Maybe your PACS vendor is going out of business, or the system is so creaky that your vendor no longer offers support. Perhaps your hospital signed an exclusive purchasing agreement that requires a new PACS from a different vendor. Maybe your new department chair just prefers a different system. Any of these causes could conspire to put you in the

RadNet, Inc, which operates 191 fixed-site imaging centers in six U.S. states, has executed a definitive agreement to acquire eRAD, Inc parent company Image Medical Corp. for $10.75 million. eRAD provides PACS and related workflow solutions to more than 250 hospitals, teleradiology businesses, imaging centers and specialty physician groups.

Few processes in radiology are as dreaded as switching from a legacy PACS to a newer replacement. Often approached only when the former PACS is on its last legs, the transition between systems requires diligent selection from an ever-widening field of solutions, lengthy migration of complex (and sometimes flawed) data, and retraining of all

Since the first of the year, radiologists at Advanced Diagnostic Imaging (ADI), Belleville, Ill, have been using a new outcomes-based quality assurance program from NightHawk Radiology Services, Scottsdale, Ariz. NightHawk developed the program to realign quality assurance with patient care, focusing first on the effect a discrepancy may have on

Medicine in general is evolving toward a patient-centered, outcomes-based model, and radiology should be no exception, according to Timothy Myers, MD, senior vice president and CMO of NightHawk Radiology Services, Scottsdale, Arizona. “We’re looking at things less from the standpoint of the physician and more from the standpoint of the patient, and

Radiologists, like all physicians, have always been concerned about the quality of their work, but in recent years, the specialty’s focus on quality has been renewed. Paul Larson, MD, chair of the Commission on Quality and Safety of the ACR®, says, “Historically, we looked almost exclusively at whether we got the right answers in our reports. What

The road to PACS perfection is paved with distractions and pitfalls, Paul Chang, MD, FSIIM, says. Chang is professor of radiology, vice chair of radiology informatics, and medical director of enterprise imaging at University of Chicago Medical Center in Illinois. During the 2010 Dwyer Lecture, “The Role of Imaging Informatics in the Next Generation

The radiology department at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), Boston, Massachusetts, developed a policy for communicating critical and discrepant results after the Joint Commission made communications among caregivers a national priority for health-care providers. When the goal was expanded in 2007, the department took the next step and used IT