Image Management Struggles: What do Critical Access Hospitals Face?.

Image Management for Rural Facilities

There are approximately 62 million people living in rural parts of America. These are people who rely on critical access hospitals for their healthcare needs. Unfortunately, these are facilities that often struggle with resources, including financial. When it comes to medical image management solutions, offsite data storage technology is stepping up to offer cost savings as well as archiving and sharing improvements – even for the most rural residents.

When there is a shift in requirements, whether it’s through HIPAA or through recent regulatory shifts through Meaningful Use, the critical access hospitals are often hit hardest. Even the smallest circumstances can disrupt the flow in rural facilities that are fiscally challenged and often have a lack of human resources, particularly in IT functionality. As these critical access hospitals work to build stronger relationships with the community and provide better patient care, the hospitals are finding assistance in offsite image management vendors who work through the cloud to give their clients more efficient and effective solutions.

Critical access hospitals are categorized as such when they have no more than 25 acute care inpatient beds. They are also at least 35 miles from any other hospital. However, regardless of their limited budget and staff, they must offer 24/7 emergency care services and maintain a yearly average time in the hosptial of no more than 96 hours for acute care patients. There are now more than 1,300 certified critical access hospitals in the United States. One piece of technology that is assisting these facilities in serving patients better is vendor neutral archiving (VNA).

VNA is being used by offsite image management organizations to help these rural facilities better manage the flow of their medical imaging. VNA is being used to archive and access images without fear of proprietary roadblocks. It’s something that is catching on due to the cost savings and the accessibility that organizations are achieving in cloud-based solutions that they can’t with on-site PACS solutions.

Healthcare professionals today are increasingly working in a multisite environment, even if they are in rural areas. Medical imaging solution providers are helping to define the stark differences between a central PACS archive and a true VNA solution, which can make up for PACS inefficiencies.

The truth is, many PACS in critical access hospitals are being asked to do more than what they were built to do. Larger hospital groups have the budgets and human resources available to jump to a bigger, better PACS solution. However, critical access hospitals usually can’t consider it, and they don’t have to. There are now offsite vendors able to make up for the shortfalls of PACS.

OffSite Image Management, Inc. is a company that is focused on assisting the rural providers with medical imaging solutions that improve the way they care for patients. We are also able to guarantee cost savings of up to 40 percent. Contact us today and let’s discuss the needs of your facility.