For a medical facility to be considered modern today, they have to be up to date on the platforms they use to share medical images. The most popular form of managing such tasks is through picture archiving and communication systems (PACS).
Increasingly, providers are finding that vendor neutral archiving (VNA) is assisting them in image transmission, not only from department to department, but from one provider to another. Let’s look at how two entities use VNA.
SUNY – Enhancing DICOM
The State University of New York (SUNY) has a medical university in Syracuse that installed a VNA in 2012. The goal was to improve their DICOM and non-DICOM management. Instead of having medical images parsed out into several silos, SUNY IT staff utilized a single repository, which other providers have also done to get a better handle on their ability to share clinical images.
SUNY also implemented VNA to link to another electronic medical records interface they adopted around the same time. They wanted to link the two systems so that all medical staff with access to the systems could get into patient charts and see the medical images through the VNA. This completely eliminated the need for separate PACS workstations. This proved very efficient for the approximately 1,500 employees who could potentially need to have access to medical images.
Jefferson Radiology – An Enterprise-Level Solution
Jefferson Radiology, located in East Hartford, Conn., has seven hospitals relying on them to read their radiology exams. The specialists aren’t all located in East Hartford – Jefferson also relies on specialists working as far away as California. Obviously, this situation calls for a highly advanced system that allows medical images to be transmitted not just from one department to another, but across the country.
Jefferson needed to alleviate workflow problems caused by the different PACS located at each site. Like SUNY, they sought a solution that silos the information to a single repository where images could be archived and accessed. The roadblock Jefferson came up against was each hospital worrying about the security of their medical data. However, the solution called for each hospital being its own entity within the VNA solution, which means their data was as safe as it would have been on their own server, and perhaps safer.
Quality Services at Reasonable Prices
Not many rural facilities have the luxury of going all out on their image transmission services. In fact, many are years behind the curve. Thankfully, VNA is the low cost solution that provides the kind of quality expected out of medical facilities today, especially where image transmission is concerned. SUNY and Jefferson serve as reminders that VNA can provide excellent results when implemented correctly.
At OffSite Image Management, Inc., we’ve developed a true VNA platform that is already being used state-wide in Missouri, Louisiana, Kansas and Michigan. When rural providers feel like they’re being left out in the cold, OffSite provides them a solution that doesn’t stretch their already limited budgets. For more information about how OffSite utilizes VNA, contact us today.