Employing computed tomography (CT) scans has both advantages and risks. CT has led to revolutionary enhancements in the diagnosis and treatment of many diseases, as well as nearly ending the need for exploratory surgery and many other invasive procedures. The risk involved is that a CT scan delivers 70 times as much radiation as a chest x-ray.
Measuring Lifetime Health Risk
One of radiology’s biggest thinkers, University of Chicago School of Medicine vice-chair of radiology informatics, Paul Chang, MD, wants radiologists to step up their game. Meaningful use requirements dictate the adoption of business intelligence analytics (BIA) for radiology. And you can’t improve what you don’t measure.
Measuring Efficiency Using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
According to Chang, radiology lags way behind other business models in the use of BIA, which includes dashboards, scorecards and other key performance indicators (KPIs). A KPI helps measure if you’re improving your processes, efficiencies and adding value to the product or service you provide.
“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.”|
John Gall, The Systems Bible
Gall’s quote above can be very readily applied to meeting the needs of multi-facility hospitals and health care organizations, particularly, the needs of the medical imaging department. Some of the more common challenges with managing medical imaging across multiple facilities include:
And it was this last challenge in particular, coupled with over 1,100 medical imaging system installations, that helped to drive the development of the newest enterprise medical imaging solutions from McKesson.
The American healthcare payment system often employs a “carrot and stick” approach to reimbursements. Radiologists are expressing their frustration at implementing a value-based program as dictated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Starting in 2015, physicians will face a 1.5% reimbursement reduction penalty for not meeting requirements, which could add up to more than just frustration.
According to a study published in the Journal of the American College of Radiology, a copy of which can be requested here, there are some startling trends emerging regarding Medicare’s Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) program. The data shows that, depending on the radiology specialty, incentive payments varied substantially. The average diagnostic radiology incentive payment was $2,811.39, while the average for radiation oncology was $12,704.38 in 2010.
What would you think if you knew that multiple medical images were being used to proactively track conditions that may progress over time? From osteoarthritis to cancer lesions, doctors and radiologists are using radiology imaging studies to evaluate changes in baseline readings and measurable cancers, for starters.
As our society continues to age and add pounds, a plethora of health concerns are on the horizon. The predictive potential of medical imaging in scenarios where bones may be shifting offers a compelling argument for maintaining an integrated PACS/RIS system.
It’s not the first time the concept of patient-centered radiology has been proposed, but what does it really mean? It is hard sometimes to marry the alluring idea of patients being top priority with the need for Radiologists and hospitals to be profitable, all while meeting the complex requirements of state and national legislature.
The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA), a branch of the UK Health Department, established safety goals in 2002 to help accredited organizations address specific areas of concern regarding patient safety (Source: NPSA). Medical imaging providers and hospitals in the U.S. can benefit from these standards as well.
While radiology information systems (RIS) manage medical imaging and other data effectively, there’s no substitute for hands-on medical “know how” when it comes to a surgical situation. Specifically, using checklists to determine radiology interventions helps keep radiology patients safe.
World Health Organization (WHO) Safety Checklist
It’s like the movie, West Side Story, in the battle for the CT angiography turf. The radiologist and the cardiologist are the modern day “Sharks” and “Jets” in the fight to own the market. Who will emerge victorious? Will there be a Tony and Maria to bring the two sides together? The drama is palpable; and the two sides are not playing it so cool.
A War of Words
The battle lines are certainly not new.
According to customer service experts Kristin Anderson and Ron Zemke, authors of “Delivering Knock Your Socks Off Service,” the following five key factors determine the vast majority of customer satisfaction with any given service:
In any busy hospital setting, workflow processes are critical to efficient communications and quality patient outcomes. State-of-the-art medical imaging software allows hospitals to manage diagnostic imaging across the enterprise. Parkland Health and Hospital System proved this premise when management decided to rebuild from the inside out as it began plans for a new facility.
This Dallas-based hospital employs approximately 60 radiologists, 62 residents and 19 fellows and is the University of Texas-Southwestern’s teaching hospital. As Parkland began its journey to enter the high-tech world of communications systems, they had five different picture and archiving communication systems (PACS). To say that their diagnostic imaging needed an upgrade would be an understatement.
