AHRAdatalynx to Drive Improvements through Competition

In what its developers are calling a 21st century upgrade for the organization, AHRA: the Association for Medical Imaging Management, has automated and digitized its annual member survey via a comprehensive data tool that could drive performance improvement industry-wide. AHRAdatalynx is an analytical benchmarking tool derived from a partnership between the professional group and National Imaging Network. With the participation of hundreds of AHRA members nationwide, imaging professionals will be able to see where their practices stand in relation to their cohorts in the field. “Speed is relative,” says Brian Baker, President of Regents Health Resources and National Imaging Network. “You may think you’re going fast until someone passes you. It’s like that in business. This allows AHRA members to see their own performance in the context of all the rest of the data.” Now that it has been digitized, the AHRA member survey allows members to review the performances of their professionals against those of any other participating group. “If you want to measure yourself as a non-profit against for-profit, you can do that,” Baker says. “It’s revolutionary for our industry. Because AHRA members are eligible for NIN membership, it automates the process, Baker says, by connecting directly systems and members. “We can predict revenue by bed and by patient,” he says. “So we can take the data from the RIS/PACS system, bump it up against the payer for that patient, which is a step that’s never been done before. This is a step before that. The Holy Grail Baker describes is to be able to track patient outcomes and quality of patient care and feed that information back to the clinicians. “Because imaging is subservient to the ordering physician marketplace, we’re merely doing what is asked of us,” he says. “We’ve got to move to real-time data that influences clinical support. We can encourage more providers to link up with data and data sharing through a source that’s impartial, in the middle, like we’re doing here, we can learn from each other, become more efficient, and that way better drive patient care.”