Health Imaging & IT - February 2008 - (Page 16)

Enterprise Image Management Makes the Grade voices of experience Dover, Del.-based medical center consists of two acute-care hospital and 10 imaging centers. Its image management goals focused on an enterprise solution that avoided hefty bandwidth requirements. The health system’s answer is GE Healthcare Centricity PACS-IW. Centricity PACS-IW fits our bandwidth and storage infrastructure, says CIO Dave Walczak. At the same time, Walczak admits IT concerns should play second fiddle to the needs of end-users during the PACS selection process. That is, PACS should add value to technologists and radiologists via logical, intuitive workflow. In addition to keeping its bandwidth and storage budget under control, Bayhealth Medical Center has maximized productivity across the radiology department and boasts turnaround time under 24 hours for 95 percent of its studies; most are complete within one to two hours, and inpatient STAT results are often reported before the patient returns to his room. The value of PACS increases with use, and Bayhealth Medical Center lures referring physicians to PACS via an interface with McKesson Corporation Physician Portal that allows access to financial information, lab and radiology results, medications, nursing documentation and educational content via hyperlinks. The other secret to enterprise success is an adequate network. Bayhealth Medical Center added redundancy and a 100 megabit connection to the desktop with gigabit switches within its hospitals. Imaging centers have network solutions tailored to their needs. Small sites that complete only a few x-rays daily use T1 lines; larger centers in the city limits rely on a fiber optic gigabit Ethernet leased from the city. Other sites use 10 megabit or T3 lines. the mega-enterprise “Enterprise image management is more than numbers. It describes a strategy for image dissemination and management,” opines Lou Lannum, administrator, radiology informatics at The Cleveland ö IF tHe sIte NeeDs AN eNterPrIse soLUtIoN, look for a complete package that meets the needs of radiology and cardiology, says Coffee Health Group’s Birt. ö Do yoUr HoMeWorK, says Self of Memorial Hermann Baptist Beaumont Hospital. Sites can estimate storage requirements by converting analog volume into gigabytes and terabytes and adding projected growth. Make sure that inter-site connections can support rapid transfer of images. ö AvoID tHe LeNGtHy rFP, says Bayhealth’s Walczak. It can morph into a monster and add to everyone’s workload. Each vendor under consideration must create a document that responds to the RFP, and then hospital staff must review all proposals. Generally, long RFPs correlate with long responses. Instead, develop a request for a solution that focuses on key components of the desired future state and asks vendors to share a plan for taking the hospital from point A to point B. ö DeterMINe WHICH AreAs CAN BeNeFIt FroM eNterPrIse IMAGe MANAGeMeNt. These include subspecialty review, central ER reading and referring physicians, particularly those who practice at multiple locations. Include all users (“customers”) in the selection process; the committee should represent the needs of cardiologists, radiologists and technologists, says Birt. Clinic Foundation in Ohio. The Cleveland Clinic uses Siemens Medical Solutions syngo Imaging as a single image management umbrella for its 27 sites that complete 2 million exams annually. The solution makes 100 terabytes (TB) of imaging data available to every physician at every site. The benefits of the approach are significant. The clinic truly taps into sub-specialty expertise. For example, every head CT is read by a neuroradiologist regardless of where the image originated. “We treat MR and CT resources as enterprise resources, which delivers easier, faster scanning,” says Lannum. In addition, every ER across the enterprise is connected to two primary reading points to provide streamlined workflow for all off-hours emergency studies. Referring physicians can view patient images from any site regardless of location and host HIS. Enabling rapid access across a large enterprise requires significant IT planning. Cleveland Clinic uses a regional approach to the network with each region housed in a sonnet ring. Regional servers for local storage deliver fast image viewing at the point of acquisition. Images reside in a central archive. Another IT challenge came in the form of multiple hospital information systems. The Cleveland Clinic sites use different HIS and each assigns a local patient number. The enterprise approach, however, requires a global patient number. Cleveland Clinic developed a unique patient identifier to standardize patients across the enterprise. “An enterprise identifier can be a complex undertaking,” cautions Lannum. The challenges of the enterprise patient identifier extend beyond complexity; some legacy systems may not be able to accommodate an enterprise identifier. From island to enterprise Coffee Health Group, a Florence, Ala.-based health system comprised of two hospitals and an imaging center, first deployed PACS in 2003. The health group’s initial digital image management solution also included a mini-PACS for echo, cath lab and EKG images. The group, which completes 146,000 radiology studies and 52,000 cath, echo and EKG studies annually, found the specialized solutions didn’t quite meet its needs. Ultimately, Coffee Health Group selected ScImage PicomEnterprise PACS to lnk radiology and cardiology images and deployed the new system in June 2007, explains PACS Administrator Philip Birt. The health system realized cost and workflow benefits immediately after the transition. All physicians, including radiologists 16 Health Imaging & IT | February 2008 HealthImaging.com http://HealthImaging.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Health Imaging & IT - February 2008

Health Imaging & IT - February 2008 Contents On the Web The Enterprise News Update Cover Story: Enterprise Image Management Makes the Grade Modality Update Special Section: Health IT: Image Management Special Section: Health IT: PCs on the Move Convention Spotlight Technology Outlook Technology Update Reader's Resource Stat Sheet

Health Imaging & IT - February 2008

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