There is much interest and confusion in the U.S. over the meaningful use criteria of healthcare IT (as required for the U.S. healthcare IT stimulus plan), and how it can be applied in radiology. As a result, researchers sought to demonstrate how a PACS for enterprisewide distribution and display of medical images could be shown to be meaningfully used, said presenter Katherine Andriole, PhD.
And use it, they did; PACS was adopted across multiple specialties and multiple healthcare settings in their healthcare system, Andriole said.
The frequency of PACS use was greater than the number of imaging studies being generated, revealing that the same imaging examinations were being viewed by multiple providers and multiples times, Andriole said. Images were also being viewed around the same time but from very different physical locations by different caregivers.
"One might conclude that because physicians continue to use this healthcare information technology tool, it is useful -- though we did not attempt show explicitly any impact on patient management, changes in care, etc., by use of this technology," Andriole told AuntMinnie.com. "We were also able to show that our hospital film expenditures decreased exponentially, with use of the enterprise PACS going up and staying up over the seven years of the study analysis."
