Cardiovascular Business - March/April 2008 - (Page 30) INTEGRATED CARDIAC RECORDS DRIVE EFFICIENCy “As a marketing tool, we can tell patients that the more in depth their records are, the safer they’re going to be.” Steven young, director of cardiovascular services for Tri-City Medical Center, Oceanside, Calif. vascular services, they wanted a single dashboard set-up, says Bill Burke, MHP, MBA, director of cardiovascular medicine. The facility implemented GE Healthcare’s Centricity system, which has been live since November, 2006. Coming from a background in a large academic medical center, Burke was accustomed to systems and departments that have evolved over time and resulted in a haphazard, piecemeal patchwork of information systems. To consolidate into one integrated system, his RFP asked vendors for a single information system that would handle physician reporting, operating statistics, volumes, turnover times and more. He also wanted seamless regulatory reporting, web-based scheduling tools and inven- tory management. Since the equipment used in cardiovascular procedures, such as stents, wires and balloons, are so costly, “we wanted to track them down to the penny and see what we’re using and where we could cut costs.” Integrating images into the system is huge, he says, because “gone are the days when everyone relied on the cardiologist and took their word on cases.” Nowadays, the various clinicians want to feel empowered to know more about their patient. Just registering a patient used to take about 10 minutes and introduced multiple opportunities for errors. Now, information is entered one time, at the point of admission, and transmitted to every piece of equipment. Cardiac ultrasound in particular has changed dramatically, Burke says. Previously, an echocardiography › integrated records require suitable storage study would go on tape so anyone needing to review it would Integrated cardiac records allow for better patient have to watch the entire tape in a care and more efficient clinicians but they do relinear fashion. The report was a quire significant review of storage needs. separate process after the review. Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside, Calif., has Now, doctors can review a whole two separate sets of servers to run radiology and screen of thumbnails from an cardiology, each with its own independent storage echo, which takes about one-fifth platform. “We could have integrated but we felt that of the time. Meanwhile, a tech the two would grow at different paces and the archihas already put together a preval requirements might be different,” says Steven liminary report that requires that young, director of cardiovascular services. Currentthe physician input a few values ly, the facility has enough storage for three years. steven young, director of cardiovascuand sign off. Report turn-around The cardiovascular system has about seven years lar services, and donald dawkins, rN, time is instantaneous. “We hardof GE Gemnet data archived on DVD jukebox. “We cardiovascular service line administrator for Tri-City Medical Center, Oceansly measure in minutes, let alone went live with two years of depth in the system but ide, Calif., employ McKesson Provider hours or days.” we will keep the GE archive alive and just pull studies Technologies to view all relevant information in a single ”cockpit.” off as we go.” Since the retrieval percentage of studies more than two years old drops off significantly, there’s no need to keep the data online. young notes that everybody is struggling with 64-slice CT data. But, even as storage capacity needs to grow year by year, fortunately the cost has come down. Thirty terabytes cost about $30,000 and facilities can just add to that as their storage needs increase. young hopes next year to deploy a system that involves a huge block of storage disks that spin down and stop when they’re not in use. “That exponentially extends lifespan. It sits idle unless you need something from far in the past.” staying on the forefront The Cincinnati Health Alliance, a consortium of four hospitals in Ohio, implemented VERICIS and HeartSuite from Emageon back in 2000. Because the alliance saw the benefits to staff and patients, “we chose to get into the fore- 30 Cardiovascular Business March/April 2008
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