Health Imaging & IT – Integrating RIS/PACS for the Enterprise - (Page 16)

by l e s l I e k . a n d e r s o n Q: what’s the best? Single Vendor vs. Best of Breed The university of Washington Medical Center in Seattle is a 450-bed hospital that is part of a group that includes nine neighborhood clinics and more than 100 outpatient clinics. uW Medical Center, ranks among the top ten medical centers in the united States as rated by u.S. News & World Report, and is a teaching hospital for the university of Washington School of Medicine. System-wide, they perform more than 210,000 imaging procedures each year. An early adapter of PACS some 10 years ago, the uW Medical Center went totally filmless in 2002. Since then, they haven’t looked back; rather they have continually evaluated and fine-tuned how images and information flow through their enterprise. The latest upgrade includes trading in their best-of-breed RIS/PACS interfaced system for a single-vendor solution. They went live with GE Healthcare’s Centricity RIS/PACS in mid-October. Andy Strickland, director of imaging informatics at uW Medical Center, shares the benefits of having a single vendor for RIS/PACS. andy strickland, director of Imaging Informatics, university of Washington Medical Center what are the challenges when dealing with multiple vendors in a best-of-breed rIs/PaCs? Even under the best circumstances, each application is built to support a preconceived business model and its associated workflows. We rely upon interfaces to normalize the resulting differences, but they only go so far. For instance, we can verify a study in PACS, but our RIS doesn’t have a verified status. That information is thrown away. Conversely, RIS distinguishes an ordered exam from a scheduled exam, while our PACS considered them to be the same and our EMR considers them to be unrelated. To the extent that software is a means of communication, these disconnects amount to signal loss and distortion. what led to the decision to go with an integrated rIs/ PaCs solution from one vendor? It became clear that the provider’s role in workflow was difficult to track and manage because their activities are largely untracked in the RIS. The integration of RIS and PACS gives us access Q: a: to the whole story and allows us to better manage the operation. what are your goals for integrated rIs/PaCs? We anticipate some measurable improvements in efficiency and satisfaction. We’ll be watching things such as the number of exams read per physician clinical hour and imaging study turnaround time. how does workflow improve working with one integrated rIs/PaCs? Providers and technologists use the same worklists for scheduling, protocols and interpretation. For exams that need a protocol pop-up in the provider’s worklist, they select a protocol, and the technologist uses that information to perform the exam. which rIs/PaCs features are most beneficial to your facility? Document management is critical to us because most of our orders don’t come via computerized physician order entry (CPOE). It gives us an electronic version of Q: a: Q: a: Q: a: the original paper order that is attached to the exam and available throughout the process. The integrated physician desktop, including embedded voice recognition, is also a huge benefit. The RIS worklist is flexible and robust, and it means the schedulers, technologists and radiologists are all “singing off the same sheet of music.” what advice do you have for other facilities considering an integrated solution? For now, most single-vendor RIS/ PACS offerings are going to be multiple, distinct applications with different “parents” that are integrated by the vendor to the extent possible. You have to evaluate the integration that has been achieved and make sure the workflow is going to fit your needs. A degree of user workflow change is going to be involved, so working through every use case and making sure the system will support the new workflow will be required. Finally, a well-constructed implementation plan is key. You will probably not be able to convert to the new system and workflow all at once, so some kind of incremental rollout may be necessary. n Q: a: Q: a: 6 Integrating RIS/PACS for the Enterprise November 2007

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Health Imaging & IT – Integrating RIS/PACS for the Enterprise

Health Imaging & IT – Integrating RIS/PACS for the Enterprise Table of Contents Integrated RIS/PACS: Making Work Flow Singular Benefits: Integrated RIS/PACS Delivers Imaging Center Battle Strategies: Combating DRA Spurring Reading Efficiency in a Large Imaging Center Group Creating the Global Imaging Record RIS/PACS for the Community Hospital What’s the Best? Single Vendor vs. Best of Breed

Health Imaging & IT – Integrating RIS/PACS for the Enterprise

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