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ScImage Lands VHA
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Single Database Solution Unifies Group's Approach
to Reading In Rural Oklahoma
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Here
Founded in 1969, Diagnostic Imaging
Associates (DIA) initially provided Oklahoma's rural hospitals
and clinics with "circuit-riding" radiologists that would
read cases once per week for a few hours before moving on
to the next facility on their list. While these circuit riders
provided a valuable service to the rural communities, as technology
advanced, it became clear that there was more that could be
done for these communities. Today, DIA has grown from a two-man
operation into a radiology physician group with more than
a dozen radiologists that specialize in MRI, CT, X-ray and
all interventional radiology procedures. The group relies
heavily on a robust telecommunication network that is run
by the state of Oklahoma to provide radiological testing for
patients and diagnostic image interpretation. DIA's focus
is on treating patients with the least invasive means at the
highest success rate. Among their customers are Tulsa Regional
Medical Center and its affiliates, Cancer Treatment Centers
of America and several small community hospitals throughout
the state. DIA also provides fellowship opportunities in interventional
radiology and a residency program for radiologists in training.
The Oklahoma Telemedicine Network and OneNet
Circuit riders supplied by DIA and other subspecialty groups
served a valuable purpose to the residents of rural Oklahoma.
In an effort to provide better service using the technology
available, the Oklahoma State Legislature signed a bill in
the early 1990s to create the Telemedicine Advisory Council.
This council set about leveraging advancements in Internet
technologies which led to the creation and initial development
of the Oklahoma Telemedicine Network (OTN) in 1993. OTN placed
new high-bandwidth connections or used existing high-bandwidth
connections between 45 hospitals throughout rural Oklahoma
to better serve these communities. The communications lines
were used for telemedicine, video conferencing and other types
of point-to-point communication between hospitals, physicians
and their patients. Toward the end of the 1990s, OTN was turned
over to OneNet, which is run by the Oklahoma State Regents
for Higher Education and is operated in cooperation with the
Oklahoma Office of State Finance.
A native of rural Oklahoma himself, DIA's president and a
long-time proponent of telemedicine, Dean Fullingim, D.O.,
understood that the state's rural population required access
to radiology services. However, because fewer and fewer physicians
were being trained as radiologists, access to those services
was limited. Dr. Fullingim saw potential in the network being
run by the state and set about making use of this valuable
resource. Working at Oklahoma State University at the time,
he devised a way to put the medical school's telecommunications
infrastructure to work in order to provide teleradiology services
to rural Oklahoma. Leveraging OneNet's
Because of
ScImage's single database approach, the solution is
easy to manage and administer. I no longer have to maintain
three solutions.
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infrastructure Dr. Fullingim made it possible for patients
in rural communities to receive diagnosis and treatment without
traveling long distances or waiting for a circuit-riding radiologist's
weekly visit. DIA has grown considerably since inception.
Today DIA comprises a dozen radiologists reading for 41 facilities
from eight central locations around the state. This growth
and the advancement of technology by way of advanced visualization
applications for CT and MR has meant using solutions from
multiple vendors to get the work done. Dr. Fullingim and DIA's
director, systems technology, Allen Noland, knew it could
be done more efficiently.
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From Multiple
Vendors to One Solution
In late 2004, DIA set out to consolidate their efforts. The
group practice was using systems from three different vendors
to provide interpretive radiology services to their customers.
DIA's homespun radiology information system, DIA RIS, tied
the three solutions together so any solution they selected needed to
be standards based and must interface to the RIS seamlessly.
This is because DIA RIS currently handles patient scheduling,
film requisitions and reporting for the group's busy reading
environments. In an effort to end the frustration associated
with using several solutions to complete their work, Dr. Fullingim
and Noland needed a single solution to provide cross-sectional
imaging tools, efficient telemedicine and standard radiology
imaging - all features that their current three vendors provided.
After considerable research and evaluation of several solutions
at the annual Radiological Society of North America (RSNA)
exhibition in Chicago, DIA launched a pilot project to evaluate
ScImage's Enterprise PACS, PicomEnterprise. What attracted
the two telemedicine veterans to the PicomEnterprise solution
was its Web-based design, combined functionality for key components
of their workflow and consistent user experience. The solution
was also cost competitive. Shortly after the evaluation began,
a decision was made to move the entire group off the existing
combined product approach and onto ScImage's PicomEnterprise
solution. The impetus for the decision was that DIA could
begin reading all exams from their 40-plus institutions using
a unified platform.
Timothy T. McCay, D.O. reading a
CT on PicomEnterprise at DIA's Telerad room at Tulsa Regional
Medical Center. Images are selected using DIA's proprietary
RIS application (located on the right monitor).
According to Noland, "Because of ScImage's single database
approach, the solution is easy to manage and administer. I
no longer have to maintain three solutions and the data being
stored on our PicomEnterprise server is seamlessly delivered
to our physicians through our DIA RIS front-end. In addition,
the built-in visualization tools for MPR and Oblique Slicing
make image interpretation and manipulation much easier because
our radiologists don't have to move to a separate workstation."
In fact, DIA currently reads an average of 900 radiology exams
per day from outlying facilities that are interconnected via
the OneNet network. Using the Web-based PicomEnterprise solution,
a dozen reading radiologists provide primary interpretations
for CR, CT, MR and ultrasound from eight facilities around
the state. By eliminating the circuit-riding radiologists,
physicians can now stay in one place and provide more efficient
service to more patients, more rapidly.
"DIA has
been providing world class teleradiology services to the residents
of rural Oklahoma for the last 17 years," stated Dr. Fullingim.
"We have worked with multiple vendors during this time. We
interpret more than 200,000 exams annually that come from
41 facilities around the state. ScImage helped us unify our
approach to reading and now we all use the same system, the
same tools and the same interface. We couldn't do that without
ScImage." |
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Customer Focus - CardioVascular Assoc.
“One of the key considerations in our decision to go with ScImage was their scaleable web-based architecture."
Eric Two Bears - Chief Information Officer
CardioVascular Associates - Birmingham, AL |
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