Health Imaging & IT - November 2007 - (Page 88)

PeoPle & technology b y B e t h Wa l s h PAcS & the ehR Users Love the Link Integrating PACS with electronic health record (EHR) systems saves time and money, eliminates the dreaded multiple system sign in, and can even help retain and attract key radiologists. Several facilities share how they went from disparate systems to direct links. Basically, when a user clicks on an order, the system takes the user directly to the results. “As for our referring physicians, I couldn’t take it away from them,” Cleveland says. Even though the radiologists look at images on PACS workstations, they “absolutely love the system,” Cleveland says. “It’s cut an hour-and-a-half to two hours off of reading time every day.” She designated two hours for training and most of the radiologists were up and running in less time. And, all the hassles and frustrations of retrieving and hanging films are gone. The facility’s administration is pleased, Cleveland says, because referring physicians are so excited about the integration and find it very helpful. “Once physicians found out that images were online, they were clamoring to get access. That attracts more customers.” In retrospect, Cleveland says they could have built secure VPN connections for each physician earlier in the process. Jacob Tapia, clinical analyst, says the integration wasn’t too challenging even though the team didn’t have experience writing plug-ins. “With our clinical system, we already had the capability to accept results information and order updates from HL7 messages. As far as actually getting the image viewer and other applications to launch from within Sunrise, you can provide a plug-in to display the link.” Tapia says they were able to use a plug-in to display web pages or information that can be downloaded over http and displayed in a browser. That plug-in logs the clinician into PACS and automatically opens a study as if they were opening the results from the order in the clinical system. Tapia currently is working on a custom plug-in that will give the radiologists a more integrated experience with all study results loaded and displayed and all mechanisms for manipulation available. In hindsight, he says he would have invested more time in these efforts from the beginning of the project. HealthImaging.com S pringhill Medical Center, a 252-bed hospital in Mobile, Ala., went live with PACS in March 2004, completely filmless in September of that year, and live with EHR a month later. Administration was pushing for technological advancement, says Systems Administrator Laura Cleveland. With the hospital’s IS effort outsourced to Eclipsys, the organization had a good reason to consider Eclipsys products. The company promised Cleveland that they could integrate imaging to EHR. “That was a big selling point. We wanted con venience for our physicians, and it results in better care for patients. To make both happy, that was great,” says Cleveland. Direct results The PACS-EHR integration means that when the technologist completes an order for a chest x-ray, that information goes into the EHR and sends the message out to the interface engine. The engine sees the message that the test is done, and creates a message that goes back to the Eclipsys Sunrise Clinical Manager to tell it to create the URL to link over to the PACS web server. 88 n o v e m b e r 2 0 07 | Health Imaging & IT http://HealthImaging.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Health Imaging & IT - November 2007

Health Imaging & IT November 2007 RSNA 360 Table of Contents Table of Contents On the Web: HealthImaging.com The Enterprise: Imaging & IT = Knowledge News Update RSNA 360: Technology Previews RSNA 360: PACS RSNA 360: PACS Peripherals RSNA 360: Reading Services RSNA 360: Voice Recognition & Reporting RSNA 360: Furniture RSNA 360: CT RSNA 360: Molecular Imaging RSNA 360: Advanced Visualization RSNA 360: MRI RSNA 360: Ultrasound RSNA 360: Health IT RSNA 360: Cardiac Imaging RSNA 360: Digital X-ray RSNA 360: Women’s Imaging RSNA 360: CAD RSNA 360: Data Storage & Archiving RSNA 360: Displays RSNA 360: Oncology Imaging PACS & the EHR: Users Love the Link Lung CAD: A Power Tool in the Imaging Toolset Special Section: RIS/PACS: Efficiency Gains through Integration Fine-Tuning Breast Imaging Workflow Peace of Mind: Long-term Archives that Deliver QA in Medical Displays: Two Approaches CPOE: Wonders in Workflow Emergency Imaging in Flux Reader's Resource Stat Sheet

Health Imaging & IT - November 2007

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