March 7, 2007
Managing the Flow in Radiology
Vendors Empower PACS with Results Notification, New Administrative Tools
Mindful of the push in medicine for quality and the impact of recent reimbursement cuts on imaging, PACS vendors exhibiting at RSNA 2006 rolled out a variety of results reporting solutions as well as new administrative tools.
With attention focused on quality in medicine, rapid and reliable communication of radiology report results has become a priority. "Two thirds of sentinel events are the result of communications failures, according to JCAHO," notes Peter White, marketing director of Vocada Inc, Dallas. "We've gone from zero to 100 hospitals in 2 years."
That number is likely to escalate as Agfa HealthCare, Greenville, SC, announced a co-marketing agreement with Vocada at the show.
NovaRad Corp, American Fork, Utah, gave the RIS portion of its RIS/PACS an overhaul, adding a number of new tools, including auto-distribution of reports with one click. The system can e-mail, page, phone, or fax results and verify receipt. "In most [other] systems, you have to buy a separate component for results distribution, and it can cost up to $40,000," notes Paul Shumway, senior vice president at NovaRad.
AMICAS Inc, Boston, announced that it has begun selling Vision Reach, a Web-based results delivery product that integrates report results with key images and creates a multimedia report for referring physicians. The application uses common e-mail and secure messaging to automatically deliver images, reports, and other information to any e-mail-enabled device. Vision Reach was designed with a zero-install client Web-based application so that referring physicians can use the service without installing any software.
McKesson Provider Technologies, Alpharetta, Ga, has enabled the 11.0.5 release of its Horizon PACS with eJacket, an HTML-centric extension of the PACS that requires very little in the way of software and hardware, according to company representative Joe Biegel. "It works on anything that can bring up a browser," Biegel explains. The company also is developing a powerful new PACS application that leverages Unified Communications, a standard application in the information technology world, and it enables physicians to share desktops.
In addition to enhanced visualization tools that include smoother cine, thick-slice MPR, and improved speed of viewing, Emageon, Birmingham, Ala, has added the following workflow enhancements to its solution: instant messaging, color-coding in the worklist, key image notes, patient notes, and auto-messaging of results.
http://www.imagingeconomics.com/issues/articles/2007-03_07.asp