Medical Imaging Blog

McKesson

“Patients” or “Consumers”? The Changing Dynamics of HealthCare

medical imaging, healthcare reformHow medical professionals – including medical imaging professionals – refer to their clients makes a lot of difference, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.

According to the the authors of the article in the Journal, healthcare reform, with its overriding focus on controlling costs, has led to an “industrialized” or “standardized” approach to medicine. The result: hospitals, clinics, and other medical facilities are viewed as “providers” of services which are used by “consumers.” Likewise, the language used to describe medical professional-patient interaction is that of a commercial transaction.

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McKesson CVIS Revolutionizes a Hospital’s Medical Imaging

CVIS - Medical ImagingWhat can a CVIS do? “With Horizon Cardiology…I can instantly see everything I need from one reading station. As soon as I sign the report, it’s instantaneously in the electronic patient record,” says William Suarez, chief of pediatric cardiology and associate professor at Mercy Children’s Hospital in Toledo, Ohio. And for him, that was a huge change.

Before Mercy implemented the CVIS from McKesson, its pediatric cardiologists regularly dealt with damaged video cassettes, slow couriers, and difficulty comparing multi-modality images. The last problem was especially troublesome, for it made it difficult to compare images of children as they grew.

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Structured Reporting Improves Medical Imaging Communications

structured medical imaging reportsAs medical imaging becomes more integrated into everyday medical practice, the need for clear modes of communicating for medical imaging professionals is more pressing than ever.

Unfortunately, “the style and format of radiology reports have generally remained unaltered” for a number of years, wrote Lawrence H. Schwartz, MD, and co-authors in a recent online issue of Radiology.

Schwartz and his colleagues found that physicians definitely preferred to read “structured” medical imaging reports over “unstructured” ones. This was especially true among non-radiologists. Why? That’s not perfectly clear, but it’s reasonable to assume that the very structure of a structured report immediately tells the non-radiologist what is and isn’t important information.

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Bad News From ASE can give CVIS and PACS Designers Food for Thought

Echocardiogram

An article in Cardiovascular Business conveys some bad news for the echocardiography world, but it may also stimulate some creative thinking from product development teams around the CVIS and PACS industry.

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Flying High with McKesson’s Horizon Cardiology Solutions

Cardiologist, cardiology

Eric Harrison is a Cardiologist but when talking about his experience with McKesson’s products, he sounds a lot like an airline pilot.

“Much as pilots can command every component of an airplane from their cockpit seat, I am able to diagnose my patient’s disease from a single workstation” because of McKesson’s products, he writes.

Harrison is the National Director of Cardiology at IASIS Healthcare, a 16-hospital system headquartered in Tampa, Florida.  Before IASIS implemented McKesson’s Horizon Cardiology combined with Vital Images’ Vitrea Enterprise Suite and TomTec’s 4-D Cardio-View, its cardiologists had to hop from workstation to workstation to see a patient’s cardio images and medical history.

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Join PACS professionals at Aunt Minnie’s Online Conference

A chance to participate in a conference of other PACS professionals is just around the corner – and you don’t even have to leave your desk to join in. The best part: it’s free – all you have to do is register and sign in on November 17.

“PACS in the Age of Change” is the theme. Time to network and chat with vendors will occur after these exciting presentations:

  • Meaningful Use in Radiology Applies to You — Dr. Keith Dreyer, Massachusetts General Hospital
  • Informatics Tools to Improve Radiology Reporting — Dr. Katherine Andriole, Harvard Medical School
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Medical Imaging Solution Enhances the Patient Experience at Bloomington Hospital

Bloomington Hospital's Medical Imaging SolutionBefore implementing a Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) and Radiology Information System (RIS), Bloomington Hospital faced the same challenge as many multi-facility hospitals.

While its facilities shared the same patients, they didn’t share patient information and images.

Bloomington Hospital needed a medical imaging solution that would help it enhance the overall patient experience – from ordering to report distribution.

Specifically, the Indiana hospital was in search of a medical imaging solution to eliminate:

  • Slow report turnaround times and delayed patient treatments
  • The need for radiologists to travel long distances to other facilities to interpret exams
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Medical Imaging Technology at Baton Rouge General Reduces Report Turnaround Time to 3 Hours

Baton Rouge General Medical Center – particularly its radiology department – has a long history of staying on the forefront of the technology curve. It was the first in the US to operate a radiation therapy unit, the first in its region to offer endoscopic ultrasounds and the first in the state to offer portable digital radiology systems.

That long-standing history is what led it to adopt the next generation of medical imaging technology.

The medical center needed to leverage medical imaging technology that could enable fast, easy access to digital images across the enterprise. Plus, it needed a solution that would help it meet the meaningful use requirements associated with tapping into federal stimulus incentives.

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34 Iowa Healthcare Facilities Soon to Benefit From PACS Implementation

Soon, 34 metropolitan hospitals and clinics throughout the state of Iowa will be experiencing streamlined workflow and improved productivity.

That’s because Iowa Health System – the state’s first and largest integrated health system – has partnered with McKesson for an enterprise Horizon Medical Imaging™ Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) implementation.

Iowa Health System conducts an increasing number of procedures every year, and needed a solution that could help physicians and staff deliver high-quality, timely patient care now and in the future.

The healthcare system chose McKesson to replace its former PACS vendor in order to meet its growing diagnostic imaging needs.

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PACS Video: Implementing Enterprise Medical Imaging

During the 2008 Society for Imaging Informatics Annual Meeting, Mark Crowder of McKesson Medical Imaging shared with RT Image magazine the McKesson strategy for successful implementation of enterprise medical imaging throughout healthcare facilities.

In the informative PACS video below, Crowder introduces the concept of Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS). He explains how PACS:

  • Captures images
  • Stores images in a repository
  • Distributes images to clinicians wherever they may be

Crowder also shares how the McKesson PACS workflow helps healthcare facilities improve the quality of patient care.

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