Better Breast-imaging Workflow: UCSF Case Study

September 15, 2010 | A Better Mousetrap

When the women’s imaging department at the Mount Zion campus of the University of California–San Francisco (UCSF) began transitioning to full-field digital mammography, workstations were implemented to enable radiologists to manage the digital workflow.... Read More »

Beyond the Basics: Next-generation Radiology Reports

July 14, 2010 | Quality

At Shields Health Care Group (SHCG), an outpatient high-end imaging provider headquartered in Quincy, Massachusetts, staying ahead of the technology curve has been a clearly defined business initiative from the beginning. It is paying off handsomely. According... Read More »

Leveraging IT for Better Service

February 15, 2010 | Radinformatics

Don Trexler, CEO of Baton Rouge Radiology Group (BRRG) in Louisiana, wants his practice to be different from a typical imaging group. “We’re a full-service radiology firm,” he says. “The radiology market, in general, is becoming more and more price conscious. To be in a leadership position when... Read More »

Marooned on Level 3: Leverage IT to Improve Reporting

January 10, 2010 | Destination Digital

In a December 2 session at RSNA 2009 in Chicago, Illinois, on using next-generation health care IT to improve radiology, David Avrin, MD, PhD, radiologist at the University of California–San Francisco Medical Center, opened with a comment made to him by one of his hospital administrators: “Images these days are... Read More »

RIS Migration at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center

August 18, 2009 | Radinformatics

It’s as extreme a transition as any IT professional could imagine: moving from a remotely hosted RIS to a fully integrated RIS/PACS over the course of just a few short months. Bill Cummins and his team, however, had ample motivation to make the switch. The director of... Read More »

Hosted RIS: An Efficient Alternative

April 15, 2009 | Radinformatics

When Vanderbilt Imaging Services LLC, the freestanding outpatient radiology practice associated with Vanderbilt Medical Center, Nashville, Tenn, opened its doors in 1999, the center decided to implement an alternative to the traditional RIS configuration: a hosted RIS. The benefits of a vendor-hosted RIS solution include increased reliability, powerful business-continuity/disaster-recovery... Read More »

Is Custom Reporting Difficult?

March 01, 2009 | NONE

Completing a customized report using RIS data-mining software (or some other system) is simply a matter of learning a little technology. For Stefanie Dendy, director of radiology at King’s Daughters Hospital in Yazoo City, Miss, it can be as easy as changing the start-date and end-date fields for... Read More »

Data Mining: Imaging Executives Crunch the Numbers

March 01, 2009 | Feature

RIS data, keyed to billing, can be analyzed to improve competitive capability and pare inefficiency to the nub

Physicians and executives are similar to scientists; they like data to assist them in making decisions,” Rob Cercek says. Cercek, vice president of ambulatory services at Rochester General Hospital ... Read More »

Information Theft: How to Prevent It

September 16, 2008 | Data Central

What do hospital administrators and their CIOs fear above all else? It may be information theft, especially if that information includes sensitive patient data. Nothing grabs the attention as completely as learning that a laptop laden with patient data has slipped out the door. With preparation, though, such an... Read More »

Intersociety Conference Urges Adoption of Structured Reports

May 16, 2008 | Dashboard Confessions

Aside from referrers’ clear-cut preference for structured reports, radiologists have added cause to adopt the use of structured reporting. At its annual meeting last summer, the 2007 Intersociety Conference urged the adoption of structured reports, according to an article by N. Reed Dunnick, MD, and Curtis P. Langlotz, MD, in... Read More »

Look, No Hands: Reports Go Directly to Referrer EMRs

February 16, 2008 | Heavy Traffic

John Griffith, CIO of Epic Imaging, Portland, Ore, says, “They asked us for it, and we had to come up with a solution.” The radiology practice provides imaging for close to 2,000 physician referrers; what they wanted was electronically delivered radiology reports sent to their practices not via fax, nor... Read More »