The role of ultrasound in modern medicine and healthcare IT has increased monumentally over the last 50 years.  Whereas extremely invasive surgical procedures were required for the diagnosis and analyzing of a great deal of illnesses and diseases, now ultrasound technologies allow for the fast imaging and diagnosis without the invasive surgery.  Staying up-to-date with the technologies, cases and innovations occurring within the field is vital to the performance and efficiency of operations.

A great method of staying current with the ever-changing world of radiology and cardiology is to leverage associations that are dedicated to compiling and synthesizing data into easy-to-consume formats.

One association doing just that is the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine.

American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine

The American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine, or AIUM, has been officially established since 1952.  A the time of their establishment, the use of ultrasound as a tool for diagnosis was still very much in its infancy and the need for an association to keep pace with the quickly innovating field was at hand.

Since then, the AIUM has been advancing the art and science of ultrasound in medicine and research through educational, scientific and also professional activities.  Now, they remain one of the most successful, reputable and creditable associations in the world due to the involvement of ultrasound professionals, physicians, scientists, engineers and healthcare IT personnel.

The AIUM also puts out the Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine that provides timely information on tests, technologies, case studies and news.  They also host conventions, like the upcoming AIUM Convention that will take place in New York City in April.

Feel free to check out the AIUM for access to current and innovative news on all things Ultrasound and its use in diagnosis and treatment.  If you’re looking for more, check out this of other healthcare IT and radiology associations.

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Stay Knowledgeable With the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine was posted at Medical Imaging Talk. | http://www.medicalimagingtalk.com

Often times, the only way to see how efficiently things are running is by comparing yourself to others.  By finding and identifying “best practices” in any medical field, radiology especially, it allows you a guidepost that can help you identify areas of your operations that are working well, and areas that need a lot of work.  Benchmarking in radiology can be a difficult practice as radiology departments all over the country and rest of the world are using completely different standards that relate to their work output or workload.   It remains an important, if not crucial, aspect of organizational strategy.

In order to remain successful in a Healthcare IT environment that is always innovating, always advancing and extremely fast paced, balance is required.  A balance is needed between reimbursements, rising study volumes, new technology, all the way down to customer expenditures and the actual time of the radiologists involved.  This balance is crucial as radiology is a massive portion of hospitals revenue and costs.  Here are some of the questions benchmarking in radiology can help answer:

• How do you compare to your goals?
• How do you compare to your peers?
• Are your technologies handling the work volume efficiently?
• What is the impact of technology to your radiologist’s workflow?
• What improvements should you make to give you the best return on value?

Once the radiology benchmarking is complete, you will not only have the answers to those questions, but also a great deal of benefits.  Everything from optimizing your overall financial, operational and clinical performance, to the ability to share truly best practices with the radiology community will be the end result.

If you’re ready to start providing clear and important insight into the areas of opportunity waiting in your radiology department, check out McKesson’s Radiology Benchmarks Collaborative^TM (RBC).  It offers you an automated benchmarking service that is perfectly suited to provide you healthcare benchmarks and business intelligence.

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Radiology Benchmarking: Improve Processes & Performance was posted at Medical Imaging Talk. | http://www.medicalimagingtalk.com

Before the upgrade to the Horizon Cardiology CVIS solution, The Washington Hospital’s charge process was just like thousands of hospitals around the country.  It was an extremely tedious, labor-intensive and very paper-driven process that took place almost entirely within the department.  At the end of any kind of cardiology procedure a clinician would then have to step in to fill out a paper charge sheet, which was then transferred to a clerk who would type those charges into their radiology information system (RIS).  After these first two steps a chief technician would then be required to step in and review and adjust the procedure charges every day.  This process very clearly involved multiple staff members and hospital systems and took a great deal of time.  On top of all this, the switches and transfers made it extremely error-prone.  In short, it took too much time and threatened the quality of patient care by jeopardizing staff time.

Once the upgrade to Horizon Cardiology Charge Manager took place, the improvements were almost instant.  According to Kelly Neal, the director of cardiovascular services at The Washington Hospital:

“Since the module automatically captures charges directly from the procedural documentation, it significantly reduces the number of manual, paper-based steps required.”

Hours of staff time previously spent supporting the charge process were now saved on top of the fact that on average, it will save the radiology administrator on average of 197 hours a year simply on updating new codes in the RIS.  All total, The Washington Hospital things it will save over 985 hours a year as a result of increased efficiency in the charge process.

Learn more about how The Washington Hospital has streamlined their entire process by using Horizon Cardiology as it’s CVIS by downloading the full case study.

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CVIS Upgrade Streamlines The Washington Hospital was posted at Medical Imaging Talk. | http://www.medicalimagingtalk.com

To say an enterprise is massive might be an understatement when it involves seven different hospitals and serves over 2.5 million patients.  So when OSF HealthCare System, owned and operated by The Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis in Peoria, Illinois realized that fragmented methods of managing and viewing images was derailing their operation, an equally massive change was required.   OSF HealthCare System quickly realized that by implementing a cardiovascular information solution (CVIS), the issues that were holding them back would be a thing of the past and their patients would be the ones to benefit.

“Swimming in boxes,” is how Todd Holling, the manager of enterprise imaging systems and services at OSF HealthCare System put their original predicament.  The fact that they had a different method and way of processing their echocardiogram labs across the multiple facilities meant that boxes and boxes of VCR video tapes began piling up.  The only way to access any older echos was to sift and search through boxes.  Not surprisingly, comparison studies were almost never done.  On top of this, all of the reports from cardiologists were dictated meaning that there was a staggering inconsistency in the verbiage and structured reporting.  Turnaround times routinely jumped over 24 hours which then delayed patient care decisions.

Having already chosen the Horizon Medical Imaging Solution for the best in picture archiving and communications systems (PACS) from McKesson in 2006, OSF knew the quality and reliability of the products offered.  When OSF began searching for equally as amazing products for cardiovascular information management technology, it is no surprise they landed on McKesson’s Horizon Cardiology CVIS.

The upgrade showed immediate results and improvements.  After moving to McKesson’s CVIS, OSF HealthCare System has successfully eliminated 14 hours of transcription turnaround time, standardized all of their reports across every facility and increased their system up-time to a staggering 99.9%.  Within only two weeks of implementation, adoption by physicians had reached 80% and climbed to 95% within only one year.  Now, 99% of all cardiologists at OSF use it for echo structured reports.

Learn more about how OSF HealthCare System has drastically accelerated diagnosis and impressively improved their patient care by using Horizon Cardiology as it’s CVIS by downloading the full case study.

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CVIS Upgrade Speeds Diagnosis & Improves Patient Care at OSF HealthCare System Hospitals was posted at Medical Imaging Talk. | http://www.medicalimagingtalk.com

Studies are in that the U.S. Healthcare industry is falling victim to a number of ‘operational inefficiencies’ that are causing massive amounts of financial waste each year.  A previous report concluded that the Healthcare system in this country wastes almost $700 billion a year.  Thankfully, there is a plan to turn this around and doing so could save $3.6 trillion in waste over the next decade.

The 5 strategies created to help reach this astronomical goal all revolve around revolutionizing practices that might be currently out of date or inefficient.  In a lot of the strategies, the need for updated healthcare IT and modern medical imaging devices like PACS and CVIS could step into modernize care and boost efficiency.  Here, briefly, are the 5 strategies:

1. Engage Customers – Bring the public into discussions with caregivers regarding the value and risk of treatment options.  Doing this could reduce the money spent for unnecessary treatments.
2. Coordinate Care – Lack of access to medical records leads to duplicate tests and inappropriate treatments that can cost up to $50 billion every year.  By using digital medical records, digital images from PACS and CVIS and updated and networked healthcare IT, this could be avoided.
3. Manage Disease and Maintain Wellness – Disease Prevention and early detection can save billions of dollars in healthcare costs.  The more educated and involved people and patients are, the less treatment they will need.
4. Design for Patient Safety & Quality – The report showed that preventable medical errors cost from $50 to $100 billion a year in spending. By using those digital medical records, a checklist could be used to improve patient outcomes and reduce costs.
5. Reduce Opportunities for Fraud - Fraud is estimated at costing between 5 and 10% of healthcare spending each year.  By using computerized systems that can track data, anomalies can be detected to indicate possible fraud breaches.

The bottom line: the U.S. Healthcare industry still has many inefficiencies and outdated methods of achieving results.  If these can be taken into the 21^st century with modern medical imaging devices like PACS and CVIS as well as digital medical records, the quality of patient care can increase while the spending decreases.

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Adopting New Healthcare IT Could Cut $3.6 Trillion in Waste was posted at Medical Imaging Talk. | http://www.medicalimagingtalk.com

The British Journal of Radiology: The British Journal of Radiology is the official peer-reviewed monthly research journal of the British Institute of Radiology.  The journal coversalmost every clinical and technical aspect of diagnostic imaging, radiotherapy and oncology, medical physics and radiobiology.  Since it covers such a wide range of disciplines means readers can stay current with developments in their own fields as well as those that are related.

Journal of Radiology Case Reports: As medical imaging and radiology are moving towards increasingly interactive and digital futures, the Journal of Radiology Case Reports offers what they call a new generation of journals and case reports.

Much more interactive in style, this Journal offers open access, free submission and publication, blinded-peer review, interactive case reports and review articles as well as international authors and editors.  The publications come in multiple formats from HTML to PDF and even video.  An amazing case report resource to check out!

For even more publications or journals, be sure to drop by our full list of PACS, RIS and healthcare resources.

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Radiology Resources for the Latest News & Advancements was posted at Medical Imaging Talk. | http://www.medicalimagingtalk.com

North Dakota’s congressional delegation has recently announced that the state’s IT department is receiving a grant of over $5 million to apply to medical records and imaging technology.

The grant is part of a much larger national effort to establish a health information exchange that will drastically improve the quality and efficiency of health care.

By applying money toward medical records technology and medical imaging, outdated equipment will be updated and digital records will be created that can be accessed instantly and shared easily.  The ability for instant-access anywhere will reduce turn-around time and improve patient care.

North Dakota’s delegation has gone on record as saying that the new health information exchange will allow patients throughout the state to receive higher quality care.

The $5 million grant is set to improve a large number of out-dated machines and streamline the process of creating and storing medical images.

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North Dakota to Invest $5 Million in Medical Records & Imaging Technology was posted at Medical Imaging Talk. | http://www.medicalimagingtalk.com

According to new article on HealthDataManagement.com, meaningful use is having a huge impact on provider willingness or ability to take the steps needed to prepare for and comply with the new ICD-10 code sets.

The Department of Health and Human Services has said all internal testing of the new and mandated HIPAA 5010 transaction set needs to be done by the end of 2010. But believing the compliance deadline will be stretched to 2013, many healthcare organizations have chosen to focus their efforts on meaningful use of Electronic Health Records (EHR) rather than internal testing of transactions.

The article also suggests other healthcare organizations may be focusing efforts on EHR meaningful use rather than upcoming changes in Medicare. Some hospitals are not preparing their processes and technologies for a likely forthcoming shift in risk sharing.

Will the meaningful use debate of Electronic Health Records (EHR) outshine all other issues? Tell us what you think.

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Electronic Health Records: Could Meaningful Use Debates Cloud Other Issues? was posted at Medical Imaging Talk. | http://www.medicalimagingtalk.com

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Radiology Resources for The Latest News & Advancements was posted at Medical Imaging Talk. | http://www.medicalimagingtalk.com

The question is, what can organizations expect to see as far as changes between the two systems?  A lot, according to an article from Health Imaging. But with calculated planning, the benefits of a second-generation PACS are predictable.

The article suggests healthcare organizations ensure a second-generation PACS:

• Provides HIPAA-compliant asset tracking
• Allows for teaching file and peer review documentation
• Enables enhanced workflow, speed and accuracy of results
• Provides redundant hardware and remote support capabilities
• Works well and interface with other applications including digital mammography and voice products
• Includes adaptive image loading, where the first image of a data set is viewable before all images are loaded

Read the full article to learn more implementing a next-generation PACS, including how to overcome data migration challenges.

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What Should You Look for in a Next-Generation Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS)? was posted at Medical Imaging Talk. | http://www.medicalimagingtalk.com