Prioritizing patient comfort and satisfaction may be a hot topic among policy makers in today’s healthcare environment, but it’s nothing new for the healthcare providers who spend most of their time working directly with them. Radiology technologists like me have always known the vital role of a positive patient experience in creating clinical value for patients. In my role supervising MRI technologists at Phoenix Children’s Hospital, I’m made aware every day of the importance of providing a calming, supportive environment for our young patients and their families.

The shift to value-based care is looking like less of a transition and more of a reality for imaging departments.

At Akron Children’s Hospital, the road to fully realized patient-centered care for kids leads to a scenario in which all patient information—including consent forms, admissions documents, diagnostic images and multimedia files—is readily accessible through the facility’s EHR.

If your hospital or healthcare system is like most others in the U.S. today, you have an EHR that’s proving expensive to maintain while working well below its potential for centralized, cost-saving image sharing. You’re fretting over non-DICOM images acquired with smartphones and insecurely siloed in numerous clinical departments. And you’re also talking a lot about enterprise imaging (EI) as a way to broach both those touchy topics and a host of others.

When it comes to ensuring patients receive the best possible imaging experience, Star Valley Medical Center in Afton, Wyo. went the extra mile so that patients don’t have to.

Imagine trying to find a white rabbit in a field of snow. This scenario is similar to what radiologists go through when looking for tumors in a woman with dense breasts, as both normal fibroglandular tissue and abnormal masses appear white on a mammogram.

Lawrence Carl, MD, is the medical director for Main Street Radiology (MSR) in Queens, N.Y., a board-certified radiologist and assistant radiology professor at Weill Cornell. His medical director responsibilities include keeping an eye out for emerging technologies to positively impact workflow and patient care in outpatient radiology. To that end, Dr. Carl leads MSR administration and technology professionals to multiple educational events each year.

HIMSS 2017 was in Orlando, Fla., last month, and officials at FUJIFILM Medical Systems U.S.A., Inc. say it was yet another hugely successful show for the company.