Medical Imaging Portals and Offsite Storage a Good Match
Meaningful Use requirements have prompted radiologists to make their examination reports
available to patients in an electronic fashion within 24 hours of the exam. The question is – should patients be able to view their own medical imaging data? It’s a question that has been around for a while now and some initial data offers a glimpse into the answer to that question.
First off, healthcare professionals have spent years honing their craft. They know how to read medical imaging and they know the lingo behind the reports. Patients, on the other hand, view their report for the first time and have a ton of question – at least that was the initial concern of radiologists. Patients can’t be expected to know how to comprehend their medical imaging report, and most physicians like to have some control over how their patients gain access to their medical data.
What healthcare professionals are seeing instead, according to one hospital group, is around one or two calls to radiologists per week, which is a far cry from the flood of calls that were expected once patient radiology portals became the norm in offering up the required electronic data. Some providers even found that after the portals went live, their calls from patients remained the same.
Patient engagement is a popular subject today, and the patient portal is definitely a way to more closely connect patients with their health management. Oddly, while 65 percent of patients surveyed by one healthcare provider said they would like to have access to their clinical data, only 17 percent of doctors are offering them this advantage. More doctors will have to start complying as Meaningful Use Stage 2 makes it mandatory for radiology reports.
Doctors’ fears are well founded – getting bad test results online rather than through a doctor who can explain treatment options can be devastating to the patient. Regardless, the prevailing thought is that most patients waiting for their results are already thinking the worst, which is why the doctors that do post results without delay do so in the knowledge that they’ll actually be giving their patients some relief.
Another vote for posting results immediately is that doctors, being busy people, can miss some tidbits of information, which patients aren’t likely to miss. Furthermore, doctors who aren’t ready to study the results will delay posting them, and if the patient asks about them, the doctor can simply say they aren’t in yet, which makes the radiologist look like they aren’t doing their job.
To get unfettered access to results, more providers are utilizing offsite-imaging resources. This not only ensures that the data is always there, but that it can also be transferred without becoming bound by proprietary technology. The best offsite image management vendors are utilizing vendor neutral archiving, which means regardless of what type of system you’re running, as long as you have an Internet connection, you can access the images – from anywhere.
Contact OffSite Image Management, Inc. today and find out how we can assist you and your organization.