Diagnostic Errors are Very Expensive: Cloud PACS Can Streamline Diagnosis.

Cloud PACS are Answering the Call for Better Diagnoses

It’s an unfortunate circumstance when a misdiagnosis works against the health of a patient. Avoidable illnesses are often treated incorrectly in the U.S. because of diagnostic errors, and it can result in death. The benefit of going with a cloud PACS solutions is that fewer misdiagnoses are made, improving patient care.

Diagnostic errors are clinically and financially more costly today than ever before. Greater attention and dedicated resources are required to help fight diagnostic errors, and healthcare providers are looking to technology to assist them – specifically, cloud PACS.

Healthcare costs have increased significantly, and when a diagnostic error is encountered, costs increase even more. For instance, when colon cancer is caught in stage one, the cost of treating it is about three times less than what a patient with stage four cancer will pay for treatment. If a diagnostic error occurs in stage one and the cancer is allowed to progress to stage four; the life of the patient is threatened, as is their financial stability.

The speed at which a healthcare professional can make a diagnosis is important as well, and too many are stalled waiting on access to medical images that help them in establishing an accurate diagnosis. PACS can be the source of the issue, which is why healthcare IT and radiology professionals are looking to the cloud for more efficiency.

Cloud PACS operate much like an on-premise PACS, but without all the maintenance, responsibility for upgrades, and proprietary issues that block the sharing of the images. Cloud PACS built with vendor neutral archiving (VNA) allow unfettered sharing of medical images across departments and from one facility to another, regardless of how remote it might be.

The problem that many facilities face today is the lack of server space to archive the sometimes-massive medical image studies that are becoming more and more commonplace. Furthermore, there is a lack of business continuity strategies in place for this data, which means a natural disaster or technical malfunction could permanently bar access to the data.

Cloud PACS help answer all the issues that healthcare providers are having today with their medical image management. Not only does an offsite solution free up their IT personnel to manage existing hardware and software, it offers more flexibility, scalability and cost containment.

A cloud PACS should feature a single-database platform that can handle RIS, PACS, 3D and other applications. It should be hardware independent so the IT department can choose the products they support. Multi-level backups should also be in the offering.

OffSite Image Management, Inc. is committed to offering an industry-leading cloud PACS solution that will improve patient care while lowering costs for our clients. We partner with Level IV datacenters that offer extensive disaster recovery protocols that ensure near 100 percent uptime of important medical images and HL7 data. Find out more about our services by contacting us today.