By Cat Vasko
As health care faces diminishing reimbursement and the emergence of new payment models, radiology departments are increasingly tracking and reporting on a wide array of analytics, ranging from quality to utilization. “We are absolutely under increasing pressure to provide this information to the organization as a whole,” says Vijay Rao, MD, professor and chair of the department of radiology at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. “There are a number of analytics we monitor fairly rigorously, and there will always be new things that come up that you have to measure and understand.”
 "Something that is always pointed out is that inpatients wait a long time to access high-end imaging modalities, and the impact of that on length of stay is a very important issue for hospitals."
—Vijay Rao, MD, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA
These analytics, Rao says, include both data for departmental use and data reported to the larger organization, and are part of larger initiatives to improve the appropriateness and quality of radiology while maintaining physician productivity and patient access. “There’s a lot of pressure related to productivity. It’s a huge issue,” she says. “Institutions want to make sure that people who are highly productive are being compensated at the appropriate level.” Managing this maze of stakeholder needs and expectations is simplified, she says, by IT that helps the department track a wide variety of metrics.
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By George Wiley
 According to Osman Ratib, MD, chief of radiology at Geneva University Hospital (GUH) in Geneva, Switzerland, tomorrow’s radiology enterprise will go well beyond diagnostic work-ups. Ratib is multilingual and multidisciplinary, and his view of the future is one in which clinical and organizational demands will lead to new radiology solutions that satisfy multiple caregivers. It will include more imaging tools and better information for referrers, as well as a larger role for radiology in the planning and execution of surgeries and other clinical treatments.
Surgeons of the future, he predicts, will actually project radiologic images generated by advanced modalities in the radiology department onto the bodies of patients during endoscopic surgery to guide the whole process with greater accuracy and safety. Molecular imaging will lead to highly individualized patient-specific treatments, and cancer-staging, as well as surgery, will become more accurate through the use of molecular and volumetric renderings, he adds.
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By Cat Vasko
 When three New York City hospitals Beth Israel Medical Center, St. Luke’s Hospital, and Roosevelt Hospitalâjoined forces in 1997 as Continuum Health Partners, each facility was utilizing its own IT solutions, and the addition of New York Eye and Ear Infirmary in 2000 added a fourth set of platforms to the mix. Jill Wojcik, Corporate Director of Technology Delivery for Continuum, recalls, “When the four entities merged, we had a lot of disparate systems to work withâtwo emergency department systems, three PACS, a couple of dental systems, and so on.”
This approach created multiple challenges for Continuum’s IT department, both financial and operational, Wojcik shares. As a result, the health system began transitioning to enterprise-wide deployments of IT systems, meting out the change according to when upgrades were already scheduled to occur. “The challenge, on our side, is trying to get all the hospitals and sites to agree on a standard workflow,” she says. “With an enterprise-wide solution, it’s a lot easier to handle the costs, training, and support for multiple IT solutions.”
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Value-Added Services of Hospital Radiology Groups
Vijay Rao, MD, and David Levin, MD, on ways in which a single on-site radiology group adds value to the enterprise, including patient safety, image quality, cost containment, and more.
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ONC Postpones Permanent Certification Program
Previously planned for January 2012, the permanent program for certification of EHRs will launch in mid-2012 to coincide with the meaningful use Stage 2 final rule.
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Radiology Benchmarks Collaborative
A vendor-neutral, subscription-based service provides a monthly view of radiology performance benchmarked against three peer groups.
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Mining Patient Records for Risk Factors
A search engine-based informatics platform enables quantitative stratification of patient risk for contrast-induced nephropathy.
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