2009 Annual Meeting

The 2009 User Group Meeting will be held October 25-27 at the House of Blues in association with the Hyatt Regency Cleveland.
See the following link for more information: http://www.merge.com/events/UGM2009/index.asp

Merge Healthcare Update

In January, I spoke with Tim Kulbago, Senior Vice President of Product Development at Merge Healthcare, concerning some of the things going on at Merge and the effect they may have had on the users of Merge software. The overall message was encouraging. Merge has posted positive earnings in both Q3 and Q4 of 2008, and Q1 2009, and several new products and services have been released or are being readied for release.

I specifically asked about some of the changes that have taken place since the new management team took over in mid 2008. One change is the move away from overseas customer support for North American users. At this time, only first level e-film support is routed overseas. All other Merge Fusion product lines are now supported from the Toronto, Milwaukee, or Cleveland offices. The result of this has been improved customer satisfaction with support calls. With every support ticket, the user now has the option to fill out a survey showing their feelings on the support resolution. Merge is using the information gained from these surveys to help improve the overall service experience.

Merge Fusion has also announced some new products. Among these are Merge Mobile, which will allow access to images and reports via an iPhone or iPod Touch. Other products currently being readied for release are a new web portal, Fusion RIS 4.0, Fusion Billing, and a 64 bit version of RIS/PACS MX.

The new Merge Fusion web portals will provide a “No Client” imaging solution, doing away with the need for the end user to install an Active-X control, which is problematic for many offices with firewalls set to block these controls. A Merge Fusion patient portal will also be available along with online order entry.

The Fusion RIS 4.0 version will utilize Microsoft SQL Server 2008. This is a major step up from the current SQL Server 2000 currently being used. It would be a good idea for users to start thinking about upgrade paths to migrate their servers to this new version when Fusion RIS 4.0 is released. For a short list of benefits of SQL Server 2008 and related information go to: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/why-upgrade.aspx

Merge Fusion’s new Billing offering will provide users with a one-stop shop for RIS, PACS and Billing solutions. Having an integrated solution instead of an interfaced solution will eliminate some of the problems that users of the current billing system have seen and will allow for a better level of support from the Merge support team.

The 64 bit version of RIS/PACS MX will provide enhancements in memory management. This will allow radiologists to load larger studies and view more comparison studies without the issues inherent in the current 32 bit system. Merge is working to do everything possible to optimize the 23 bit solution, but a 64 bit version will go a long way towards this goal.

I asked Tim how the development of products such as Merge Mobile was affecting the time-line for their core products, such as RIS and PACS updates. He assured me that no resources were taken from the core products to create these new applications, and that the core product teams were fully staffed. A new team has been hired to allow development of the web products without affecting the core products.

In an earlier call with Tim and Nancy Koenig, the new President of Merge Fusion, Nancy stated her support of the user group and that she understood the benefits that an active user group brings to both the users and Merge Fusion. There was discussion concerning timing and location for the 2009 user group meeting. The plan is to move away from “destination locations” to more centralized locations that allow users to have the benefits of the meeting while improving access to the meetings and reducing some of the expenses of the meeting. The timing of the meeting, which has historically been in the spring, has been moved to the fall. Having the user group meeting closer to RSNA will allow for more finished products to be shown at the meeting and will give the Merge Fusion team a chance to test their setup procedures prior to RSNA.

Since my conversation with Tim, Merge has announced “Software as a Service” solutions. Using hosted applications and a pay-per-study pricing plan helps to minimize up front costs and in-house IT requirements while still providing the benefits of a fully integrated RIS/PACS solution. Other offerings that some existing users may be unaware of are offsite disaster recovery solutions and remote system monitoring.

Since the 2008 user’s group meeting, there have been a number of changes at Merge, both in management and direction. There is both a consolidation of products, bringing together similar products from the different segments of Merge, and also a branching out into new areas as with the Mobile Merge technology and the hosted services offerings. It may be a while before the end users can feel the benefits of these changes, but so far Merge Healthcare seems to be moving into a direction that will provide greater stability for all end users.

* Note, since this article was written the venue for the 2009 User Group Meeting has been announced. The meeting will be held October 25-27 in Cleveland, OH.

CEU Credits

For those who were at the User Group Meeting and may have forgotten to turn in your CEU sheets. Jerry Duncan at Merge will be happy to mail CEU information in to ASRT for you. Feel free to contact Jerry at 414-977-4084.

User Group Meeting

The 2008 User Group Meeting was held at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada from April 22-25, 2008. There was a lot of information to be found from various members of the Merge team as well as from other users. Click here for more information.