May, 2007
Managing the Flow in Radiology
Combined PACS/CTRM Solution Focused on Making Communication Easier
Agfa HealthCare, Greenville, SC, and Vocada Inc, Dallas, have partnered to integrate Vocada's Veriphy Critical Test Result Management (CTRM) solution into Agfa's Impax PACS. The CTRM system improves patient safety and outcomes and boosts staff productivity by promptly verifying the communication of critical test results from a reporting clinician to the responsible ordering clinician.
"Reports show that a breakdown in communication is accountable for 80% of all malpractice lawsuits," said Lenny J. Reznik, business unit manager for RIS and PACS at Agfa. "In 1971, Keene v Methodist Hospital found a radiologist negligent for failing to communicate with an attending clinician. Since that time, the courts, for the most part, have been siding with the patients and saying that radiologists are legally responsible for communicating unexpected findings. So, this is an issue that's been growing for a long time. Agfa offers a whole suite of radiology IT solutions RIS, PACS, and reporting and adding a component to verify the communication of critical results brings significant value to our customers."
Veriphy offers automated compliance with all legal and professional standards concerning critical communications; Reznik also touts the system's ease of use as a major benefit. "When the radiologist is reviewing the images and reporting the images on either the Impax PACS or Talkstation, which is our reporting solution, all the radiologist has to do is hit a button that says, Vocada, and the patient information and ordering physician ID are automatically transmitted to the Veriphy solution," Reznik explained. "The radiologist dictates information on the findings, and then Veriphy notifies the clinician by whatever preferred method he or she has identified." All communications are stored for 10 years, and an auditable record of the transmission and receipt of critical results is available.
Agfa and Vocada have entered into a co-marketing agreement; in other words, customers of both Veriphy and Impax solution are now offered a professional service to integrate the two systems. And thanks to the open architecture of Impax, Reznik said that the additions will not stop there: "At RSNA 2006, we announced a relationship with a company called Ascom [Berne, Switzerland]. The Ascom system is an internal hospital pager system, and we actually connect Impax automatically to the Ascom system, sending the clinician who ordered the exam a notice."
Other new developments include the introduction of the Impax Clinical Suite, which, according to Reznik, "is essentially a new IT solution that can bring disparate clinical data to the Impax radiology desktop."
"One way of putting it is that we need to put the communication back into PACS," he continued. "A lot of people haven't been focusing on communication, and this partnership is all about changing that."
http://www.imagingeconomics.com/issues/articles/2007-05_06.asp#4