With more than 80% of hospital visits involving at least one imaging test, it’s clear that medical imaging continues to be a big part of the overall healthcare picture. To keep up with demand, operational improvements are often sought out by healthcare providers.
Among the areas where medical imaging professionals look for improvements is in how they’re utilizing their resources and to identify waste elimination opportunities. It’s not always a piece of equipment – it can be waste in workflow in regard to time that staff spends in an inefficient manner.
Where to Look for Improvement
A thorough approach to eliminating waste involves a multi-pronged strategy that involves gathering all the data you can in order to make more insightful decisions. This can involve talking to employees about workflow and areas that need improvement. You can also survey your patients for objective information about your services and how they can be improved. This will give you the data you need to get a clearer overall picture of your imaging department.
Most successful strategies involve setting goals. Look at immediate goals and those that are long term, then set up some metrics to help you track your progress in reaching those goals. As you work toward these goals, you’ll be more cognizant of trouble areas, such as workflow bottlenecks, and then you can look for solutions to resolve these issues.
Partnering With an Imaging Professional
Antiquated equipment can often be the source of many of your operational improvement problems. Imaging departments need to have PACS solutions that are based on the latest DICOM standards if they want to stay on track with their workflow goals. For example, a fully hosted cloud-based PACS solution can significantly improve your position where your antiquated equipment is concerned.
Browser agnostic viewing opportunities are also available through quality imaging technology vendors. For radiologists who have struggled with proprietary viewers in the past, having browser agnostic viewing capabilities represents a large improvement in accessing images more freely.
Are you working with equipment that isn’t 3D TOMO BTO compliant? This is another area where working with the right imaging technology vendor can put you in a better position. Furthermore, a vendor offering cloud-based solutions fully manages all the software, which means you never have to hassle with updates.
At OffSite Image Management, we’ve assisted imaging departments for years in their efforts to improve operational efficiency. From structured reporting to unlimited routing, modality worklists to image storing options, we address all our clients’ needs in a comprehensive fashion. Check out our PACS offerings and see how you can save money while reducing workflow bottlenecks and improving patient care.
