Pros Offer 25 Tips on Purchasing the ‘Ideal’ PACS
December 2007. By Rick Dana Barlow

Choosing the ideal picture archiving and communications system may seem like a pipe dream to a clinician or administrator at an outpatient care facility. Sometimes those ideal desires may be unrealistic for a variety of reasons so “optimal” becomes the next standard of comparison.

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The Perfect Blend
A Long Island imaging center streamlines workflows and eliminates errors via an integrated RIS/PACS.
November 2007. By E. Victor Brown

When it comes to RIS and PACS, understanding and embracing the difference between the terms interfacing and integrating defines the chasm between inefficient and optimized workflows in healthcare environments both big and small. For a Long Island-based imaging center, closing that chasm took time, teamwork and forward-thinking vendors. Having grown to eight locations spread across Nassau and Suffolk counties, Zwanger-Pesiri radiology has been providing radiological services to the region for more than 55 years. With 25 board-certified staff radiologists, the full-service imaging center provides the entire spectrum of MRI and CT scan modalities as well as Nuclear Medicine, ultra sound and DEXA Bone Densitometry.

*This article features Zwanger-Pesiri Radiology, which uses a Fusion RIS/PACS from Merge Healthcare.

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Enterprise PACS: Where Do the Opportunities and Challenges Lie?
October 1, 2007. By Jonathan Batchelor

Deploying PACS capabilities beyond a radiology department or facility provides the opportunity of extending the reach of diagnostic imaging to the entire spectrum of clinical medicine. The benefits to healthcare practitioners are immense—increased diagnostic certainty and the capability to provide efficient and effective treatment.

*This article features Greene Memorial Hospital in Xenia, Ohio which uses a Fusion PACS from Merge Healthcare.

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Two in One
September 2007. By Michael Leonard

The integrated RIS/PACS environment reduces health care costs, provides efficiency gains and expands access to information—yet RIS and PACS weren't always so tight. Find out how they came together, and how that union can affect your business.

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Harsh outpatient realities spur tailored RIS/PACS applications
September 9, 2007. By Greg Freherr

Imaging centers across the U.S. have cut back drastically on their purchase of big ticket products. Demand for 64-slice CTs and PET/CTs has plummeted in the wake of belt-tightening prompted by the Deficit Reduction Act. MR sales are sliding, as are those for ultrasound. RIS/PACS, however, is gaining ground, and much of its gain is coming in the outpatient arena.

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Breast Imaging Workstations: Why Multimodality Is a Must
September 1, 2007. By Lisa Fratt

Breast imaging workstations are a whole new breed of animal these days. Becoming extinct are the single-vendor workstation solutions in favor of more flexible multimodality, multi-vendor workstations that allow radiologists to efficiently read digital mammography, ultrasound, breast MRI, and CT images in one place as well as read remotely to cover a variety of imaging sites.

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Country PACS, City PACS
How two very different businesses have leveraged advanced IT solutions into new revenue.
August 2007. By Cat Vasko

Digital imaging is leaving film in its dust, and in the DICOM era, advanced information technology solutions are more important than ever. Just ask Shanda Coomes Bland, COO of Radiology & Diagnostic Imaging (RDI) PSC, Owensboro, Ky; Bland's business stays competitive thanks to the efficiencies it has achieved since adopting an integrated RIS/PACS. Her country imaging center competes most directly with the local hospital system; meanwhile, Randall Stenoien, MD, CEO of Houston Medical Imaging and president of Innovative Radiology, Houston, has leveraged his business' population-dense location into a powerful and geographically diverse partnership.

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Selecting Optimal Software Products
Pros offer 35 tips covering clinical to EMR to imaging tools.
August/September, 2007

Sourcing, evaluating, selecting and implementing software for any tasks can be one of the most frustrating and mind-boggling issues for clinicians and administrators alike – whether you’re an outpatient surgery center, imaging center or cancer center. Doctors and other clinicians want to focus their attention and time on serving patients at the expense of business decisions, which in today’s healthcare environment is more of a luxury than standard operating procedure. Administrators simply want tools to run their hospitals or outpatient care facilities more efficiently without having to invest too much effort and time in disruptive technology.

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The costs of healthcare, in general, and medical imaging, in particular, seem to be on a permanent upward spiral – while, at the same time, payors continue to find ways to reduce reimbursements for virtually all healthcare procedures.

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Weighing Breast MR’s Pros and Cons
August 2007. By John Hall

As with any imaging modality, breast MR is known to have some limitations. Ironically, the very thing that makes MR attractive – its high level of detail – reveals myriad structures not visible on X-ray film, many of which befuddle even the most astute radiologists.

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Over the Digital Threshold
With its lower cost, CR mammography opens the doors to the digital age
August 2007. By C.A. Wolski

For the past few years, DR-enabled full-field digital mammography (FFDM) has been the breast imaging gold standard, transforming women's health services. This transformation has delivered faster throughput and more accurate diagnostic results. However, its cost has made it a prohibitive modality for many facilities that have access to fewer resources and/or have multiple locations.

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Poster Shows How Viking 3D Vision Complements Robotic Laparoscopic Surgeries
July 2007. By Cat Vasko

A poster given at the 2007 meeting of the American Urological Association, Linthicum, Md, in Anaheim, Calif, highlighted the advantages of using 3D visualization in conjunction with da Vinci robotic technology.

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Providers Illuminate PACS Enterprisewide
Organizations use various strategies to share electronic clinical images with all types of caregivers.
June 2007. By Beckie Kelly Schuerenberg, Senior Editor

Three years ago, executives at Mercy Health Partners decided to reevaluate how the seven-hospital delivery system manages clinical images. Images were playing a larger role in patient care, so executives wanted all types of images, including those from cardiology and pathology, to be integrated into a single system so they could be available to all locations.

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Command Center Redefines Workflow
Integrated PACS/RIS workstations leverage advanced IT tools to create a new, more seamless workflow.
May 2007. By Tim Kulbago, senior VP, Strategic Business Initiatives, Merge Healthcare

Moving from film to digital has dramatically improved efficiencies in imaging organizations. Now organizations are blending their RIS, PACS and clinical algorithms to further improve workflow and operations. This improvement creates new opportunities for radiologists and the business environments in which they work, but it also creates several challenges.

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Digital Mammography Takes Off
May 1, 2007. By Cheryl Hall Harris, RN

Like an airplane gathering speed, adoption of digital mammography has gained momentum as centers recognize the benefits of this technology. Research findings such as the DMIST (Digital Mammographic Imaging Screening Trial) study that revealed the advantageous aspects of digital screening exams for women with dense breasts, improved vendor solutions that address connectivity and workflow concerns and innovative new products that tackle specific issues for busy departments and centers have propelled facilities towards the digital realm for mammography.

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RIS-PACS Rolls Over the Radiology Wheel
May 1, 2007. By Beth Walsh

Integrated RIS-PACS almost sounds too good to be true. Can it really offer reduced costs, improved productivity, speedier report turn-around times, track patients and equipment, offer more detailed reports, and even help recruit physicians? Organizations that have implemented an integrated solution are experiencing all of this and more.

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Analysis Tools Lead Workflow Trend
Quantification and analysis tools, such as image fusion and algorithms, will streamline the study of large datasets.
April 2007. By Vittorio Accomazzi, Lead Architect, Image Processing, Cedara Software, and Lorelle Lapstra, Director.

As the medical imaging market grows rapidly, so does the size of image data sets. These huge data sets have in turn given rise to new workflow tools and techniques to better process these studies, moving 3-D visualization into the realm of data quantification and analysis.

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Making Sense of Business Analytics
Organizations seek to gain efficiencies using I.T. to measure clinical and financial performance.
April 1, 2007. By Beckie Kelly Schuerenberg, Senior Editor

Executives at Pocono Medical Center were aware of long waiting times and staffing problems in the hospital's emergency department. But it wasn't until they hired health care data analysis and benchmarking firm Press Ganey Associates Inc. that they found out how bad things really were.

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Real ROI on an EMR
EMR’s generate the greatest gains in reduced overhead, efficient billing and on-demand access.
March 2007. By Cristen C. Bolan

EMR’s generate the greatest gains in reduced overhead, efficient billing and on-demand access. While the return on investment on an electronic medical record (EMR) may not appear for several months or years – does that make the EMR any less valuable? The physicians at the Semmes-Murphey Neurologic and Spine Institute in Memphis, TN, don’t seem to think so. Their new EMR system has afforded them both short-term overhead reductions and long-term conveniences that are hard to quantify, but worth every penny.

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Image Workflow in the ED
March 1, 2007. By Erin Chesson

Emergency medicine professionals working in trauma centers must deliver prompt diagnosis and treatment to critically or acutely injured patients. Radiology has always been an integral part of emergency medicine. That’s why PACS and the streamlined image workflow it offers is having a huge impact on the way multidisciplinary trauma teams handle their most critical of patients.

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Digital migration raises concerns over access of priors
February 1, 2007. By Kristie Sivells

As radiology clinics begin to move from film to digital mammography, an increasing number of clinicians are grappling with how best to access prior mammograms done on film to compare them with new digital results. Comparing prior mammograms with current mammograms significantly improves radiologist performance and may decrease unnecessary recalls by up to 44 percent, according to a study in the January issue of Radiology.

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Cedara Software Corp.
Integrated imaging workflow products
January 1, 2007

Toronto-based Cedara Software Corp. introduces several new products designed to integrate the imaging workflow process. With the increasing prevalence of multiple PACS installations, clinical applications and information systems used at a single healthcare institution, some radiology professionals believe that the need for integration has never been greater.

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