PACS Problems: Physicians Say Medical Images Must be Both “Fast and Filtered” to Save Lives.

How PACS Improvements can Work for You

Gaining a fast yet accurate diagnosis for the patient is critical in delivering the highest possible level of patient care. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always occur as it should, and sometimes, it’s because a medical image wasn’t available fast enough, or something was missed in the reading of the image. PACS problems can work against patient care, but taking a different approach to how your PACS works could be a significant step in the right direction.

Sometimes, X-rays are simply misread, like in the case of a woman in her 40s who went to a Boston hospital with a persistent cough. The medical image was read as “normal,” yet the cough persisted and 13 months later, the lady was found to have advanced lung cancer, which was beyond treatment. Obviously, this was a case that required a second, closer look. Unfortunately, there are barriers to the delivery of medical images, and it’s often PACS-related.

Meaningful Use requirements have forced the hand of radiologists who now have to work with electronic health records. While the situation is far from perfect, due mostly to the limited budgets and access to qualified personnel who can carry out an effective electronic health records program, but when up and running, they should allow for better access to important medical data, such as images.

PACS workflow issues are holding up the work of radiologists all over the country. The massive amount of patient data can hamper the situation. A study at the University of Chicago reveals that 35 percent of radiologists there locate clinical history on their own. However, most radiologists won’t go through this step because they have very little time to direct toward this task. Could a cloud-based PACS help resolve some of these issues?

Querying data doesn’t have to be time-consuming, nor does gaining access to medical images. Too many radiologists and physicians are barred from easy access to images due to proprietary solutions that limit them to a stationary workstation to view images. Thanks to the vendor neutral archiving engineering of cloud-based PACS, all that is needed to view medical images is a secure URL. Smartphones, tablet computers, laptops and desktop computers can then be used to view images.

Large hospitals with larger budgets for improvements to their on-premise PACS don’t face the same challenges that rural providers face on a daily basis. However, rural providers have options in the cloud that can bring them the same efficiencies, if not more, than what the larger hospitals do. For instance, using offsite datacenters to archive medical images, providers can choose how much storage they need now and pay for more as needed in the future.

OffSite Image Management, Inc., is a company that brings these efficiencies to providers of all sizes. Our VNA, cloud-based PACS solutions bring efficiencies that include better workflow options for busy radiologists and ease of use to physicians who need access to medical images on the go. Contact us today and let’s see how we can help you and your colleagues.