Dear RIS Insider,
Radiology reading rooms can be hectic places: phones and pagers are ringing constantly, clinicians wander in and out seeking patient results, and paper-based exam notes often stack up near workstations. In addition, most departments perform diagnostic reads not just for their facility, but for satellite outpatient imaging centers as well.
The compound annual growth rate of diagnostic imaging utilization means that this scenario will not be going away anytime soon, unless a practice undertakes to retool its radiologist's workflow. As knowledge workers perched atop the radiology food chain, every minute of a radiologist's time is a precious commodity.
Recognizing this, a group of radiologists and software application developers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center in Ohio created a software program to minimize interruptions, speed report delivery, and maximize their workload capabilities.
The Web-based application, RadStream, is an automated radiology triage system that allows technologists and radiologists to differentiate medical acuity in stat reads, dynamically balance workload by service and specialty, and provide an auditable report delivery system to referring physicians.
The tool, which is fed patient demographic data directly from a RIS or PACS, has cut mean stat report turnaround times across the board, decreased interruptions of radiologists, and improved the quality of communications to referring clinicians.
To learn more about how a team at Cincinnati Children's developed an in-house RIS/PACS enhancement, click here. As a RIS Insider subscriber, you have access to this story before it's published for the rest of our AuntMinnie members.
Finally, if you have a comment or story to share about any aspect of RIS or healthcare IT, please get in touch with me at [email protected]. I look forward to hearing from you.
