Cardiovascular Business - March/April 2008 - (Page 29) Anthony Marks, Md, (left) and Joseph Jiang, Md, interventional cardiologists at south shore Hospital, review a cardiac catheterization procedure using GE Heathcare’s Centricity Cardiology. Steven Young, director of cardiovascular services for Tri-City. “When you want to automate and tie in images, it’s very challenging because there isn’t the infrastructure in the HIS [hospital information system] or RIS [radiology information system] to really drive cardiovascular services through the order process.” He’s leveraged the facility’s RIS to make cardiovascular procedures part of the ordering system. Now everything is structured by date of service, time and results, along with radiology services, and available in one location. Clinicians can see CT, MR, echo and CV reports in one place. “That’s a huge advantage for us,” Young says. Tri-City has been able to take advantage of the work and expense already devoted to its radiology department’s information systems to link and synch the two systems. The radiology infrastructure already included networking, servers, domains, user groups and more. “We didn’t have to spend any money for this project. It was already built and in place, including the archival piece,” says Dawkins. Although there are plenty of differences between radiology and cardiology, weekly cardiovascular conferences has served as a forum to highlight the similarities. “The techniques and skill sets of each specialty are starting to come together,” Dawkins says. “The technology is driving that level of communication.” Implementation of 64-slice CT at Tri-City has led the two groups to talk about how to use the technology most effectively and efficiently and the implications for reimbursement and patient selection. The value of the infrastructure and information systems has been particularly apparent through the conferences. It used to take a full hour just to get through two patient cases. Now it takes half that. The physicians were accustomed to that kind of time waste. “They don’t see it because it’s their daily practice,” says Young. “But as we eliminate 15 to 20 minutes here and there, they wonder how they worked in the past.” competition. In the San Diego area, “we’re the small ship in an ocean of big aircraft carriers,” says Dawkins. “We need this to compete with them.” Because of its small size, the facility has the benefit of being able to deploy cutting-edge technology faster than the larger competitors. It not only helps them keep up, but it helps them gain market share as well. Dawkins credits his forward-looking administration. “It’s critical that there is a long-term strategy in place to support growth of cardiovascular services, which can make up 50 percent of an organization’s gross revenue.” Meanwhile, information systems make radiologists more efficient. Tri-City has fewer radiologists reading 30 percent more exams compared to before the implementation, says Young. Before, studies would be left at an outpatient imaging center overnight for interpretation. The next morning, one-third of the studies still needed to be read. Now, almost all studies are turned around the same day. Those advantages are now applicable to cardiology. Recently, Young met with an invasive cardiologist Tri-City was recruiting. “He specifically asked about our technology, deployment, how to read remotely and how systems are set up and running. Had we not done what we did, I couldn’t have answered positively. I could speak to almost 100 percent of his requests.” Dawkins notes that patients are starting to expect this level of technology. “Ultimately, I hope to use this as a marketing tool to the patient population. We can tell them that the more in depth their records are, the safer they’re going to be.” Cutting competition Integrated records also has helped Tri-City with all aspects of setting up a one-stop-shop When the South Shore Hospital’s Cardiovascular Center in Weymouth, Mass., decided to create a one-stop-shop for its cardio- CardiovascularBusiness.com Cardiovascular Business 2 http://CardiovascularBusiness.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.