Leading Critical Access Hospital Upgrades Enterprise Imaging Platform, Adds Remote Viewer to Enhance Treatment Decisions
(Neillsville, Wis.) is a critical access hospital with a Level 3 trauma center. The facility installed the latest version of Carestream’s Vue Radiology PACS (see video link) and Vue Motion enterprise viewer as part of Carestream’s Clinical Collaboration Platform to help onsite and remote physicians enhance patient care.
“This enterprise imaging platform delivers exceptional functionality and advanced tools. When using the enterprise viewer, surgeons and other specialists can securely view a patient’s imaging studies on their mobile device or any remote Internet-enabled workstation to determine how urgent the patient’s condition is. Then we decide whether our staff should treat the patient or refer them to another hospital,” said Paul Harmer, Memorial Medical Center’s Imaging Department Manager. “Implementing this technology has had a dramatic impact on patient outcomes.” The enterprise viewer also is embedded within the hospital’s EMR so referring physicians can access both patient images and reports along with the entire patient record. “A clinician looks at a report and clicks on a link that launches Vue Motion, which delivers current and prior exams for immediate review. Our physicians are able to deliver a rapid diagnosis with confidence,” Harmer reports.When reading from the PACS, the diagnostic viewer equips radiologists to customize their worklist and hanging protocols for greater efficiency and convenience.In addition to radiology, the enterprise imaging platform also manages ultrasound, nuclear medicine, MRI and PET-CT exams. The enterprise viewer serves general and orthopaedic surgeons as well as internal medicine, OB/GYN and family practice physicians. Cardiac, ENT, urology and other specialists also review patient information using the viewer.The hospital recently implemented a new EMR that required changing medical record numbers for all patient files for the past eight years. “Carestream planned and handled this complicated conversion and all the data was transferred without any problems,” according to Harmer.Memorial Medical Center also uses Carestream’s Vue RIS with digital dictation and Carestream Vue Cloud Services.