Variability between hospitals is no longer a problem and a boost in efficiency means RadCare can increase capacity and move more imaging studies than ever before without added IT complexity:

• An intelligent workflow engine that tracks the patient name, identification number, and imaging services provider for each exam from disparate systems. This prevents mishandling of patient information in a multi-site workflow when patients have the same name or accession numbers. It also enables radiology reports to be automatically communicated back to the correct site.
• Specialized streaming technology speeds image transmission and allows radiologists to begin reading the study as the first images arrive, instead of waiting for the entire exam to be received. Vue Connect validates that the entire study has been received and speeds the delivery of large data sets over cable modems and other connections used by remote radiologists.
• Patient exams can be automatically routed for reading by subspecialty radiologists.

Walker believes the integration with client systems is improving customer satisfaction as a result of greater consistency paired with faster turnaround times for hospitals and patients:

What data integration, quality and integrity challenges does your multi-site environment face?

In our final post of our RadCare series next week, Phil Heckendorn, RadCare CEO, will share his perspective on the ROI of Vue Connect and the platform’s impact on the company’s competitiveness.

With 200,000 women aged 50-69 years,  a free mammogram every second year and 750 patient appointments each day, the mammography screening program in Denmark’s Capital Region is the largest in the country. It also boasts a 75 percent screening attendance rate.

Key to balancing the demands of scheduling, hospital resources and patient satisfaction? Empowering women to book mammography appointments online at a convent time and location with the CARESTREAM Vue RIS Portal.

How It Works

1. Women are sent a letter, questionnaire and leaflet explaining how to access the RIS Portal with a unique, password-protected, secure ID number.
2. Once in the Portal, the patient navigates through a simple process to modify appointment time, day or location as many times as they like for up to three months. At the same time, the Portal seamlessly communicates with the hospital RIS to book.
3. A summary screen displays date, time and address details to print for future reference.
4. Patients can also cancel their appointment for the current screening round or altogether, giving them complete freedom of choice.
5. The portal allows patients to include comments. Consequently, the hospital can track why some women are choosing not to attend their screening appointments.

This patient-centric solution makes it easier for women to coordinate  busy lives with hospital appointments because they no longer are required to phone the hospital between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. For Denmark’s health system it means secretarial staff can find a more efficient use for the time they spent writing to non attenders, re-booking and dealing with cancellations.  For radiologists and technologists, it means  one system harmonizes  clinical tools and reports with a scheduling system that encourages quality care in a timely fashion.

Chief Physician Ilse Vejborg, Head of the Mammography Screening Programme, sat down with us at Righospitalet, the main hospital for the capital region ofDenmark, to discuss how Vue RIS has become the most used web site in the region and plans for continued improvements.

Come see the CARESTREAM Vue RIS at ECR2012 inVienna, March 1-5.

A Diagnostic Imaging poll making the rounds on Twitter today took a quick pulse on cloud security and imaging sharing:

Cristine Kao, Global Marketing Manager, Healthcare IT, Carestream

Healthcare facilities should ask for detailed documentation on security from every cloud services supplier they evaluate – what should you ask? Our cloud-based data security white paper offers guidance on how to evaluate the data security capabilities of cloud-based services for your healthcare facility.

Today we’ll look at the impact the common reading and reporting platform is having on radiologist productivity and satisfaction.

With more than 100 radiologists on staff J. Leslie Derdeyn, MD, RadCare’s National Medical Director knew an easier way to work was crucial to keep their better than 95 percent physician retention rate:

Carestream’s Vue Connect, powered by SuperPACS™ technology, allows the radiologist to focus more on patient care and less on workflow issues with one log-on, one workstation, one way of doing things.

Keeping up with different hospitals and making sure everyone’s demands are being met is also easier with one single unified programmable worklist:

With this workflow, streaming technology speeds image transfer and allows radiologists to begin reading the study as the first images arrive (seconds), instead of waiting for the entire exam to be received. In addition, prior exams are also automatically delivered to radiologists eliminating the cumbersome process involved on manually forwarding prior imaging. After hours teleradiologists can now deliver a final read because they have access to all the patient information.

Integrated voice recognition is also keeping radiologists happy. They don’t have to dial into each individual hospital to dictate reports. Within Vue Connect the radiologist can dictate reports, sign them and then the reports are inserted in the patient’s medical record:

Equipping teleradiologists to function like onsite radiologists has been a big satisfaction and retention win for RadCare:

Next week we’ll hear from David Walker, COO, RadCare about the operational IT benefits of Vue Connect.

Robert Ashby, European Communications Manager, Carestream Health

February 10^th 2012 is the anniversary of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen’s passing and will be marked by the second European Day of Radiology.  It’s an event, which for me acts as the perfect springboard into ECR 2012 in March.  A time to remember where the focus of our industry originated, and to pledge to remain true to the sentiments of its founding fathers.

ECR is known very much as a trendsetter – a dynamic service-orientated congress.  It’s a key event in our trade show calendar, well respected and renowned as innovative within the scientific community, something that has led to its year on year growth and improvement.

Carestream has participated in ECR for as long as I can recall and I personally became involved from 1997. In the beginning ECR was a bi-annual event, becoming annual in the late ‘90s, and in all of these years the pilgrimage has been to the beautiful city of Vienna. I’ve been to Vienna many times, and although my time for sightseeing is often limited, I always try to take in the atmosphere of the city, even if it is only during an evening stroll after a meal in one of the many excellent restaurants! But I have still yet to visit the opera!

ECR 2012 is a great opportunity to renew relationships with existing customers and take the opportunity of meeting new customers and demonstrating the portfolio of Carestream solutions on show:

• Included on our booth will be the DRX-Revolution* Mobile X-ray System, which was so well received at RSNA.  I’m particularly interested to discover who’s going to re-enact the fabulous arabesque!
• You will also be able to see the second-generation CARESTREAM DRX Detector, which is available worldwide.
• In healthcare IT we’re excited to be presenting our plans for a cloud-based service, part of the CARESTREAM Vue Cloud Services, that will empower patients to view their own medical imaging data and share it with their physicians using secure cloud computing data storage and transmission technologies.
• We are also featuring a versatile digital printer that outputs black-and-white and colour X-ray images onto film for diagnosis or paper for use by referring physicians–the DRYVIEW Chroma Imager–and the  CS 9300 System,  a high-quality cone beam CT (CBCT) and true panoramic imaging system for ENT and dental indications.

Our products are designed to marry up best-in-class technology and the optimisation of human contact. Carestream understands that contemporary healthcare is about delivering both in equal measure. ECR 2012 gives Carestream the opportunity to demonstrate its breadth of knowledge to everyone attending – I’m looking forward to all of the presentations.  See you in Expo B!

Have you started your ECR countdown? 

*not commercially available

RadCare’s secret? Standardizing on ONE reading and reporting platform that offers a common user interface and set of applications to both onsite and remote radiologists from anywhere.

The firm recently put in place Carestream Vue Connect, powered by SuperPACS™ technology that interfaces with multiple PACS to produce a single patient worklist, automates pulling of prior exams and embeds voice recognition—a combination that simplifies workflow:

•  Teleradiologists who previously had three or four workstations now use one
• Streaming technology displays  the first image in seconds
• Stat reports are delivered in as little as 20 minutes
• Standard reports are completed in about half an hour
• Physician downtime is reduced by 75 percent

RadCare’s leadership team recently invited us to their headquarters to discuss their growth and technology direction. In part one of a four part weekly series, we share an inside look at what drove their investment in a new platform:

Each week during the month of January, we’ll take a deeper look at how a smarter approach to radiology workflow is benefiting the practice, radiologists and patients. Tune in next week when J. Leslie Derdeyn, MD, RadCare’s National Medical Director discusses how the system is affecting radiologist productivity.

Today is the first day of our 2012 radiology image challenge.  Here’s January’s image:

This month’s challenge runs until February 6.  The first person to correctly identify the subject of the x-ray will be the winner.

Happy guessing!

Sorry… Carestream employees and their agencies are prohibited from entering. 

Doug Rufer, Director Clinical Operations and Business Strategy, Healthcare Information Solutions, Carestream Health

Meaningful Use has been a moving target in 2011 and we see signs that there will be no slowing down in 2012.  Keeping abreast of changes and sifting through misinformation to determine your organization’s strategy can be a continual challenge—but one that is winnable.

Radiology workflow, IT system data transmission and storage, and the importance of using certified technology – either modular or complete – are often overlooked elements of the overall Meaningful Use process.

Carestream's Vue RIS received modular certification for both Eligible Hospitals (EH) and Eligible Providers (EP) in October.

Once your organization decides it will comply with Meaningful Use, your journey begins with:

• Determining the measures you will track by eligible provider
• Evaluating your IT solutions and updating your technology to comply with all measures
• Discussing  with your supplier their strategy for MU compliance and any potential gaps

As you move forward, you must look at the impact on specialties and the operations of your radiology department to chart the best course for success.

Understand the Measures

The first step is understanding your workflow and how and where data will be captured for a complete picture of how compliance will affect your radiology operations.  Much of the data you are now required to track, monitor and report against for meaningful use measures is data that has not traditionally been captured by radiology departments—and some may argue that such data is outside the scope of radiology.  However, having this data may be useful.  For example, recording smoking status may not, at first glance, be relevant to radiology.  But this information may become VERY important if a radiologist is reviewing a chest x-ray and sees an obscure nodule. Understanding more about a patient’s history could impact diagnosis.

Plan for Change

The challenge for radiology is where data is captured.  For EACH visit, information such as BMI, blood pressure, etc. must be captured, recorded and possibly transmitted to other IT systems or directly to the CMS, based on the measures you track.  Since this responsibility has traditionally fallen to a patient’s physician, the requirement for radiology to capture that data can be a workflow burden for many facilities.

Answering the questions below will help you plan for the full impact and ease the workflow adjustments of meaningful use compliance:

• Where in the workflow process will we capture each measure we will submit?
• What impact will capturing the data at that point in the process have on our overall operations and staff?
• Will we need to increase our exam time slots when scheduling studies?  If yes, by how much?
• Will we need to hire additional resources to capture the necessary data?
• How will this impact patient wait times?
• How will we ensure staff complies with capturing this required data for reporting?
• How will we explain to patients that we need to capture this data during each visit?
• How are we going to handle high throughput modalities (like mammography screening)?
• Who will be required to enter data?
• Who will monitor and provide daily checks and balances to ensure compliance?
• What information will we need to send to other certified IT systems?
• Will we directly submit data from our RIS to the CMS; to an EMR; or both?
• What is the overall cost to our organization to capture this additional information?
• How can we minimize the financial impact?

Electronic Data Transmission

Transmitting data from one certified IT system to your RIS (or other certified system) can minimize the workflow burden of your radiology staff.  However, this can increase your IT costs.  If your facility has an EMR and a RIS and both are certified, there are costs associated with building the interfaces to pass the meaningful data between the two systems. These costs should decrease over time since the data being sent is defined by the ONC as a standard for all systems to comply with.  However, if both your RIS and EMR can submit the data in the proper format to the CMS, you could avoid additional costly interfaces by submitting your data from both systems directly to the CMS.  If you do plan to submit your data from two or more distinct IT products, you must have a dashboard (or the ability to run periodic management reports) in place to monitor all your measures and how your eligible providers are stacking up at any given time during your reporting period to make real time adjustments.

Key to both these strategies is that the data that is entering the systems must be in the format required by the ONC for every measure.  While the sending system does not have to be certified, the system that will track and submit the data to the CMS must be certified and the data that is entered into it MUST be in the specific ONC format.  Not adhering to these guidelines can cause your site to be out of compliance.  For example, if blood pressure is captured at a physician’s office and recorded using software that has not been certified by the ONC and then is transmitted to your certified system in a different format than is required for reporting, you could be out of compliance for that measure.  Likewise if the data being sent is coming from a certified system, but if your IT solution has not been certified for the measure—you cannot submit data to the CMS to count towards your measures in a given reporting period.

No Right or Wrong Answer

There is no right or wrong answer to achieving a balance that your radiology staff, patients and administration can agree on.  How you choose to implement technology and workflow has to fit your site and the needs of your facility and the people who run it.  How you choose to implement technology and workflow has to fit your site and the needs of your facility and the people who run it.  Carestream’s Vue RIS received modular certification for both Eligible Hospitals (EH) and Eligible Providers (EP) in October.  This modular approach provides customers with a solution that addresses the needs of both the ambulatory and hospital environment, while assuring that their data is being recorded, stored and transmitted in the proper fashion to meet the specific requirements set forth by the ONC and CMS.

For more information about what IT systems are certified and the criteria they were certified for, please see: http://onc-chpl.force.com/ehrcert.

JoAnn Linder, Director Global Marketing Communications, Carestream

2012 has arrived and the world of healthcare is changing faster every day. New treatments. Growing challenges. Evolving technologies.  Yet, some things remain constant. Namely, people. Like a patient’s hopes, fears, and the need for expert care. A doctor’s commitment to providing exactly that.

As we look toward the future, Carestream is focusing our energy on solutions that can help providers do more with less, enhance efficiency and boost productivity–all while helping improve patient care.  Our resolution for radiology is to continue to work every day toward improving the quality of imaging and information exchange between radiology and the electronic medical record. As an industry, we are we are building an environment where radiologists could view patient information, such as symptoms or chronic conditionals, from the EMR for contextual decision support to influence diagnosis and improve patient outcomes. We’re excited about the year ahead.

We wish you a healthy and prosperous new year. Click the image below to celebrate with us!

Cristine Kao, Global Marketing Manager, Healthcare IT, Carestream

Recently, we received FDA clearance for the use of our Vue Motion medical image viewer with mobile devices. Supported devices for this new technology include the iPad and almost all other mobile tablets. What makes Vue Motion so unique is that its the first web-based viewer that can be accessed from tablets without installing additional software. There are no storage or technology requirements for users’ mobile devices, PCs or workstations. Its intuitive design can also minimize training to speed adoption by healthcare providers. Vue Motion is independent so the viewer can be integrated with other vendors’ PACS systems, DICOM archives or XDS repositories. It can also be embedded in a HIS or EMR portal to allow clinicians and referring physicians to quickly and easily view patient data and radiology images with a single log-in from anywhere. 

Wouter Stom,  a physician from the Netherlands, currently doing a PhD in radiology, and an editor at iMedicalApps.com, an independent online medical publication written by a team of physicians and medical students who provide commentary and reviews of mobile medical technology and applications, took Vue Motion for a spin on an iPad 2. You can read his in-depth review here:  The first HTML5 radiology viewer approved by the FDA, review of Vue Motion Medical Image Viewer.

His verdict?  ”Vue Motion is a simple and hassle-free viewer that works almost flawlessly across multiple platforms without the need to install any software or apps. In its current state, it is perfectly usable for the clinician to review images remotely or on the bed-side.”

Do you have mobile access to imaging data? How could Vue Motion help your facility?