Better Quality and Less Hassle With an Off Site PACS
The vetting process related to taking on a new PACS (picture archiving and
communication system) vendor is not to be taken lightly. Traditional, on-site PACS are very expensive. However, if you’re planning on going the on-site route, you’re making an investment in something that is well past its prime.
Radiologists and IT professionals in the healthcare industry today are focusing quite heavily on vendor neutral archiving (VNA) systems that do much more than a traditional PACS can offer. The new way of thinking is to forgo the idea of on-site solutions in favor of off site vendors who store and manage your data. The major upside to this solution is that they also manage the software and hardware, leaving you to focus on patients instead of cumbersome technology.
Healthcare providers conscious of the bottom line are beginning to realize the cost savings of an off site PACS system. They pay for what they use, not the entire system.
With more than 2,000 critical care facilities in the U.S., it’s clear that there is a need for low-cost solutions that offer quality results. In a perfect world, you would have the resources and talent on staff to integrate all your clinical images and electronic medical records across every department for imaging studies. Few facilities can afford such a scenario, which is why going with an off site PACS vendor is the key to success for these under funded facilities.
It’s not all about cost; an off site solution also offers functionality that might otherwise be impossible to achieve. Monitoring applications and analytics platforms found in off site solutions give users a better handle on business intelligence and improvement of quality. Storage limits are a problem with providers using an on-site system. However, when you’re using an off site PACS solution, you don’t have any limits on storage, and you also don’t have to worry about budgeting for more servers and more real estate in which to house them.
As you’ve probably already noticed, the archiving tasks are only getting more difficult as the amount of data begins to stack up and regulations regarding how that data is stored becomes more difficult to live up to. Letting a third party handle these issues is the way to go today, especially for providers that are limited in size, staff and funding. Diagnostic applications are becoming more complex yet more integrated into the everyday workflow. Maintaining these applications is often beyond the scope of the average IT staff.
OffSite Image Management, Inc. is a company that leads the industry in providing off site archiving solutions. Tell us what your needs are and we’ll tell you how we’ll meet them at a low cost.