Is Siemens setting its healthcare business free to do its own thing or isn’t it? 

Astronomers working with the high-resolution Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have penetrated clouds of gas and dust to capture the best images ever recorded of planetary formation 450 light-years from Earth.

“The cost of global cybercrimes now exceeds the revenue from the global drug trade,” said David Anderson of consulting firm CliftonLarsenAllen at the start of his presentation to RBMA members on information security at the RBMA Fall Educational Conference in Seattle. “Every second of the day, people are out there looking for the weak link." 

In these days of right-sizing and second-hand scanners, it may not be politically correct to say it, but as long as we are paying for performance, why not consider paying for technology performance.

Blue Mountain Health System may not have been early to the digital revolution when it implemented its first RIS/PACS in 2010, but it has moved further than many larger health systems in the intervening four years.Since implementation, the two-hospital community health system has dramatically reduced turnaround time, increased technologist productivity and improved patient satisfaction and safety. Much of that improvement can be attributed to Blue Mountain’s crowning achievement: It has achieved a 100% paperless workflow in the radiology department.

To Cory Cino, the history of Wyoming County Community Health System in Western New York divides neatly between “before RIS” and “everything since.”The PACS administrator vividly recalls his radiology department doing patient scheduling and tracking on sheets of loose-leaf paper in three-ring binders and reporting via cassette-tape transcriptions on a homegrown database. Then there was perhaps the most cumbersome practice of all: storing pretty much everything the department produced—reports, tapes and, prior to PACS, films—wherever an untaken spot could be found…including on the roof.

Productivity surged without additional work hours in the medical imaging division of Sutter Health in Sacramento when radiologists received data-driven performance metrics, according to the company that supplied the data tools.

The placard project at Spectrum Health Systems is a unique methodology developed by George Vallillee, manager of Radiology Information Solutions, to improve the fidelity of the patient experience during a planned downtime or system disruption.  The project was proposed and initiated by Vallillee, and largely driven by teams whose input was mainly intellectual collateral, drawn from daily workflows, and drawn from the radiology system used throughout Spectrum. Since the rollout of the program, it has been tested and updated regularly to make further improvements in efficiency. Deemed a success by health system executives, the placard program has become a permanent part of Spectrum Health Systems communication plan.