vRad expands analytics portfolio with Global Practice Information report
Virtual Radiologic, aka vRad, has added a new service aimed at radiology practices that want to know how they’re performing 24/7 in all sorts of clinical and operational activities.
The Minneapolis-based teleradiology giant introduced its GPI Report (the acronym stands for Global Practice Information) Oct. 21, building out its already expansive analytics portfolio.
Eligible vRad clients subscribed to the report will automatically receive the reports monthly in their email as a graphical and chart-based summary of summary and facility-specific metrics, including individual radiologists’ hour-by-hour volumes, productivity, patient mix and other operational tracers.
The company stated in a press release that the reports will reflect both onsite and teleradiology activity. It said the new service is an outgrowth of its clinical benchmarking platform, data normalization solution (which is awaiting patent) and natural language processing tool “for innovative radiology report mining that turns qualitative text, like clinical findings, into quantitative metrics.”
In prepared remarks, the company’s chief medical officer, Ben Strong, MD, pointed to the main problem the new service seeks to solve. “Pulling data from different systems such as billing, scheduling or PACS does not provide the normalized information needed for trending, benchmarking and operational oversight with which to make better decisions for patients, physicians and radiology practices,” he said.
In a conversation with imagingBiz, vRad’s CIO, Shannon Werb, said vRad clients vary widely in their embrace of the company’s analytics offerings.
“Some customers fully embrace [the available metrics], using our analytics for insight every single day and being very specific about how they want to derive value from our technology stack,” he said. “Other customers see analytics as a future value add” to vRad’s core teleradiology services.
The company has posted a sample GPI Report online.
Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.