A mobile device offers a portal into everything from your bank account to the latest episode of your favorite television series, so why not give referring physicians mobile access to PACS? This question occurred to Raleigh Radiology in 2012, and when a mobile application became available for the practice’s Synapse® PACS, the tech-forward practice put the wheels in motion.

In recent years, constituents across many industries have strongly embraced a cloud-based infrastructure to achieve data ubiquity. Healthcare is not one of these segments, but there are exceptions to the rule, among them the 19-hospital Indiana University Health (IU Health) system. 

When the dust settles from all the recent activity and changes in the healthcare environment, it will soon become clear that there has been a major shift in the way healthcare is practiced, measured, and compensated.

Among the many requirements a hospital must meet to achieve and maintain the designation of Critical Access Hospital (CAH), the hospital must be fairly remote and furnish 24-hour emergency care services seven days a week, using either on-site or on-call staff.

Nationwide, imaging operators are beginning to feel the impact of reimbursement cuts from the 2014 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (“MPFS”) primarily associated with Computed Tomography (“CT”) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (“MRI”) modalities.

Running a radiology practice naturally forces clinicians to divide time between treating their patients and watching after their business.

As the federal meaningful use incentive program has progressed, its direct impact on the practice of radiology has intensified through the addition of provisions specific to the utilization and sharing of medical images. 

It’s a question often posed by thought-leaders and end-users in the imaging community: What prevents health IT from working as seamlessly, and with as much interoperability, as the technology that drives banking, travel or e-commerce?