Health Imaging & IT - May 2008 - (Page 56)

speCial seCTion praCTiCe managemenT By Jonathan Batchelor Drive new archive strategies Data availability is crucial for the provision of quality medical care. Healthcare data flows and interacts with multiple sources within and across institutions. Therefore, the backbone of the diagnostic matrix— patient histories, imaging studies and lab results—must be available at all times whenever and wherever they’re needed. Lost access to healthcare data can affect cash flow leading to reduced revenues; and more importantly, negatively impact patient care, according to John S. Koller, president of KAI Consulting. Citing a study by Sunquest Information Systems of Tucson, Ariz., Koller says that when a hospital billing system went down, the manual recovery process for data lost during that period was equivalent to about 8 hours for every hour of system downtime. Koller spoke at the 2008 Digital Healthcare Information Management System (DHIMS) conference in San Antonio, Texas. “Donald Holmquest, MD, president and CEO of CalRHIO [California Regional Health Information Organization], stated that missing information affects patients by delaying care 59.5 percent of the time and is judged to adversely affect patients 44 percent of the time,” Koller says. High availability of healthcare data is key, given these sobering statistics. “All data must be protected and recoverable,” Koller advises. “There must be a plan to respond to an event that interrupts the access to data and restore access.” This plan must address business continuity—the people, processes, and technology required to continue to deliver the mission of a department or enterprise during an event—and disaster recovery— the people, processes, and technology required to recover operation and data access after an interruption from an event, he says. “No organization is static; the plans need to change as the organization does,” he notes. Edward M. Smith, ScD, professor of imaging sciences at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y., recommends that diagnostic imaging practices apply availability metrics on a need basis. For example, storage media and network hardware should have 99.999 percent availability while storage, servers, the RIS, and the PACS broker should achieve 99.99 percent availability, according to Smith. Critical-use diagnostic workstations should 56 Health Imaging & IT | May 2008 have 99.9 percent availability while clinical review and teleradiology workstations can suffice with 99 percent availability. “None of us have unlimited funding when we’re dealing with implementation projects,” Koller says. “[Smith’s recommendations] will probably give you the best balance between the cost and the availability you can achieve with the money.” virtual availability One of the means by which high availability can be achieved is through the use of a virtual storage network. Virtual storage allows the access of data across an enterprise through a single interface, HealthImaging.com http://HealthImaging.com

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

Health Imaging & IT - May 2008 Contents On the Web The Enterprise News Update Convention Spotlight: SIIM 2008 Healthcare IT Salary Survey Survey Findings Inside the Transition to Next-Generation Image Management Blurring the Lines: Interfaced vs. Integrated RIS/PACS The Insider's Primer: Taming the Workflow Beast - Five Facilities Tell How Availability, Applications Drive New Archive Strategies Modality Review Managing Technology Inside Technology Reader's Resource Stat Sheet

Health Imaging & IT - May 2008

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