Health Imaging & IT - March 2008 - (Page 40)

moDality upDate By Beth Walsh DR: You Gotta Have IT Delivering Speed, Efficiency, Savings Healthcare facilities that have bought into digital radiography (DR) would never go back. The efficiencies gained dramatically improve productivity, allowing physicians and technologists to provide better patient care and service. Image quality is like “night and day,” end-users say. And the savings in film, chemicals, space and staffing in many cases can even outweigh the costs of upgrading to DR. DR has bought time for the physicians at McHenry County Orthopaedics in Crystal Lake, Ill., says Administrator Manette DeCramer. Since installing DR equipment from Imaging Dynamics in 2003, the orthopedic surgeons no longer suffer with the bottleneck created by traditional x-ray systems. One physician now sees more patients in a day than he could before. Another surgeon who typically ran behind schedule now stays on schedule. One doctor uses the saved time to spend more time with each patient. “I think that for each physician, it brings a different element to how they practice, but the one common thing is that they’ve gained time,” says DeCramer. “They can select how to utilize that time.” The time-savings also apply directly to patients. “We try to run a hospitality industry,” she says. “We believe the patient’s time is worth something. If they are waiting more than five minutes, we haven’t done our job.” Aside from gaining time, the improvement in image quality is amazing, she says. “It’s a transformation that is hard to believe until you do it. It’s amazing how fast you can put a patient through with DR and the quality is like night and day.” Better images and productivity The radiologists at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Syracuse, N.Y., “absolutely loved the images” when they started using the Carestream 9500 DR system, says Robert Whitmarsh, director of radiology. The hospital participated in a North American trade trial of the system and the unit was installed in March 2007. Whitmarsh says the system allows for views that didn’t previously exist. An example is a trauma patient with a hip problem. “With traditional cross-table lateral views, it’s always difficult to get good visualization of the femoral head and neck,” he says. The 9500 is so versatile that the patient didn’t even have to be moved off the ED stretcher. “It’s the most incredible thing I’ve seen in terms of lateral hip x-ray. We use that now as part of our teaching files to show what we’re capable of doing with this technology.” Chest and extremity images also got bet40 Health Imaging & IT | March 2008 HealthImaging.com http://HealthImaging.com

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

Health Imaging & IT - March 2008 Table of Contents On the Web The Enterprise: Communicating Better News Update Critical Test Results Management: The Human Touch The Changing Face of the Cath Lab Cardiovascular CT: A Clinical Boon Cardiology PACS: Solutions to Fit Your Needs ACC 08: Building Quality & Value Together Picking the Perfect PACS Displays PET/CT: A Game-Changer in Cancer Patient Management DR: You Gotta Have IT – Delivering Speed, Efficiency, Savings Laser Imagers: Answering the Call for Hard Copy Reader's Resources Stat Sheet

Health Imaging & IT - March 2008

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