Leaders of the PACS
In his Eugene P. Pendergrass lecture, Paul Chang, MD, opened with an anecdote about his father’s retirement from radiology last year. He told his son that he was glad he was getting out of radiology because “you PACS people” ruined it.
Since PACS became pervasive, radiologist productivity has at least doubled and possibly even tripled in some settings—as reimbursements declined—and no amount of nostalgia for the days when rounds began in radiology will take us back. What we can look for from the technology that facilitated that transition are even greater productivity enhancements,
PACSGEAR Introduces Media Management Solution at RSNA
PACSGEAR, a provider of imaging solutions for EHR and PACS, announced PACSGEAR Image Exchange (PIE), a comprehensive media management solution for image sharing between healthcare facilities. PIE includes the ability to import DICOM CDs/DVDs from outlying facilities, reconcile and edit studies with QC tools, burn DICOM CDs/DVDs, and securely upload images to a variety of cloud-based and point-to-point vendors through the Open Image Exchange (OIE) network. PACSGEAR Image Exchange will be featured in PACSGEAR’s Booth #8913 at RSNA 2012.
Recommended Reads
The diagnostic imaging business environment is one of the most dynamic in medicine and keeping up on all that is going on can be a challenge. We want to take some of the burden off our readers. To that end, I’m going to be trying something new for the next month. Along with my usual commentary, I’ll be sharing links to news stories I believe to be interesting to executives in this field. If these Recommended Reads are popular, we may make this a permanent feature on the site. Let me know what you think.
BusinessTraining: The Portal Success Insurance Policy
The third of a three-part post on ensuring a smooth transition for your referring clinician customer base to a new radiology portal.
When it’s time to train your referring clinicians and their staff on your new portal you have several options. You have to think about the right method based on your clinician. You could do a training session on site, or over the phone, or an online meeting. You could develop a short video demonstration of how to use the system; you can host it on Youtube, or your web site and e-mail
Leave No Referrers Behind
The first of a three-part post on ensuring a smooth transition for your referring clinician customer base to a new radiology portal
There are several considerations to make when selecting and deploying a new radiology portal as part of your new RIS/PACS implementation. The key is to think about your customer, the referring clinician located at the hospital or group practice, at the beginning of the process. In a series of posts, I will touch on best practices for ensuring a smooth transition so that you do not lose any of your customers. Instead, you will
Image Quality Control in the PACS Age
You couldn’t ask to learn about PACS quality control from a better organization than MD Anderson. In this afternoon’s informatics session “Quality Control in PACS,” S. Jeff Shepard, MS, explained that MD Anderson “is an extremely high volume operation,” doing 400,000 exams a year (80% of which are outpatient). What’s more, patients come from all over the world to be treated there, making throughput paramount and uptime essential. “Delays really impact the satisfaction of patients’ experience,” he said.
Kevin McEnery, MD, of MD Anderson kicked off the talk with a discussion of how techs, radiologists and
The Data Migration Blues
12:30 AM Pity the poor imaging informaticist who has a data migration in their future. That potentially includes everyone who owns a PACS.
“PACS has a 5 to 7 year life cycle,” explained Richard H. Wiggins III, MD, University of Utah Health Sciences Center. Wiggins sat on an afternoon panel, PACS/RIS Replacement Debate, with William Gregg Jr, MS, LSU Health Sciences Center; Richard “Skip” Kennedy, MSc, Kaiser Permanente Medical Group; and David Wild, Fujifilm Medical Systems. Charles Socia, RT, Empiric Systems/Fujifilm, moderated.
Forewarned is forearmed, so Socia laid out the ugly truth with a discourse on
Who Owns Imaging? (A Play in Five Parts)
This is not a trivial question. As digital imaging has matured, the stakeholders have multiplied, and a number of models have emerged.
But consider this: ultimately, whoever owns digital imaging is responsible for uptime. The better question might be: Who wants to own digital imaging?
“If we really recognize that digital-based image management is important, then it has to run 24/7,” said Paul Chang, MD, University of Chicago. “Who is responsible for providing the service, for the workflow, and for answering the phone at 3 in the morning?
The panelists took absolute positions (for dramatic
