Improving patient care is always a top priority for medical professionals. A variety of methods are employed to reach this goal of continual improvement in treating patients, including streamlining radiology workflow.
A 2018 study called “The Pareto Principle” found that there are a number of efficiency problems in the average radiology workflow, and 80% of the problems practitioners face are related to only 20% of cases. If you can reliably track these problem cases and have a plan for how to deal with them, your workflow is going to improve dramatically. For example, if you are having issues with the amount of time it takes for a specific type of study to be available in your PACS, you can take measures to facilitate a more reasonable response when those studies come up.
Plans for Workflow Efficiency
Radiologists can sometimes get into the rut where routines just become the norm, even if they aren’t exactly efficient. By collaborating more inclusively with IT, you might be able to determine more practical means of getting from point A to point B. For example, IT can assist in being the gatekeeper for practice data, but also help you by “cleaning” the data to make it more manageable to work with.
Is your staff fully educated on your clinical data? By keeping them current on how data is applied, you can see more gains in productivity. Your staff should also have access to automation technology that will ease the workflow process.
Implement the Latest Tools
Everything from clinical tools to predictive analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) can be brought in to give you the advantage. For instance, you need help forecasting practice management issues, so when you use predictive analytics on your data, you get exactly that.
The same can be said of using AI on your data, which when in use can assist you with your operations management tasks. For users who have machines that are slow during various exams, your AI will track that problem and alert you to it so you have more information to make fact-based decisions on handling the problem.
Choosing the Right Vendor
If you want to get the upper hand on improving radiology workflow without all the trial and error, you have to choose a provider of radiology technology that fits your objectives. For example, if your outdated PACS represents the biggest problems in your facility, choose a vendor with a track record of innovation, customer satisfaction and guidance in how to more effectively use an updated PACS platform with your infrastructure.
At OffSite Image Management, we offer everything from PACS to VNA, teleradiology to industry-leading mammography solutions. Contact us and learn more.
